Attainment 8 | Schools Week

Secondary moderns must have a voice, too

Grammar schools are back in the news with Nicky Morgan’s approval of a Kent school’s expansion. But they’ve never been away, with one in five students in England attending a school affected by academic selection The National Association for Secondary Moderns (NASM) sees the expansion of a Kent grammar school as a chance to raise […]

Surge in entry to ‘traditional subjects’ as schools sign up to Ebacc

More pupils are being entered into ‘traditional’ subjects such as maths and science in response to the Ebacc, Ofqual boss Glenys Stacey has claimed. Ms Stacey, who is chief executive and chief regulator of the watchdog, told journalists this morning that there had been a rise in the entries to subjects, also known as ‘facilitating subjects’, at […]

GCSE exam results to be released early to help parents with secondary school choice

The government has announced today it will start releasing provisional GCSE results in mid-October so parents can use them to finalise school choices. Schools Minister Nick Gibb said the move is part of the government’s transparency drive and will help parents hold schools to account while allowing heads to highlight their achievements. The results will […]

School changes pupils’ GCSEs mid-course and blames Progress 8 compliance

Work experience cut and pupils’ GCSEs changed mid-course to be league table ‘compliant’ A Cambridgeshire school has cancelled a week’s work experience and is making year 10 pupils take on additional GCSEs half-way through their courses to make sure they are “Progress 8 compliant”, Schools Week can reveal. Ely College principal Evelyn Forde wrote to […]

Pupil premium: is the £2.5bn cash injection raising standards?

Schools Week is exploring the way vulnerable groups of learners have fared under the coalition. In the third of a five-part series, John Dickens looks at who exactly is benefiting as schools receive more than £6bn of pupil premium funding and questions if is really closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their wealthier […]

7 Education Ideas That Could Change Everything

When men become heads of their schools, they receive a pay rise of roughly £8,000. For women that figure is just shy of £6,000. The government are working flat out to hire graduates with physics degrees – paying as much as £50,000 for them to train. Yet dig into the data and you will find […]

Are schools really making the GCSE grade?

Schools have now had a week to digest the GCSE league tables released by the Department for Education. But have they spotted what we saw? Last week, the Department for Education (DfE) released data about the performance of secondary schools. But while some schools demonstrated high proportions of pupils gaining five A*-C GCSEs, including English and […]