Nicky Phillips | Schools Week

Website highlights links between London’s schools

A digital resource to showcase partnerships between state and independent schools across London has been launched. Funded by the Mayor of London, the London Brokerage platform will allow visitors to find out which schools are working together in their local area. The site currently involves 120 state schools and is searchable by partnership type and […]

How many schools should we be trying to help?

The question may not be how many coasting or failing schools need help, but how many we have the resources to help Since the Conservative return to power in May, the papers have been full of Nicky Morgan’s promise to get tough on “coasting” schools. Attracting fewer headlines, but still important, was the government’s commitment […]

Another brick in the wall. . .

Primary school pupils are building up their knowledge of construction techniques after a lesson put on by their neighbouring college. The five and six-year-old children at St Andrews C of E Primary School, Warrington, took an interest in the techniques after reading “The Three Little Pigs” at school. They visited Warrington Collegiate and built their […]

Graham Stuart, Wendy Baxter and David Blunkett

Graham Stuart is the new vice chairman of the fair funding for schools campaign, f40. The former chair of the education select committee follows Worcester MP, Robin Walker, who has been appointed parliamentary private secretary to education secretary Nicky Morgan. Mr Stuart, 53, resigned from the education committee to put himself forward as chairman of […]

Essex team nets top prize – again

Greensward Academy’s under-16s girls’ basketball team slam-dunked their way to victory again at this year’s national schools’ champion. Competing in the final at the University of East London, the Essex team kept up their winning reputation, losing just one game in the past five years. The school won the same title last year and has […]

Twenty-seven years on from the national curriculum

Will the 2015 drive for curriculum entitlement succeed where 1988 and the national curriculum did not? We’ve been here before. A government re-elected; impatient to press on with education reform; concerned about the way schools respond to change; determined to implement radical curriculum and assessment change. This time it is the proposal that the EBacc […]

New Ofsted complaints ‘committees’ will have just two members

Ofsted’s newly announced scrutiny committees, which will review complaints about inspections, will comprise of a Her Majesty’s Inspector (HMI) and an “external school leader”, both chosen by “appropriate national representative bodies”, the watchdog has said. Speaking to Schools Week following Sir Michael Wilshaw’s announcement on Monday that eight regional bodies would be set up to […]

DfE runs ‘targeted’ consultation on academy rules

The Government has quietly launched a “targeted” consultation over plans to rewrite regulations that enabled a sole staff member to halt an academy conversion. Schools Week can reveal the Department for Education (DfE) has written to selected stakeholders for their views on plans to amend governance regulations for federated schools. The planned change follows department […]

Ofsted’s ‘double visits’ will extend into secondary schools

Ofsted plans to extend dual visits to secondary schools from September as a test of its new short inspections. Schools Week revealed in January that the school watchdog planned to conduct “double visits” during the spring term to see if different inspectors reached different verdicts about a school’s judgment. The paper has now learned that […]