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16 April 2026

Tag: ASCL

ASCL wants next year’s grades pegged to pre-Covid standards

School leaders’ union ASCL wants next year’s grades to be pegged back to pre-Covid standards, warning it is “difficult to justify… baking in” higher results. General secretary Geoff Barton told members there is no “easy answer” but the union “felt that returning to the grade distribution of 2019 represented the fairest approach for past, present […]

School repairs derailed by ‘inexplicable’ CIF delays and material shortages

Schools have been forced to delay building repairs by up to a year after the government awarded condition improvement funding almost two months later than usual. Some of the 1,199 schools which received CIF awards last month face an anxious wait to hear if contractors and the DfE will agree to defer projects no longer […]

Exams 2021: AQA to return 26% of fees paid by schools

Exam board AQA has confirmed it will once again return just 26 per cent of entry fees paid this year after saving £45 million. In a statement today the board said it was returning all of the money it saved to schools “because, as we’ve always said, we’d never want to benefit financially from the […]

The Brexit ‘minefield’: how immigration changes threaten school jobs and trips

Some migrant pupils risk exclusion from school trips and European staff risk losing jobs under post-Brexit immigration reforms. As the EU settlement scheme deadline expires this week, Schools Week investigates wider Brexit disruption to schools, from rising building costs to recruitment and travel woes. Julie McCulloch, the policy director at ASCL, the school leaders’ union, […]

Heads plan greater weighting on ‘exam-style papers’ for teacher assessment grades

Over half of leaders plan to give greater weighting to “exam-style papers” than other forms of assessment when issuing grades this summer, a union survey has revealed. The poll of 521 members of the ASCL school leaders’ union also found that around one in 14 respondents plan to base grades on exam-style papers alone, despite […]

Geoff Barton to serve second term as ASCL leader

Geoff Barton is to serve a second term as general secretary of the ASCL school leadership union, after being re-elected unopposed. Elected in a landslide victory in the first contested election for the role in 2017, Barton’s first term was due to end next year. But ASCL announced today that the former secondary school headteacher […]