Category Archives: Schools

Pupils in England to be taught law behind sex and gender identity, new guidance says

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Updated RSHE guidance says curriculum should be ‘age appropriate’ and lifts strict age limits around teaching gender

Pupils in England should be taught what the law is on biological sex and gender reassignment, but schools must be “careful not to endorse any particular view or teach it as fact”, according to new government guidance.

The updated relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) guidance, published on Tuesday, says schools “should not teach as fact that all people have a gender identity” and must avoid any suggestion that social transitioning offers a “simple solution” to feelings of distress or discomfort.

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Five-year-olds in England with special educational needs 20 months behind peers – report

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Children from lower-income families also remain significantly behind their peers as impact of pandemic continues to be felt

Five-year-olds with special educational needs in England are lagging a record 20 months behind their peers, according to a report that says the country’s youngest learners face a “deepening crisis”, five years after the pandemic.

Since Covid closed schools, disrupting learning and triggering falls in attendance, there has been widespread concern about the growing attainment gap that leaves disadvantaged pupils and those with special educational needs significantly behind their peers.

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Secondary schools in England to tackle ‘incel’ culture and teach positive role models

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Government says new guidance will challenge ‘manosphere’ myths as DfE reports epidemic-scale misogyny

Secondary school pupils in England are to be taught about “incel” culture and the links between pornography and misogyny as part of long-awaited statutory government guidance due to be published on Tuesday.

It will include a new focus on positive role models for boys and challenge “myths about women and relationships that are spread online in the ‘manosphere’”, but will warn schools against “stigmatising boys for being boys”.

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Fathers plan legal action to get smartphones banned in England’s schools

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Two fathers tell education secretary they will seek judicial review in bid for statutory ban to safeguard children

Two fathers plan to take legal action against the government in an attempt to get smartphones banned in schools in England.

Will Orr-Ewing and Pete Montgomery wrote to the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, on Friday warning that they would seek a judicial review. They argue that current guidance, which allows headteachers to decide how smartphones are used, is unlawful and unsafe for children.

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Minister won’t rule out support cuts for children with EHCPs amid Send overhaul – UK politics live

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Stephen Morgan, the early education minister, would not confirm every child who has an EHCP would continue to keep the same provisions

The Conservatives will try to change the government’s welfare Bill to tighten up access to personal independence payments (Pip) and universal credit, PA Media reports. PA says:

Kemi Badenoch will pledge that the Tories are “now the only party committed to serious welfare reform” after Keir Starmer shelved plans to restrict eligibility for Pip in the face of a backbench revolt this week.

The Tories will look to lay amendments to the legislation – set to be renamed the universal credit bill – and party leader Badenoch is due to deliver a speech on welfare on Thursday.

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Smartphone bans in Dutch schools have improved learning, study finds

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After initial concerns, pupils are said to be more focused and have better social interactions with each other

Bans on smartphones in Dutch schools have improved the learning environment despite initial protests, according to a study commissioned by the government of the Netherlands.

National guidelines, introduced in January 2024, recommend banning smartphones from classrooms and almost all schools have complied. Close to two-thirds of secondary schools ask pupils to leave their phones at home or put them in lockers, while phones are given in at the start of a lesson at one in five.

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Fewer pupils in less affluent English schools taking languages, survey finds

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Less than half taking foreign languages GCSEs compared with 69% in most prosperous state schools

Ministers must make access to language learning a national priority, experts have said, after research showed that children from more deprived areas of England are disproportionately denied the chance to learn a foreign tongue.

This year’s Language Trends report by the British Council surveyed 1,000 primary, secondary and independent schools and found that the proportion of pupils studying a modern language GCSE in less affluent English state schools was 38% lower than in the most affluent and 12% lower than the average.

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About 200 new nurseries to open at schools in England in September

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Sites will accommodate 4,000 children as part of ministers’ plan to improve childcare, Bridget Phillipson to announce

About 200 school-based nurseries will open in England this September as part of the government’s plan to improve access to childcare for working parents.

The milestone will be announced on Monday by Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, who will say that the sites will accommodate 4,000 children under school age.

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A rising proportion of Australian students aren’t going to school – and there’s not just one way to get them back, report says

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Exclusive: Report from Independent Schools Australia calls for data collection on student school refusal to better tackle rising absenteeism

A new report has urged the federal government to collect national data on chronic absenteeism and embed layers of support in schools to tackle Australia’s growing student attendance crisis.

The report, provided exclusively to Guardian Australia by Independent Schools Australia (ISA), drew from interviews with academics, mental health clinicians and teachers. It called on the government to implement a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) to better support children struggling to stay in school.

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Met officers’ strip-search of black girl at school was gross misconduct, panel finds

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Disciplinary hearing finds two police officers’ search of Child Q, 15, was disproportionate and humiliating

Two police officers who were involved in the strip-search of a black teenager at her school have been found to have committed gross misconduct.

The search at a school in Hackney, east London, was “disproportionate, inappropriate and unnecessary” and made the girl, known as Child Q, feel degraded and humiliated, a panel concluded at the end of a four-week misconduct hearing.

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Families of children killed in Hillcrest jumping castle incident ‘shattered’ after not guilty verdict

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Rosemary Gamble, owner of Taz-Zorb which set up the equipment in Tasmania, had pleaded not guilty to failing to comply with workplace safety laws

The families of the six children killed in a primary school jumping castle incident are angry after the operator who set up the castle was found not guilty of a workplace safety charge.

