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Schools Week can today reveal how the toxic legacy of costly PFI contracts threatens to derail the government’s promised “academies revolution”. Our three-month investigation has uncovered how cash-strapped, failing schools are seeing potentially transformative takeovers hit the buffers as academy chains baulk at taking on lengthy contracts to repay the private firms who built the […]
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Pledges to create a new England-wide fair funding formula could be derailed unless ministers find a way to fund schools’ PFI agreements. Many schools currently receive funding towards their PFI repayment contributions through a specific clause in their funding formula. The money is sliced from the dedicated schools grant given to local authorities – before […]
Every state school in England would have to pay more than £1 million each to clear the debt owed to the private firms that built new schools under PFI contracts, an analysis of Treasury figures by Schools Week has found. While schools are already struggling under the burden of hefty financial commitments, Schools Week can […]
The Department for Education (DfE) has been cleared of allegations that its £3 million recruitment advert was misleading for claiming teachers could earn up to £65,000, Schools Week can reveal. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) launched an investigation in November into the department’s “Get into teaching” advert after nearly 100 complaints. The complainants said the […]
The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) has launched its annual conference today with a survey revealing “the damage caused by funding cuts”. One in four of the school leaders who responded to the survey said they have made redundancies because of financial pressures. Nearly two thirds of the 900 respondents also said they have […]
Speculation that the release of proposals for a national funding formula could be postponed until after May’s London mayoral elections has been dismissed as “irresponsible” by the government, despite the apparent frustration of a senior civil servant over ongoing delays. Sue Baldwin, the Education Funding Agency’s academies and maintained group director, admitted today that she […]
A proposed free school has been cancelled three years after it was given the go-ahead because the planned site was too small – with £1.9 million already spent on it. The Harperbury Free School was given approval by the Department for Education (DfE) in May 2013 to open the following September in Hertfordshire. A former […]
Two studio schools will pass on responsibility for post-16 provision to North Hertfordshire College (NHC) when they close next summer. The decision to close the Da Vinci Studio School of Science and Engineering in Stevenage and the Da Vinci Studio School of Creative Enterprise in Letchworth (pictured), opened in 2012 and 2013 respectively, was taken […]
One in four girls are starting their periods without having been taught about puberty at school, a report released today shows. The Sex Education Forum asked children and young people between the ages of 11 and 25 about their experience of sex and relationships education (SRE) at school. The survey of more than 2,300 people […]