Schools Week Reporter | Schools Week

Schools Week chief reporter John Dickens scoops top CIPR award

Schools Week staff were jokingly cautioned to “pipe down” when chief reporter John Dickens won an outstanding national education journalism award last week. Accepting the gong at the CIPR Education awards, held at The Shard in central London, Dickens was nominated for his investigations into independent school standards, parents unable to pay private school bills, […]

Progress 8 scores could fall after ECDL grade recalibration

Schools that enter large numbers of pupils into a fast-track ICT qualification could see Progress 8 scores drop if Ofqual or the DfE recalibrated grades to reflect more closely how pupils score in other GCSEs, a new analysis has claimed. Education Datalab has investigated the potential impact on Progress 8 in schools that teach the […]

Jarlath O’Brien, headteacher, Carwarden House community school

Ofsted is not something Jarlath O’Brien talks about to his staff, he tells me, as we sip tea in his office, foliage framing our conversation. He goes a little further: “I don’t give a shit about Ofsted, really. They’re nice people and they’ve got a job to do, but they can come to our school […]

Is race the elephant in the staffroom?

Men at the recent WomenEd conference admitted they were scared to talk about gender. Are white people just as scared to talk about race, asks Cath Murray This week, Jon Chaloner writes a column for us about last weekend’s WomenEd “unconference”. One keynote event featured men: the HeforShe panel. There were eight men at the […]

The Gene: An Intimate History

If you’re not a science teacher, you may think this book is not for you. Think again. Whatever your background, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Gene will make you more connected to medicine, science, history and frankly, the trajectory of human thought. My only caution would be not to recommend it to too many people. Once this […]

SEND reforms: Past, Present and Future

The Children and Families Act came into effect in September 2014, with a revised special educational needs and disability (SEND) code of practice and a programme of implementation until April 2018. But half way through the reform, it has divided opinion to such an extent that two parallel Westminster reviews are underway. So what’s happened […]

Osborne’s £10 million Mandarin teaching fund not ‘strategic’

A £10 million investment in expanding the teaching of Mandarin could be better invested in language assistants and online courses, claims the former head of languages at CILT The National Centre for Languages. George Osborne announced the £10 million funding in September, while on a trip to China, saying it would enable 5,000 more pupils […]

Pupils forced to switch school after free transport cut

Parents are considering transferring their children to a new school after a local authority tightened up rules around free transport to save costs – with a warning from the Local Government Association that more councils could follow suit. East Keswick parish council has lodged a complaint with Leeds city council after the latter’s decision to […]

Ofsted judging schools negatively for teacher shortages

Ofsted inspectors are judging schools on how well they are handling teacher shortages, with two schools rated as inadequate found to have too many vacancies. Joanna Hall, deputy director for schools at Ofsted, told the commons education committee last week that inspectors would start asking leaders about teacher shortages as part of inspections. But Schools […]