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14 April 2026

Author: Tom Mendelsohn

SPONSORED: STA Travel Education is giving one school £10,000 to spend on a trip

STA Travel Education has broken traditions, and to help make school trips more accessible, it is offering one lucky group the opportunity to win their next trip, to the sweet tune of £10,000! The company is so dedicated to sending schools away, that it’s handing out freebies. STA Travel, the self-confessed round-the-world experts, has turned […]

The careers consultation will make teachers’ lives better at every stage

The government’s response to the career progression consultation is full of thoughtful ideas and welcome suggestions, but more funding is still necessary, writes Dame Alison Peacock At the Chartered College of Teaching, we hear every day from our members about the fantastic work they are doing and the challenges they face. If our profession is to […]

Education is a long game, so league table measures should be too

There are natural swings between year groups as talent and circumstance ebb and flow, suggests Loic Menzies, but under the current system, this skews perspectives on school success. Every year, hundreds of secondary schools’ results swing by more than 15 percentage points. Some shift by 30 percentage points. This does not necessarily mean a particular school […]

Animal dissection must be cut from the curriculum

The modern curriculum is no place for cutting up dead animals, argues PETA’s Dr Julia Baines As a teacher, if you could take a stand against needless suffering while improving your students’ learning experience, wouldn’t you jump at the opportunity? Fortunately, this isn’t a rhetorical exercise: you can do both, by replacing animal dissection with […]

What’s the law on confiscating a pupil’s mobile phone?

Confiscation has been a hot topic on social media this week. Ramona Derbyshire clarifies schools’ and teachers’ legal rights If a teacher confiscates a mobile phone (or something else of value) from a pupil and it then gets broken or lost, who is responsible, and who must therefore bear the cost of replacing the item? […]

How to improve academy trust governance

Too many multi-academy trusts are struggling under poor governance at trust level, says Michael Pain, but Forum Education has some suggestions for improvement Ask most academy trust leaders about the most fundamental challenge for the multi-academy trust system and they will tell you about the massively varying quality of governance. So while some MATs are […]

GCSE results 2017: Boys benefit again in reformed subjects

Boys have closed the gap on girls achieving top grades in English literature and language, and moved further ahead in maths in the results of the newly reformed GCSEs. Last year, girls held a 3.9 percentage point lead over boys in English literature in achieving A*s. When comparing to the new grade 9 this year, that […]

Learndirect debacle shines light on £2m teacher test contract

The future of online tests for trainee teachers is hanging in the balance, as the only provider which holds a contract to deliver them in England faces turmoil over its adult training. Learndirect, the country’s largest private training company, holds a £2 million contract with the Department for Education to administer the computerised professional skills […]

Can a school decide to leave an academy trust?

As one regional schools commissioner ponders whether a school can voluntarily quit its multi-academy trust, education consultant Simon Foulkes examines the legal issues Schools occasionally leave one multi-academy trust to join another. They can be rebrokered for a number of reasons: failures of educational performance, management and governance, or those responsible for them might ask […]