Category Archives: Schools

Worries over confidence and periods hitting UK girls’ enjoyment of PE

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Survey finds less than two-thirds say they enjoy PE in schools, down from 74% in 2016

Girls’ enjoyment of physical education in school has declined over the past six years, with a lack of confidence, concern about periods and anxiety about their appearance holding them back, according to research.

Less than two-thirds of girls and young women (64%) who took part in a survey this year by the UK charity the Youth Sport Trust (YST), said they enjoyed PE, down from 74% when the poll began in 2016.

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Teachers deride Starmer’s plan for supervised toothbrushing in schools

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Labour leader’s pledge for English primaries as part of a wider dental plan labelled ‘window dressing’ by union chief

School leaders have accused Labour of “window dressing” after Keir Starmer pledged to introduce supervised toothbrushing for young children in England’s primary schools.

While the policy has long been supported by the dentistry profession as a way of curbing decay, headteachers said it was not appropriate for their staff to check whether pupils had cleaned their teeth.

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Sunak’s plan to ditch A-levels is out of touch with reality, says union

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Head of National Education Union says new qualification would need 5,300 additional teachers in England

Rishi Sunak wants to scrap A-levels and replace them with a single qualification that includes compulsory English and maths, bringing upheaval to sixth-form education in England that would last a decade.

The new baccalaureate-style Advanced British Standard, which Sunak announced in his speech to the Conservative party conference in Manchester, would also kill off the T-level vocational qualification the government launched just three years ago.

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Sunak scraps Manchester HS2 leg, plans to stop children today ever legally smoking and says A-levels to be replaced – UK politics live

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Prime minister says HS2 move will release £36bn, that he will raise smoking age by one year, every year and announces five-subject qualification

Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has been giving interviews about HS2 this morning. He told BBC Breakfast that cancelling the link to Manchester would show that the north of England did not get the same priority as the south. He said:

It just proves there’s still so many people in politics, many of them in the Tory party, that think they can treat the north of England differently to the way they treat other parts of the country. It’s just so wrong.

I’ve been in politics 30 years, I’ve never seen a party come to a conference and leave an axe hanging over the place they’re in for the whole week. And then actually drop it on that place.

I’ve had so many contacts over the past few hours from people who are concerned as I am that we are using this culture war battleground to no good effect at all and we’re actually hurting people.

And we shouldn’t be doing that as Conservatives. That’s not the Conservative party I joined and I think we’re better than that.

Luckily that’s not going to happen … because I believe in the ultimate common sense of the party. Also, I very much hope that Suella Braverman learns about the power of her words and moderates her tone.

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World needs 44m more teachers in order to educate every child, report finds

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Unesco analysis shows that sub-Saharan Africa accounts for a third of the shortfall, but that Europe and North America are lacking too

The world needs 44 million more teachers if education is to be provided to every child, according to new figures from Unesco.

The education and culture agency said 9% of primary school teachers quit the profession in 2022, almost double the rate of 4.6% in 2015.

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Former pupils demand apology from Irish school over Nazi teacher’s bullying

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Louis Feutren joined a nationalist group in occupied France and went on to teach at a prestigious Dublin school

There was never any mystery about the fact that Louis Feutren, a French teacher at St Conleth’s school in south Dublin, was a Nazi collaborator.

He had a taste for violent punishments and bizarre humiliations that terrorised pupils. He liked to reminisce about the second world war, when he had joined a Breton nationalist group that fought on the side of Germany. And he showed pictures of himself in uniform.

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Mobile phone ban in English schools ‘smokescreen’ to mask real issues, say critics

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Most schools had policies before government’s plan, and there are concerns about safety and implications for carers of outright ban

Glyn Potts, head teacher at Newman Roman Catholic College in Oldham, could not hide his irritation at the morning headlines announcing a government ban on mobile phones in state schools in England.

His school, like the vast majority, already has a mobile phone policy. “All banned and have been for 10 years,” he said, dismissing the announcement by the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, as a “smokescreen” to distract from the real challenges facing schools, such as underfunding, teacher recruitment and providing for pupils with special educational needs.

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Catholic and C of E primary schools in England ‘take fewer Send pupils’

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LSE research suggests faith-based admissions requirements deter disadvantaged children

Church of England and Roman Catholic primary schools take fewer pupils with disabilities or special needs than other local schools in England, according to research that suggests faith-based admissions requirements deter pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The findings led the author, Dr Tammy Campbell of the London School of Economics, to conclude that faith schools “serve as hubs of relative advantage” for children from more affluent families who were less likely to have special needs.

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Loose language leaves Labour accused of flip-flop on private schools

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Shadow ministers used ‘charitable status’ as shorthand for main goal of introducing tax changes

Has Labour flip-flopped on stripping private schools in England of their charitable status? Senior party figures from Keir Starmer down have certainly been guilty of using loose language, conflating such a move with their plan to apply VAT to private school fees and other tax breaks.

Starmer said in July last year: “When I say we are going to pay for kids to catch up at school, I also say it’ll be funded by removing private schools’ charitable status.”

