Schools Week Reporter | Schools Week

Spielman’s school funding blog post: The full text

Ofsted’s chief inspector Amanda Spielman sparked controversy yesterday over several claims in a blog post outlining the impact of school funding pressures. The post was hastily removed by the watchdog, which said it was published “erroneously”. It will be released in the coming weeks to coincide with the publication of a more detailed study on […]

Who were the winners of The Careers & Enterprise Company Annual Awards 2019?

This week the Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC) celebrated the work of schools, colleges, businesses, and careers professionals with its annual awards ceremony for 2019. Over 200 nominations were accepted for the 12 categories and the winners were chosen by panel of independent expert judges. Claudia Harris, chief executive of the Careers and Enterprise Company, […]

Grammar school scraps controversial ‘exclusion clause’ from registration form

A grammar school has deleted a controversial clause in its registration form that made parents agree their child could be kicked out if the headteacher thinks it “desirable”. The Skinners’ School in Kent required the parents of prospective pupils to sign a registration form allowing governors to withdraw their child if they decided via “a […]

Luke Sibieta, director, Sibieta Economics of Education

One figure has been bandied about more than most in the school funding debate of the past couple of years and that’s the 8 per cent drop in real-terms per-pupil funding since 2010. I’ve come to meet the man who calculated it. Luke Sibieta’s 2017 education funding report for the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) […]

Interview: Robert Halfon, chair of the education select committee

When I ask Robert Halfon, the chair of the education committee, to name the witness that has affected him most, I’m expecting a big-hitter. Andreas Schleicher, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s education director, perhaps, or Chen Liang-gee, the Taiwanese science and technology minister? But instead he talks about Carlie Thomas, a senior caseworker […]

Emma Hardy, MP for Hull West and Hessle

Emma Hardy, MP for Hull West and Hessle Emma Hardy may be a relative newbie in Parliament, but she’s a bit of a trendsetter. Last May she launched the all-party parliamentary group on oracy. By January Nick Gibb, the schools minister, was announcing that educational traditionalists should claim oracy for themselves. “He’s going to be […]

Beccy Earnshaw, director, Voice 21

Oracy hit it big on the education agenda earlier this year when Nick Gibb unexpectedly dropped it into a conference speech, causing pundits to speculate whether it might replace phonics as the new darling of the schools minister. As director of the oracy charity Voice 21, Beccy Earnshaw has seen the power of such pronouncements […]

How could schools be held accountable for excluded pupils?

Various government reviews, at least since the 2010 white paper, have claimed that the way to improve alternative provision is to make schools take greater responsibility for the pupils they exclude. Leaked documents suggest the Timpson review of exclusions will repeat this recommendation, but how might it work? Cath Murray takes a look Last autumn […]

Ian Bauckham, CEO, Tenax Schools Trust

Ian Bauckham is probably one of the few people to have talked explicitly about sex with Department for Education officials. As their relationships and sex education adviser for the new guidance, the multi-academy trust chief executive soon realised that someone had to break the ice, and it would have to be him. “I’m probably one […]