Chace Harrison, Jalailah Jayne-Maree Jones, Zane Mellor, Addison Stewart, Jye Sheehan and Peter Dodt died after the incident at Hillcrest primary school in Devonport in December 2021.

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Badenoch to ‘get better’ at media and PMQs, says Stride, as he backs her as leader – UK politics live

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Shadow chancellor says Badenoch ‘is the person to lead us’ and compares her to Thatcher, who ‘in the end, got it together’

Stride stresses the need for politicians to consider policy carefully, saying this is harder in the era of social media.

The digital age has many advantages, but in some ways, it has ushered in the death of what we might call the age of thoughtfulness, by which I mean, the careful consideration of arguments in order to establish the truth …

Audiences are increasingly attracted to the fleeting sparkle of the novel or shocking or celebrity, or in some cases simply the fake, and that risks allowing attractive but shallow arguments to take hold.

The fact is, for a large swathe of the population, our economy simply has not been working for them for some considerable time.

Incomes have stagnated. Many feel that the system only works for the benefit of others, for large corporations or people from other countries, but not for them and their families.

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Hungary’s crackdown on LGBTQ+ content violates human rights, says EU’s top court

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ECJ advocate general condemns ‘stigmatising’ law that bars such content from schools and primetime TV

A Hungarian law banning content about LGBTQ+ people from schools and primetime TV has been found to violate basic human rights and freedom of expression by a senior legal scholar at the European court of justice.

The non-binding opinion from the court’s advocate general, Tamara Ćapeta, issued on Thursday, represents a comprehensive demolition of the arguments made by the Hungarian government defending its so-called childprotection law, passed in 2021.

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Estonia eschews phone bans in schools and takes leap into AI

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Country at top of education charts aims to equip students and teachers with ‘world-class artificial intelligence skills’

While many schools in England have banned smartphones, in Estonia – regarded as the new European education powerhouse – students are regularly asked to use their devices in class, and from September they will be given their own AI accounts.

The small Baltic country – population 1.4 million – has quietly become Europe’s top performer in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s programme for international student assessment (Pisa), overtaking its near neighbour Finland.

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One in four pupils in England ‘disengage’ when they move to secondary, report finds

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New study found a drop in enjoyment, trust and feelings of safety after year 7 and a largely positive primary experience

One in four pupils in England “disengage” when they move up to secondary school, with enjoyment, trust and a sense of feeling safe declining sharply, according to a new report.

After a largely positive experience at primary school where children report high levels of enjoyment, there is a “steep and lasting” drop in engagement after year 7 when pupils transfer to secondary at the age of 11, the survey of 100,000 pupils in England reveals.

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London dominates England’s social mobility league with top 20 places

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Sutton Trust ‘opportunity index’ measured factors such as children on free school meals passing key GCSEs

The top 20 constituencies with the best social mobility in England are all in London, according to research from a leading education charity that underscores the stark regional divide in children’s life chances.

In a report published on Thursday, the Sutton Trust has put together an “opportunity index” by analysing six measures of mobility. These include the share of children on free school meals who achieve passes in GCSE maths and English; who complete a degree by age 22; and who make it into the top 20% of earners by age 28.

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Texas governor signs largest US school voucher law in win for conservatives

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State becomes 16th to allow public funds to be used for private schools, which opponents say will benefit mostly wealthier children

The Texas governor Greg Abbott on Saturday signed a law making more than 5 million students eligible to use state funds for private schools, a watershed moment in the conservative campaign to remake public education in the US.

Texas is allocating $1bn for the first two years of the program to offer parents vouchers to pay for school. It is the 16th state to make all students eligible to receive public funds for private education.

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Trump administration to cancel $1bn in Biden-era school mental health grants

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Funding will not be continued next year after bill signed in 2022 helped schools hire more mental health workers

The Trump administration is moving to cancel $1bn in school mental health grants, saying they reflect the priorities of the previous administration.

Grant recipients were notified on Tuesday that the funding will not be continued after this year. A gun violence bill signed by Joe Biden in 2022 sent $1bn to the grant programs to help schools hire more psychologists, counselors and other mental health workers.

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US supreme court seems open to religious public charter schools

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Oklahoma case is part of a broader push to erode separation of church and state, and a test of role of religion in schools

The US supreme court’s conservative majority seemed open to establishing the country’s first public religious charter school as they weighed a case Wednesday that could have significant ramifications on the separation of church and state.

The Oklahoma state charter school board approved the application for St Isidore, a Catholic virtual charter school. The ACLU and other groups filed suit, as did Republican attorney general Gentner Drummond. The state supreme court sided with Drummond, ruling that the US and Oklahoma constitutions “prohibit the state from using public money for the establishment of a religious institution”.

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Labour’s pledge to hire 6,500 extra teachers in England will be a ‘challenge’, report says

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Secondary school pupil numbers also likely to outpace government’s recruitment goals, watchdog warns

A key government pledge to appoint 6,500 extra teachers in England by the end of this parliament will be difficult to achieve and is likely to fall short of demand, the UK’s public spending watchdog has warned.

The education secretary Bridget Phillipson’s promise to recruit thousands of extra teachers in state schools, which has been funded by adding VAT to private school fees, forms one of the cornerstones of the government’s education policy.

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