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‘LAURA MCINERNEY’
We need to talk about exam re-marks – and quickly, says editor Laura McInerney It’s the first week of term and teachers of exam classes will be poring over papers to decide if any should be sent for re-marking. At A-level the decision is usually made early: if a student misses their university grades, papers […]
Opinion
Editor Laura McInerney explains how we are going to report Thursday’s A-level results For the past two A-level results days we focused our attention on secondary modern schools. We did this because readers told us they were sick of newspapers focusing on pupils who get all A*s, and given the last 12 months of grammar-fussing […]
A-level results day is here! As usual, we will be celebrating everyone’s successes, but with a particular interest in secondary modern pupils. There are close to 300 schools in England that fall into the category of secondary moderns – non-selective schools that recruit from the same neighbourhood as a grammar school – according to education […]
Politics
Ofsted recently announced it will introduce a new focus on how schools plan their curriculum. We look at what the watchdog has said so far, how inspectors have been involved in curriculum in the past, and ask some experts: how can schools make sure they’re building a strong curriculum? Ofsted’s delegation to the recent Festival […]
Feature
When Amanda Spielman told a packed audience at the Festival of Education that she aspired to be like Bismarck, it was hoped that the chief inspector meant Otto von, the iron chancellor who unified 19th-century Germany through diplomacy, rather than the battleship that was fatally damaged on its first offensive operation. In her first speech […]
Features
The Northern Rocks conference kicked off with a minute-long round of applause for its co-organiser Emma Hardy, who was elected to parliament this month. The new MP for Hull West and Hessle, a former primary school teacher and an organiser of the event, was hailed by some, including the NUT’s general secretary Kevin Courtney, as […]
News
The curriculum has been lost “as a needle in a haystack” within Ofsted inspections despite being the “real meat” of a good education, the chief inspector of Ofsted has said. Amanda Spielman, speaking to delegates at the Festival of Education this morning, said too many schools are teaching to mark schemes, SATs and GCSEs rather […]
Can the Conservatives still push through their plan for new grammar schools now they are a minority government? Editor Laura McInerney explains what we know so far. The first rule of a government is that almost nothing will stop one implementing an outrageous policy if they really, really want to. I learned this back in 2010 when […]
One of Michael Gove’s first decisions as education secretary was to abolish the General Teaching Council for England (GTCE) in 2010. He was “deeply sceptical” of the body, which was responsible for maintaining a register of teachers and investigating alleged cases of misconduct, claiming that it did “little to raise the teaching standards of professionalism”. […]
