Author: Pippa Allen-Kinross

Ormiston Academies Trust has dropped plans to axe caretaking and maintenance jobs after a backlash from staff and unions. Last month Unison accused the trust, which runs 38 schools, of failing to give enough consideration to the health, safety and welfare impact of its restructuring plans. The union claimed more than 130 posts could be […]

Local authorities have been urged to maintain a list of registered independent education providers after it emerged six councils spent more than £700,000 sending vulnerable youngsters to an “unsafe” illegal school. Last month three people were convicted of running the unregistered school at Freiston Hall in Lincolnshire (pictured). It charged £1,200 a week to educate […]

Ministers are yet to respond to five consultations on new reforms as government shuts down for purdah, including one aimed at helping Theresa May’s “ordinary working families” that is more than two years late. With a total of four years of delays between them, other consultations cover fire safety in schools, launched after the Grenfell […]

The number of teachers banned from the profession for life without the right to appeal last year has almost halved, while those escaping misconduct hearings without any prohibition rose. Our analysis has prompted further calls for reform to a system that one senior lawyer says leaves the Teacher Regulation Agency (TRA) without the “nuance” needed […]

The Conservative candidate for Croydon South told voters in an election video he “wants to see” a grammar school built in the borough – despite the fact that new selective schools are illegal. Chris Philp, who has represented Croydon South since 2015, is a long-time supporter of bringing selective education into the London borough. In […]

One in ten school leaders plan to ignore government demands to consult parents on developing new relationships and sex education (RSE) lessons. A quarter will form working groups with parents, but almost a fifth have not decided how to engage, according to a new poll by The Key. From September next year, all schools must […]

The Department for Education breached data protection rules over its controversial pupil nationality data collection and by sharing pupils’ details with the Home Office, the data watchdog has found. The Information Commissioner’s Office is now considering whether to take further regulatory action against the department following “wide ranging and serious concerns” raised in a complaint […]

A Birmingham school has been downgraded from ‘outstanding’ after Ofsted found it was off-rolling pupils. Holte School becomes the second local authority school to see its grade fall for removing pupils from the school roll, a year after Harrop Fold in Salford was put in special measures for the practice. In the report, which was […]

Almost three-quarters of school teachers say they are stressed out, while more than half considered leaving the sector because of mental health and wellbeing pressures. The annual Teacher Wellbeing Index found that over a third of education professionals (34 per cent) experienced a mental health issue in the last academic year, up from 31 per […]