Author: Pippa Allen-Kinross

Reforms to GCSEs intended to cut the amount of time pupils spend in exams have actually led to an increase in mock exams, according to a new report. The results of a three-year joint research project by exams regulator Ofqual and Oxford University’s Centre for Educational Assessment also found growing concerns about the impact of […]

A cash-strapped council is trying to sue an academy trust for more than £4 million over alleged unpaid services. Lambeth council in south London has been in an escalating legal battle with the Parallel Learning Trust (PLT) for more than three years. The government has stepped in in an attempt to resolve the long spat. […]

Emails seen by Schools Week reveal senior leaders at an academy trust arranged and encouraged support for a controversial approach to behaviour management – although it denied it had any such policy. Delta Academies Trust insisted it did not have a “flattening the grass” behaviour policy, an approach that caused widespread concern earlier this year […]

A chief executive and operations manager at an academy trust have left their posts amid an internal investigation over a budget black hole supposedly totalling several hundreds of thousands of pounds. Tom Quinn, chief executive at Holy Family Catholic Multi-Academy Trust, left his post last week, alongside operations director Sally Mitchell. Quinn is a member […]

Two-fifths of headteachers say they have had to cut back on school trips in an effort to save money. According to a poll for The Sutton Trust, an educational charity which aims to improve social mobility, more than two thirds of secondary school senior leaders have also cut back on teachers (69 per cent) and […]

Teachers have warned of a growing “crisis” in pupil mental health, with over 80 per cent saying the problems have got worse in the last two years. Less than half of the 8,000 teachers, school leaders and support staff surveyed by the National Education Union also reported having a school counsellor, with a third saying […]

England faces a £1.2 billion shortfall in special needs funding, the National Education Union has warned, as its members prepare to vote on possible strike action over job cuts. On the first day of its annual conference, the union has released analysis which shows that 93 per cent of local authority areas across England now […]

The Treasury has clawed back more than £300 million in funding from the Department for Education’s budget after money paid into the apprenticeship levy went unspent, Schools Week can reveal. School leaders today lamented the fact that the cash – a proportion of which will have been paid in by schools that then struggled to find […]

An error in a mark scheme for a skills test would-be teachers must pass before training has led to hundreds of candidates failing the test, the government has admitted. Schools minister Nick Gibb admitted the error in the literacy skills test mark scheme had been in place for at least 10 years. Between September 2017 […]