Girls do better in exams at all-girls schools than mixed, research finds

Pupils in girls’ schools in England outperform girls with similar records and backgrounds in mixed schools, analysis says

Girls who attend all-girls schools get better exam results than girls with similar records and backgrounds at mixed schools – and outdo boys at all-boys schools – according to research.

While girls’ schools have long been known to outperform other types of school in England, the analysis by FFT Datalab found that even after adjusting for background characteristics there was an unexplained boost for pupils at girls’ schools, equivalent to 10% higher GCSE grades in 2023.

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Virginia school board votes to restore Confederate names to two public schools

Schools changed their names after 2020 George Floyd protests, but will now revert to old names celebrating slave-state leaders

An all-white school board in Virginia has voted to restore the names of Robert E Lee and other Confederate military leaders to two public schools in a backlash to the racial reckoning that followed the police murder of George Floyd.

The decision to restore the names of Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Turner Ashby was taken on Friday morning by the six-member school board in Shenandoah county. Only one of the members voted against the resolution.

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‘Almost beyond belief’: axing of UK teacher recruitment scheme will worsen crisis, say critics

The government’s scrapping of the Now Teach scheme, which has overdelivered on targets for older workers, has sparked an outcry

Ministers have been accused of making a crisis in the recruitment of teachers even worse after axing funding to a much-praised programme helping older workers start a new career in the classroom.

An outcry is already beginning over the decision to axe the career change programme, with organisers complaining that there “will be barely anyone left to teach our children” unless Rishi Sunak lives up to his party conference pledge to prioritise education.

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Teaching assistants routinely cover lessons in England and Wales, survey finds

Exclusive: Research shows extent to which schools are struggling to provide qualified teachers for every class

Hundreds of thousands of pupils in England and Wales are being educated “on the cheap” by low-paid teaching assistants (TAs) covering lessons for teachers who are off sick or have quit, according to new research.

A desperate teacher recruitment crisis, compounded by inadequate funding, means schools across the country are struggling to put a qualified teacher at the front of every class, unions say.

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High court upholds top London school’s ban on prayer rituals

Muslim pupil loses case against Michaela community school, run by former government social mobility tsar Katharine Birbalsingh

A ban on prayer rituals at one of the highest-performing state schools in England, famous for its strict discipline and high-profile headteacher, has been upheld by a high court judge.

The case against Michaela community school in Brent, north-west London, was brought by a Muslim pupil, known only as TTT in court proceedings, who claimed the ban was discriminatory and breached her right to religious freedom.

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Schools in England and Wales using ‘gender toolkit’ risk being sued by parents

Leading barrister warns that the kit – used to support gender-questioning children – is likely to be in breach of equality laws and could violate pupils’ rights

Schools in England and Wales have been warned by one of the country’s leading equality and human rights barristers that the “toolkit” many of them use to support gender-questioning children is unlawful.

The toolkit, introduced by Brighton and Hove council in 2021 and subsequently replicated by a number of other local authorities, says schools should “respect” a child’s request to change their name and pronoun as a “pivotal” part of supporting their identity, as well as other changes such as switching to wearing trousers or a skirt.

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Tory candidate for London mayor has Trumpian attitude to climate, says Khan

London mayor expected to criticise Susan Hall in speech launching panels on school roofs

Sadiq Khan will accuse his Conservative rival in the race to be London’s next mayor of being “Trumpian” over the climate crisis, as he announces plans for solar panels on schools.

Khan is expected to acknowledge resistance to his expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) in a speech on Friday but insist that he still intends to “go further”.

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Menopause training should be mandatory for all school leaders, says UK union

Women with symptoms are being penalised, National Education Union’s annual conference told

The UK’s biggest teaching union is to lobby for menopause training to be made mandatory for all school leaders, saying women with symptoms are being penalised for sickness absence and disciplined on competency grounds.

Older staff were at greatest risk of “capability procedures”, delegates at the National Education Union’s (NEU) annual conference in Bournemouth were told, while others were being forced out of their jobs, affecting not only their income but their pensions.

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Support positive masculinity in England and Wales schools, union conference told

Boys and young men need guidance – not punishment – to avoid ‘manosphere’, teacher tells NEU

Teachers should promote positive masculinity in schools in England and Wales in order to support boys who might otherwise feel demonised and end up turning to “the manosphere” for hope, a union conference has been told.

Charlotte Keogh, a secondary school English teacher from Worcestershire, said boys and young men needed support and guidance as they grappled with ideas about masculinity, rather than being punished and silenced.

