Schools Week Reporter | Schools Week

Has Ofsted given up on school case studies?

Ofsted’s case studies have not always had their intended consequences. As Sean Harford said at the recent ‘Radical ideas to transform Ofsted’ conference at the UCL Institute for Education: “When Ofsted tries to nudge something, it often becomes a shove.” A famous example is triple marking. When the inspectorate published the case study of a […]

Mark Martin, Computer science lead, South Bank Engineering UTC

Mark Martin is standing at Silicon Roundabout in London, the location of choice for so many of the capital’s education start-ups. It’s also a good metaphor for the man himself, who is also known as “Urban teacher”, and whose career crosses the worlds of EdTech, the tech industry and the school where he still teaches. […]

Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney, Joint general secretaries of the National Education Union

As I mount the steps to the National Education Union’s London headquarters, I can’t help feeling disappointment that the joint general secretaries turned down the idea of a photoshoot on a bright blue tandem. Nothing that would highlight their stark height difference, the press officer insists. Union business is a serious game, it appears. Almost […]

Emmanuel Akpan-Inwang, founder, Lighthouse

Looked-after children have poor educational outcomes. Only one in seven achieve five GCSEs at A*-C – compared with one in two who are not looked after – and just six per cent go on to higher education. The stats for those growing up in children’s homes are even more stark: one in 25 for the […]

Claudia Harris, CEO, Careers and Enterprise Company

Claudia Harris, the CEO of the Careers and Enterprise Company, wants to give young people everywhere the kind of opportunities to network with employers that she was given herself during her teenage years at the prestigious St Paul’s independent school in London. “I was exposed to lots of very impressive-looking businesswomen who walked around and […]

Drew Povey, Executive head, Harrop Fold School

For the first time in the history of Channel 4’s Educating series, the filmmakers have persuaded a school to let the cameras return for a second season. From the channel’s point of view, it’s a no-brainer: Educating Greater Manchester, which aired in the autumn from Harrop Fold School in Salford, was a huge hit with […]

Emma Sheppard, founder, MaternityTeacher PaternityTeacher project

Emma Sheppard is on a mission to make it easier for parents to stay in teaching – and to move into leadership roles – and one way she intends to achieve this is by making it acceptable to bring babies to conferences. There’s pressure on Sheppard on the day we meet. First, I’m showing up […]

Revealed: How Gove was forced to create UTCs

As education secretary, Michael Gove was forced to create university technology colleges by George Osborne and David Cameron, a former senior minister has revealed. David Laws, a Liberal Democrat who served as schools minister in the coalition government from 2012 to 2015, told Schools Week that Gove “never liked” the policy, but had it “imposed” […]

Natasha Porter, CEO, Unlocked Graduates

Teach First is spawning. First there was Frontline, which applied the model to social care, and Think Ahead, focusing on mental health. Then came Police Now. The latest spin-off to get off the ground is Unlocked Graduates, which aims to train up the “brightest, smartest” graduates to work as prison officers for two years, during […]