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Rishi Sunak’s planned A-levels reforms could include baccalaureate

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PM wants pupils in England to study a wider range of subjects including maths and English until they are 18

The A-level system in England could be reformed with a new style of British baccalaureate in which children would study more subjects after the age of 16, according to reports.

The proposals include English and maths becoming compulsory up until the age of 18, the Times said. Students would also be required to study a wider range of subjects in post-16 education.

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One person dead after bus carrying schoolchildren crashes in New York

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Dozens hurt, at least five of them badly, after vehicle carrying students from Long Island to a band camp in Pennsylvania collided

A charter bus carrying schoolchildren to a band camp crashed on a New York highway on Thursday, killing one person and hurting dozens of others, police said.

The wreck happened on Interstate 84 in the town of Wawayanda, about 45 miles (72km) north-west of New York City, state police said.

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Almost 90% of voters – including 65% of Tories – say Britain needs fresh team of leaders, poll suggests – UK politics live

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Rishi Sunak’s government seen as less competent that Boris Johnson’s administration

The UK economy is set to witness the highest inflation rate of the world’s G7 advanced economies this year, according to new forecasts, PA Media reports. PA says:

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also increased its predicted average UK inflation rate for 2023 compared with its previous estimate.

Economists at the globally recognised organisation also reduced their UK growth forecast slightly for next year amid pressure from higher interest rates.

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Revealed: covert deal to cut help for pupils in England with special needs

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Government contract aims to reduce the number of specialist care plans by a fifth

The government has quietly signed a contract targeting 20% cuts to the number of new education plans for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) to bring down costs, the Observer can reveal.

Then junior education minister Claire Coutinho – recently promoted to the cabinet as energy secretary– subsequently told MPs that no targets were in place.

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Most English schools handing out clothes and food to children

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Survey finds cost of living crisis has increased both number of children needing extra support and level of need

Schools are handing out clothing and food to children amid the cost of living crisis, while teachers report deteriorating hygiene among pupils as families cut back on brushing teeth, showering and even flushing the toilet.

According to a survey of schools in England, nine out of 10 said they were providing clothing and uniforms for students, while seven out of 10 were giving out food in the form of parcels, food bank provisions, vouchers or subsidised breakfasts.

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PMQs: Rishi Sunak denies cutting budgets for school repairs as list of concrete-risk schools revealed

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Keir Starmer likens the Tories to ‘cowboy builders’ as the PM insists the government acted decisively in response to the problem

The DfE list shows pupils at 24 schools across England will receive some remote learning because of the concrete crisis, with four schools switching to fully remote learning, PA Media reports.

And the list shows 19 schools where the start of term has had to be delayed as a result of collapse-prone concrete.

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Raac crisis: pupils at 24 schools in England forced to study remotely

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Newly published government list identifies 147 schools as having potentially dangerous concrete

Twenty-four schools across England will receive some remote learning because of the concrete crisis, according to a newly published government list of schools identified as having a type of potentially dangerous concrete

They include four where lessons have been taking place on a fully remote basis since the weekend, along with 20 where there is a mix of face-to-face and remote learning.

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Leicester school told by DfE to close building finds it has no Raac

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Willowbrook Mead primary will now shut for a day to move furniture back after scramble to create new spaces

A school that scrambled to set up temporary classrooms after the Department for Education (DfE) ordered closures because of Raac has received a government apology after it turned out it did not have the crumbly concrete after all.

The government has published a list of 145 schools with Raac, nine fewer than it announced last Thursday, suggesting that last week’s order to close buildings was overcautious in several cases.

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More than half of dilapidated English schools were refused rebuilding money

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Only four schools were rebuilt in 2021 in government scheme intended to cover 500 schools over 10-year period

More than half of English schools that are so dilapidated they are at risk of partial closure were refused money under the government’s school rebuilding scheme, Department for Education (DfE) statistics show.

Amid mounting concerns about a wider apparent neglect of the schools estate in recent years, beyond the immediate alarm about crumbling concrete panels, it emerged that of 500 rebuilt schools planned for England over 10 years from 2020, just four were completed in 2021.

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Concrete crisis: Labour compares Gillian Keegan’s response to mayor in Jaws

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Opposition posts spoof on education department’s ‘most schools unaffected’ tweet, referencing minimisation of shark attacks

Labour has launched a tongue-in-cheek attack on the government’s response to the school buildings crisis, comparing the response of the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, to that of the fictional mayor in Jaws.

Keegan on Tuesday defended her department’s handling of the problems surrounding crumbling concrete, publishing a Twitter picture with the phrases “Raac update” and “Most schools unaffected”.

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Schools concrete crisis is risk to pupils’ mental health, headteacher warns

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Leader of a secondary school in Essex warns upheaval could have similar negative impact to that caused by Covid lockdowns

A headteacher whose 830 pupils must learn semi-remotely for at least a term because of the schools concrete crisis has warned that the upheaval could cause a recurrence of the negative mental health impact of Covid lockdowns.

James Saunders, the leader of Honywood school in Coggeshall, Essex, fears that year-seven students entering their first term at secondary school could face future struggles after the Department for Education last week ordered the closure of 22 classrooms as part of a nationwide safety alert.

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