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Alan Duncan facing Tory disciplinary inquiry over comments accusing senior party figures of being too ‘pro-Israel’ – as it happened

Former Foreign Office minister had suggested some in government were prepared to overlook human rights violations

Members of the National Education Union have voted to delay moving to a formal strike ballot until they know the detail of the government’s pay offer for 2024/5.

Delegates attending the NEU’s annual conference agreed the offer - when it comes - should be put to members in a snap poll and if rejected with a convincing turnout, move to a formal ballot for industrial action.

After achieving an overwhelming majority vote in our recent indicative ballot, NEU conference committed to intensify its campaign to win a fully-funded, above-inflation pay rise and greater resources for schools and colleges.

Education is on its knees, struggling to cope with a crisis never seen before in our sector. And the responsibility for this lies squarely at the door of secretary of state for education Gillian Keegan and 14 years of mismanagement and underinvestment by a government that does not care.

The Greens claim their policies could lead to at least 150,000 extra council homes a year being built. In his speech, Ramsay said these would come from a mix of new-build, refurbishments and exisiting homes. This is one of several policies intended to increase the supply of affordable housing. In its press notice the party says:

The policies the Green party would introduce to help councils increase the supply of affordable housing include:

-Providing funding to councils to meet their needs for affordable social housing and lift the overly restrictive rules on council borrowing for housebuilding – ensuring at least an extra 150,000 council homes a year are made available through a mix of new build, refurbishment, conversions and buying up existing homes

Denyer said the Greens were aiming for a record number of seats in the local elections. She said:

We are aiming for a record number of seats in the city and to lead the next administration. We know there is a huge appetite for the bold progressive approach of the Greens here, like in so many other towns, cities and villages across the country.

We go into these local elections with around 760 councillors on nearly 170 councils in both urban and rural settings and Greens being a governing party in 10% of all councils in England and Wales already.

She claimed the Greens had “more ambition” than any other party. She said:

When times are hard we need more ambition, not less. We need to rise to the scale of the challenges we face and be clear that not doing that is a political choice. Leaving millions of children in poverty is a political choice. Letting our NHS fall into chaos is a political choice. And failing to commit to the green investment we need is a political choice.

At the Green party, we’re making a different political choice. We choose to listen to what people need. We choose to see the cost of living crisis for what it really is, a widening inequality crisis. And we choose to offer solutions to fix it.

Denyer and Ramsay confirmed that the Greens are focusing on four seats in particular at the general election. They are Brighton Pavilion, where Siân Berry is the candidate, hoping to succeed Caroline Lucas; Bristol Central, where Denyer is the candidate; Waveney Valley, where Ramsay is the candidate; and North Herefordshire, where Ellie Chowns is the candidate. According to the YouGov MRP poll published yesterday, only Berry is on course to win. But Ramsay claimed he had a good chance because last year the Greens won control of Mid Suffolk district council (which roughly overlaps with the Waveney Valley constituency). He went on:

The counsellors there have spent the last year delivering on their promises to secure investment in the local area, make the council’s operations greener and improve local services. And their efforts are being recognised because the Green-majority council has recently won the council of the year award.

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Education ‘will grind to halt’ unless pay rises address recruitment crisis, union leader warns – UK politics live

National Education Union leader says morale among teachers is at ‘an all time low’ in radio interview

There is widespread agreement in the UK and the US that Israel has “gone too far” in its war against Hamas, Darren Jones, a Labour Treasury spokesperson, said this morning.

In an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Jones said:

I think what we’ve seen from President Biden, from Keir Starmer, and now from Lord Cameron, our own foreign secretary, is that countries that supported Israel’s right to defend itself and to recover its hostages from Hamas terrorists in Gaza, which clearly is their right to have done in the first place, have all said that you’ve gone too far, that we need to bring this war to an end, we need to get around the negotiating table, we need to aid to get to people who desperately need it in Gaza.

This latest situation, not only has it resulted in the death of aid workers, which is unacceptable, but it’s now making it much harder for aid to be made available to people who are in the most desperate situations.

The fact of the matter is if the UK, for example, stopped supplying arms, the war would not end. What we need to do is get the parties to a position where the fighting can stop.

As always, on questions of international law, it’s for judges and courts to make that decision, not for politicians.

