Nicky Phillips | Schools Week

How we could abandon GCSEs and make 14-19 education work

Expecting students to take a plethora of exams at 16 makes little sense in a modern context. By stripping back the number of externally-assessed subjects for this age group, we could introduce far greater flexibility into our education system To my mind, many of the reforms to qualifications made in the life cycle of the […]

Pupils compete for school makeover

Budding young designers can win £5,000 worth of design and decoration services for their school through a competition set up by Dulux. Entrants in two age categories — 7 to 11 and 11 to 18 — are being welcomed from all schools across the country as the paint provider launches its Smarter Spaces 2015 campaign, […]

Embracing my dyslexia makes me a better teacher

Tasks such as writing and alphabetising can be time-consuming and tricky, but children learn more helpful lessons when we are honest about the challenges we face in life than when we try to conceal them What is it like to be a teacher with dyslexia? I have been staring at that question for 20 minutes […]

Let the education games begin!

Schools are being invited to pre-register for this year’s World Education Games, a global online competition. The free-to-enter event is the expanded format of what was once World Maths Day and now includes World Literacy Day and World Science Day. In 2013, more than five million school students – aged 4 to 18 and representing […]

Neil McIntosh, Patrick Watson, Elin Twigge, Tim Evans, Robert Swannell and Nadia Paczuska

Neil McIntosh CBE, the former chief executive of the CfBT Education Trust, has been appointed as the first president of the Centre for the Study of Market Reform of Education (CMRE). He said the reason he has joined the Westminster-based education research and policy unit is to tackle the “unwillingness to utilise the discipline of […]

Classmates score a goal against cancer

A year 6 pupil has used a school football tournament to raise more than £1,000 for the cancer ward that saved the life of his classmate. “Sports mad” Oliver Finden of The Elms junior school, in Nottingham, was told he had B-cell Non Hodgkins Lymphoma last November and endured more than three months of treatment […]

World champ offers World Challenge tips

Teachers preparing for global expeditions had the chance to pit their fitness against one of the world’s foremost winter sports athletes, Lizzy Yarnold. The current Olympic, World and European champion in skeleton sled racing attended the World Challenge’s Expedition Preparation Conference, held at Buckinghamshire New University last month. After speaking at the conference, which aims […]

Breastfeeding boob prompts equalities law reminder in schools

School leaders have been reminded that they cannot discriminate against breastfeeding visitors, staff or students under equalities legislation. Last week, the Eastbourne Herald reported that parent Lisa Bailey had been waiting with her 11-year-old daughter before a school trip, when her one-year-old son became hungry. Ms Bailey began breastfeeding and the school’s headteacher told Ms Bailey […]

Promises, promises, promises…

After the election results, the government now needs to make good on its election promises. With the recent election outcome, we can now only hope Nicky Morgan keeps to the promises made in the Department for Education’s (DfE) Workload Challenge report published in February. Reading back over the details this half-term, I have decided to […]