Category Archives: Schools

School absence a big factor in child mental illness in England, data shows

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Loughborough University and ONS study of 1 million school-age children reveals risks increase with longer absence

School absences “significantly contribute” to children’s mental ill health, according to research backed by the Office for National Statistics that shows the risks increase the longer a child is absent.

“Our research shows that the more times a child is absent from school, the greater the probability that they will experience mental ill health,” the authors, from Loughborough University and the ONS, concluded.

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Bridget Phillipson: parents must do more about bad behaviour and attendance in schools

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Education secretary targets 800 schools as she attempts to turn around post-Covid trends with enhanced support

Parents and caregivers “need to do more” to reverse post-Covid trends of poor attendance and behaviour in schools, the education secretary has said, announcing new measures to support schools in England before the start of the new school year.

Bridget Phillipson unveiled a UK government programme on Sunday targeting 800 schools attended by about 600,000 pupils, beginning with an initial wave of 21 schools that will serve as attendance and behaviour hubs.

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‘So aware of their emotions’: Pupils are standout stars in new series about Yorkshire academy

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Educating Yorkshire Part 2 shows inspirational teachers negotiating challenges in young people’s lives

“Basically, there’s summat wrong with me. I’m like … a psychopath. Genuinely!” A teenage girl with the face of an angel is confiding in Mr Wilson, one of the student managers. He listens solemnly, but his mouth twitches with the beginnings of a smile.

“I’m going to start by disagreeing with you,” he says with all the seriousness he can muster. “You’re not a psychopath.” The girl in the sky-blue hoodie relaxes and rewards him with a broad smile.

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As Covid effect ebbs, GCSE results reveal broken legacy of Gove’s resit policy

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Experts talk of ‘resit crisis’ as number accounts for nearly a quarter of maths and English entries, an all-time high

This year’s GCSE results in England delivered something that teachers and policymakers had craved in recent years: stability, at least for most 16-year-olds.

Covid and its aftermath had sent GCSE results seesawing until this summer, when results were more similar to the previous year than at any time since the pandemic struck in 2020.

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Australian Book Week is here – and we’d love to see your children’s costumes

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The annual event, which promotes literacy, is celebrating 80 years as part of Australian school life

Book Week is in full swing, marking it’s 80th year celebrating all things reading and literacy for Australia’s schoolchildren.

The theme for the week, which runs from Saturday 16 to Saturday 23 August, is “Book an Adventure”, encouraging children to explore new worlds through stories.

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Parents in England skipping meals to afford school uniforms, survey finds

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Education secretary urges schools to change uniform requirements as costs force many parents into debt

Parents in England are skipping meals and turning to buy-now-pay-later services such as Klarna in order to afford school uniforms before the autumn term, according to a survey.

Almost half (47%) of the 2,000 parents who took part in the poll said they were worried about uniform costs, which can run into hundreds of pounds due to expensive branded items, while more than a quarter (29%) said they had forgone food or heating to pay for uniforms.

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Scottish ministers face legal action over policies ‘inconsistent’ with UK gender ruling

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Campaign group that won supreme court case brings challenge over transgender guidance in schools and prisons

A campaign group that won a legal victory on the definition of gender is taking action against the Scottish government over policies it says are “inconsistent” with the ruling.

For Women Scotland’s legal battle with Scottish ministers over the definition of a woman ended in the UK’s supreme court, which ruled in April that the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 referred to a biological woman and biological sex.

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Funding for English youth clubs aims to keep children off smartphones

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Keir Starmer says £88m package will help tackle trend of young people becoming ‘disconnected from their communities’

Youth clubs and after-school activities in England will receive a funding injection of £88m as ministers try to get more children away from smartphones and computer screens.

The package, which Keir Starmer announced on Tuesday, is intended to give pupils access to sport, outdoor activities, art, music, debating and volunteering.

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One in three students fail to meet Naplan benchmarks as disadvantaged fall behind

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Results found four in 10 students performed below expectations in grammar and punctuation, indicating they struggled to recognise verbs and pronouns in sentences

One in three students have failed to meet Naplan benchmarks, this year’s test results have showed, as thousands of disadvantaged students continue to fall through the cracks.

This year’s tests were taken in March by 1.3 million students across years 3, 5, 7 and 9 to measure literacy and numeracy proficiency, with results released on Wednesday by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (Acara).

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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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