Schools Week Reporter | Schools Week

School uses ‘nurture room’ to calm pupils at risk of misbehaviour

Students at Aureus School in Oxfordshire who feel at risk of misbehaving are encouraged to “self-refer” to a nurture room to watch an aquarium or “sit and smell in the darkness”, says Julie Hunter, the school’s deputy headteacher. “To nurture their minds, we need to support them, maybe by giving them that time in a […]

Safeguarding software ‘normalises authoritarian approaches’ in schools – academics

Academics are concerned safeguarding software that allow firms to keep watch on pupils’ activity on computers is “normalising extreme authoritarian approaches” in schools – with worries parents might not know about the “snooping”. It follows tech firm Smoothwall launching a new partnership with company Safeguard Software to provide a service that scoops up data from […]

ACE Schools Trust: The MAT branching into family services

ACE Schools Multi Academy Trust, an alternative provision trust in Devon, is developing a new way to provide wraparound family support to get children out of the “downward spiral” of those who’ve fallen under the radar If you’ve read the recent stories in the media, you’d be forgiven for thinking that alternative provision is a […]

Ofsted’s curriculum focus ‘risks being a tick-box exercise’

Ofsted’s focus on curriculum risks being a tick-box exercise that does nothing to assess whether children are actually learning, warned a prominent education academic. “Working out whether somebody has learned something or not is incredibly complex,” said Becky Allen, professor of education at University College London’s Institute of Education, at a panel event on assessment […]

Should home education have statutory monitoring?

With the second reading of the Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill due in parliament, we brought together Mike Wood, founder of Home Education UK, and Sarah Dove, a former teacher, who now consults for local authorities supporting children at risk of exclusion Would you support monitoring visits for home-educated kids? Sarah Dove: Yes, […]

Luke Tryl, director of corporate strategy, Ofsted

Luke Tryl, Ofsted’s director of corporate strategy, is one of those people who always appears impeccably presented – which is why it’s reassuring, as I smooth down my hair from the cycle ride, to notice that he’s wearing one poppy-red sock and one powder-blue. He casually crosses and uncrosses his ankles, settled in a low […]

The school leading on job shares from the top

“Why did you leave, and why are you coming back?” Simon Knight fizzles with delight as he tells the story of how he and Heidi Dennison were grilled by the student council during their interview for the joint headship of Frank Wise School. “We had about 35, 40 minutes with the pupils interviewing us. The […]

Can schools make any more savings?

With chancellor Hammond’s autumn budget offering schools a one-off payment of £50,000 for “little extras” but no increase in revenue funding, a headteacher and a chief operating officer debate whether there are still areas where schools can make efficiency savings. Sean Maher is headteacher of a secondary academy in Richmond, West London. Micon Metcalfe is […]

School – TV series

While we wait with baited breath to know whether series two of Educating Greater Manchester will ever make it onto our screens (Channel 4 is currently waiting on the outcome of Salford council’s investigation into the school’s former headteacher), BBC2 is rolling right in to fill the gap. The latest school reality TV series, a […]