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Cold, damp, unsafe: record number of UK schools refused funding for repairs

DfE allocates £450m to 826 building projects at 733 schools, a fall of almost 60% – in terms of total projects – compared with 2020-21

A record number of schools have had bids for building repairs turned down by the government, with experts warning that buckets on desks, freezing classrooms and power cuts are all becoming commonplace.

The Department for Education (DfE) announced on Tuesday that it had allocated £450m to 826 building repair projects at 733 schools through its annual condition improvement fund (CIF), which is designed to help academies and small academy trusts keep buildings “safe and in good working order”. But this is a fall of nearly 60% – in terms of total projects – compared with 2020-21, when the government awarded £563m to 2,104 repair projects.

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Gillian Keegan criticises union for ‘inappropriate’ Israel-Palestine motion

Education secretary says conference proposals describing Israeli government as racist ‘reflect NEU’s divisive ideology’

Gillian Keegan has strongly criticised the National Education Union over a motion to be debated at its annual conference describing Israel’s government as “racist” and “guilty of apartheid policies”.

The education secretary said the motion and amendments were “wholly inappropriate and completely ignore the horrific terrorist attacks committed by Hamas on 7 October … These motions reflect the NEU’s divisive ideology, which I don’t believe is representative of our teachers.

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Schools in England accused of closing down debate on Israel-Gaza conflict

Government adviser says teachers feel ill-equipped to talk about controversial topics but avoiding debate risks fuelling anger

Schools in England are closing down legitimate debate about the Israel-Gaza conflict because teachers feel ill-equipped and are concerned about political impartiality, the government’s independent adviser on social cohesion has said.

Dame Sara Khan said that if schools continued to shut down debate they risked “fuelling further anger, hate and polarisation”.

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School leaders welcome proposal to tackle harassment of teachers

Creation of a ‘cohesion and conflict unit’ in England is among recommendations in government-commissioned review

School leaders have welcomed proposals for the creation of “a cohesion and conflict unit” to support teachers who face “freedom-restricting” threats and harassment during the course of their work.

It is one of a number of recommendations in a government-commissioned review into threats to social cohesion in England, which highlights the case of a religious studies teacher at a school in West Yorkshire who was forced into hiding after accusations of blasphemy.

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North Carolina schools candidate who called for Obama’s death put on the spot

Michele Morrow, the far-right Republican running to oversee public schools in the state, said she is facing ‘radical extremists’

A far-right Republican candidate running to oversee public schools in North Carolina decried “extreme agendas that threaten our children’s future”, after being confronted by reporters over tweets in which she called for the executions of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

“Don’t let extreme agendas threaten our children’s future,” Michele Morrow said on social media on Thursday, posting an address in which she said she was “facing the most radical extremist Democrats [that] have ever run for superintendent in the history of North Carolina”.

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Students suspended even for short spells fare worse at GCSEs, study finds

Charity says findings from schools in England show need for early intervention and fewer exclusions

Children who are suspended from school in England even for short periods see their GCSE results suffer, according to research that highlights the need for early interventions to reduce suspensions.

Pupils who had been suspended were found to be lagging a year behind their peers and on average were unable to achieve a standard pass in GCSE maths and English.

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‘It’s an absolute mess’: building work seriously delayed on 33 new special schools in England

Promised provision, particularly for autistic children, was announced a year ago but few schools will open on time

Plans to deliver thousands of new special school places by 2026 are falling seriously behind, with experts branding the building programme “a mess”, the Observer can reveal.

The news calls into question the only announcement on schools the chancellor made in last week’s budget – a commitment of £105m towards 15 additional special schools.

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At least 287 Nigerian students abducted from school by gunmen, say authorities

Assailants reportedly surrounded Kuriga school as pupils were starting the day in second abduction in country in less than a week

Gunmen have attacked a school in Nigeria’s north-west region seizing at least 287 students, in the second mass abduction in the West African nation in less than a week.

Authorities had said earlier that more than 100 students were taken hostage in the attack. But Sani Abdullahi, the headteacher, told Kaduna governor Uba Sani when he visited the town on Thursday that the total number of those missing after a headcount was 287.

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Less than 3% of artists named in GCSE art exams are Black or south Asian, study finds

Analysis across four exam boards in England reveals white artists comprise 91.6% of all mentions

Less than 3% of artists named in GCSE art exam papers are from Black or south Asian backgrounds, research has found.

Analysis of GCSE assessment materials from four big exam boards in England – AQA, Eduqas, OCR and Edexcel – showed only 8.4% of artists referenced across the 27 art exam papers were minority ethnic.

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