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23 May 2026

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Opinion

Business rates revaluation: what schools need to know

In what has been billed as the biggest change in a generation, the process of the 2017 business rates revaluation is well under way. Richard Farr considers what schools need to know – and how they are likely to be impacted. What are business rates? Business rates are a tax payable on non-domestic buildings, including […]

FGM is child abuse and schools need to talk about it

Every school leader should be aware of the issues of female genital mutilation, says Hibo Wardere. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a subject many adults feel uncomfortable discussing, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The young people I speak to don’t share the same reticence. I spend most of my week talking with […]

Grammar schools are a symptom not a cure

The design of the schools system requires that failure exists somewhere. Ed Cadwallader says the only fix is a broader curriculum that gives every child a chance to succeed and when knowledge itself is seen as more important than grades. It has been heartening to see educators usually at odds with one another unite in […]

How selection could – and probably will – seep back in

“There is no way they will get this grammar school thing through.” That’s what former shadow education secretary Lucy Powell said at a debate on Sunday. It’s a comforting thought, but I’m not buying. Governments tend to do what they want, regardless of the administrative hurdles placed in their way. Michael Gove used the Terrorism […]

Payment by results: that would never happen now… or would it?

Zimmer-framed educationist that I am, I was delighted to discover Schools Week’s new column on the history of education. So delighted, in fact, that I promptly (foolishly?) proposed a contribution of my own on a subject that is close to my heart – and that of the illustrious 19th-century poet and (which is less well […]

Free school meals are still the best measure of deprivation

It may not be the clearest way to allocate extra funds to disadvantaged pupils, but it’s the best there is, says Alex Sutherland. Every year, the UK government allocates £2.5 billion to state schools to support disadvantaged pupils via the pupil premium. To figure out how to allocate these funds, the government uses free school […]

Forget grammars! Sixth-form colleges are engines of social mobility

The government should consider how greater investment in sixth-form colleges could drive up standards, says James Kewin Sixth-form colleges share the government’s ambition to create an education system that works for everyone, not just the privileged few. But the plans unveiled earlier this month to achieve this are flawed and incomplete. Flawed because they overplay […]

School are not mini-immigration offices – and never should be

Schools should not make parents show their children’s passports. For anything. That’s a really simple rule. It’s also a rule the Department for Education won’t write that clearly. I don’t know why. But it should. So let us be clear. Schools have no right to make parents show a passport. Schools do not need to […]