The Schools' News Service

Schools Secretary Ed Balls has pitched up a pair of challenges for schools – to find imaginative ways to expand the reach of cricket for young people and to come up with innovative ways to use the sport to raise standards across the curriculum. The competitions are being backed by the England and Wales Cricket [...]

One way to ensure that your school has a very positive approach to environmental issues is for your colleagues to have access to free ready-made resources.   Fortunately these sources are now available on-line, free of charge.  They cover the activities that can arise in eco clubs, plus environmental issues that are to be found [...]

Does too much use of the internet fry the brain?   It’s a regular story – and goes back at least as far as the introduction of television on a large scale (people would all have “square eyes” was the comment of the day – ignoring the fact that early TVs had a 4×3 screen).   Quite probably someone [...]

An Ofsted report recently published showcases 12 schools in challenging circumstances that have been rated as ‘outstanding’ in at least two inspections and examines the elements that have created this success. The outstanding schools in the sample succeed for the following reasons. They excel at what they do, not just occasionally but for a high proportion [...]

There was a story two weeks ago that street sign makers in Birmingham officials have, since the 1950s, been dropping apostrophes in names such as “St. Pauls Square”.  Now it is making the change official. I thought of this, this week, as I walked past St Johns’s Street in London, and then read a review of the annual list of [...]

A survey of school administrators has discovered that around 1 per cent of all school pupils suffer an injury while at school each day.   Almost all of the injuries are minor – mostly cuts and bruises – but there are enough serious injuries for over four in every ten schools (41.9 per cent) to [...]

According to the Telegraph, quoting the Ed Mayo director of “Consumer Focus” – the government sponsored campaigning group for consumers, over 300,000 children aged five and upwards have been recruited to conduct market research for companies such asMattel, Nintendo, Tizer, Wrigley’s, McDonald’s the West Yorks Police, The British Museum, the anti-drug campaign Frank and Coca-Cola. Most of the children [...]

The new Scottish curriculum, ”Curriculum for Excellence”, is now expected to be introduced in summer 2014.   An extra in-service day is to be added to the five days that currently exist in Scotland, in order to help with the implementation of the new curriculum. The Education Secretary in the Scottish Assembly, Ms Hyslop, said, “Curriculum for [...]

The United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of the Child has criticised the media in its report examining the UK’s progress on protecting children’s rights. The committee said the UK government needed to work with the media to address “the intolerance and inappropriate characterisation of children, especially adolescents” by the media. It also questioned the [...]

Some of the schools that have been called failing and which have been told they might be closed have now been told that they will get very little money to help them recover.  £400m was set up for the 631 schools that didn’t get 30% of pupils through five GCSE’s with A star to C [...]

Most of Europe starts schooling aged around seven, and makes far smaller use of nursery and pre-school units.  The British are alone in having children and then packing them off to others to look after them. In such a scenario, and with so many social problems around us, one might think that the government could [...]

Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls today announced that 75 sports colleges will share over £21 million to improve their facilities. This funding will ensure sports pitches can be used in the evening and through the winter with flood lights, artificial turf and new tented style sports halls. Speaking at the [...]

the teacher who has received the record payment after an assault by a pupil, was assaulted by a pupil who was known for this type of behaviour. Sharon Lewis was assaulted by a 13 year old boy and it ended Ms Lewis’ teaching career leaving her in permanent pain, and suffering flashbacks and nightmares. But [...]

A new £3.3m package to recruit specialist teaching assistants and train staff to run practical cooking lessons has been announced along with £53m given to secondary schools for new cooking facilities –  with the aim of getting pupils preparing meals at home and pave the way for compulsory practical classes in secondary schools from 2011. The [...]

I wrote a few days ago about disturbing findings concerning asbestos in schools. Now there is more bad news. Richard Fraser from Voice: the union has sent in this comment following my piece about asbestos. You may be interested to know of recent reports of 903 of 1,043 schools in Manchester containing asbestos, 626 of 632 schools in [...]

Difficult behaviour by pupils and students is not being addressed fully because young people with special educational needs, are not being identified – according to the government’s chief adviser on school discipline, Sir Alan Steer. As a result some young people are seen as naughty or badly behaved, when in fact they have serious problems which are not being addressed.    [...]

Kids in Museum is a plan to encourage a greater use of museums by pupils and students.  Amongs its 20 point plan from the Royal Academy there is a plea for greater tolerance and indeed encouragement of the excitement of young people in these surroudnings. According to the Guardian. the campaign arose after a writer for the paper [...]

This is going to sound frightening, but the chances are that you work in a school that contains asbestos. BBC TV’s programme Inside Out South East discovered that more than 90% of schools in the region still contain asbestos. The programme used the Freedom of Information Act to conduct the first survey of asbestos in [...]

Survey of school visits According to a government survey 87% of parents said they been asked to pay for a school trip – with the average day trip costs being £9.47 in primaries and £21.70 in secondaries and average UK residential trips being £153.14 in primaries and £160.07 in secondaries. Three quarters of all parents said [...]

Scotland has seen a reduction in pupil exclusions, down 11%, reversing the trend over the past four years of annual increases.   The main reasons for exclusion are persistent disobedience (33 per cent), verbal abuse against staff (26 per cent) and insolent or offensive behaviour (17 per cent). Boys continue to account for most exclusions, [...]