Author: Pippa Allen-Kinross

GCSE results day will – hopefully – be a day of celebration for many pupils and teachers around the country. But if something doesn’t seem quite right with a result, there are still some options available. This year the exam boards have renamed re-marks to ‘reviews of results’. Each board takes a slightly different approach […]

A small academy trust which is about to be wound up has been told to urgently investigate grant advances that were paid to two private companies. St Neot’s Learning Partnership (SNLP), which runs two secondary schools and a sixth form centre in Cambridgeshire, has been warned of the Department for Education’s “concerns regarding grant advances […]

More pupils studied Chinese A-level than German for the first time this year. According to a breakdown of entries for modern foreign languages released by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), a total of 3,334 pupils in the UK opted to take an A-level in Chinese – an increase of 8.6 per cent from last […]

The proportion of pupils getting an A* at A-level in England has declined to its lowest level since 2013. In England, eight per cent of pupils reached the very top grade, down from 8.3 per cent last year. However, an increase in pupils achieving an A grade in England means that the overall proportion of […]

Business studies has had a surge in popularity among this year’s A-level pupils as traditional favourites like geography begin to lose ground. A total of 32,867 pupils in the UK took business studies at A-level, an increase of 9.5 per cent on last year with more male and female students opting for the course. Provisional […]

Schools must prove it was “proportionate” to exclude an autistic pupil on the grounds of challenging behaviour, after the Department for Education lost a landmark legal challenge. The upper tribunal, the court that deals with appeals against school exclusions, has ruled the government’s equality laws are unlawful and discriminate against pupils with autism and similar […]

Pupils at a top primary school in west London have had their SATs maths exams annulled after an investigation by the Standards and Testing Agency. The agency investigated in response to allegations of “maladministration” of the tests at St Matthew’s Church of England Primary School in Hillingdon, which was rated ‘outstanding’ at its last Ofsted […]

Two leading independent Catholic schools have been heavily criticised for failing to prevent pupils from being subjected to “appalling” sexual abuse and caring more about protecting the reputation of staff than the welfare of pupils. A 200-page report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse has said the “blatant openness” of the sexual abuse at […]

Campaigners are celebrating a government U-turn after the Department for Education said it will “consider” introducing a British sign language GCSE before 2022. Nick Gibb, the schools minister, has announced that the government could make “an exception” to its rule preventing the creation of any new GCSEs before the next election, providing the new course […]