The Schools' News Service

Each term we publish a guide to school money – where it is, who has got it, where it is being spent. There’s a link to the current edition at the end – a new edition will emerge in the summer hols. Now the Audit Commission has joined in the analysis and they focus on [...]

The Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) has announced a programme of enhancements for teachers who work in difficult schools, along with research showing the impact of good teachers on pupils in challenging schools. In this regard a challenging school is one in which 30% or fewer students gain five A* to C grades [...]

Ofsted has conducted a series of inspections to look at the way the new secondary curriculum has been implemented. It says that, rather than taking school-wide decisions, most schools have left the matter up to individual heads of department. Ofsted says this results in a jumbled whole-school curriculum. Of 37 inspected for this particular purpose [...]

The new Principal Learning and Project qualifications in Wales have been announced. They have been developed in partnership with employers and universities and will offer Welsh Baccalaureate students a study option that places emphasis on developing and applying knowledge and skills through practical activities related to different work sectors. Principal Learning qualifications give students an [...]

Teacher Support Network Chief Executive, Julian Stanley, has given evidence to the House of Commons Children’s, Schools and Families Committee evidence session on Allegations Against School Staff. Speaking ahead of the session, Julian Stanley said: “Allegations against teachers are becoming more frequent but very few are eventually proven to be true. Far too often, the [...]

Research commissioned by the National College of School Leadership (NCSL) suggests that professional school business managers (SBMs) can save almost one third of a headteacher’s time and up to £18,000 a year in primary schools, or up to £56,000 a year in secondary schools.* If you achieve such savings it does quite a lot for [...]

I published an item recently, following a survey of school administrators, concluding that many schools still communicate with parents using entirely paper-based systems and that it is difficult to move away from this because parents refuse to give out email addresses or prefer paper. This is contrary to Becta surveys carried out during 2008 (summarised [...]

Teachers TV statistics show that over 40 percent of teachers have experienced stress-related illnesses. These statistics are in line with findings in 2008 from Teachers Support Network, which showed that 87 per cent of teachers had experienced stress in the last two years. Of those who identified problems at work as the cause, 78 percent [...]

I recently wrote a piece on Functional Skills that included the words: “the 2010 cohort onwards won’t get their Maths and English GCSEs at A*-C without Functional Skills passes”. Some regular readers have contacted me to take issue with that statement – quoting DCSF announcements of 2nd April to suggest otherwise. I’m never very comfortable [...]

Our brains are singularly effective at learning through language – and because of that most of us tend to learn in a linear manner. But when we push ourselves to learn visually, suddenly a whole new perspective opens up – and learning can proceed far more effectively and far more efficiently. Going visual transforms how [...]

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has announced a new approach to Schools Recruitment. The Schools Recruitment Service is being established to provide a standardised application system to recruit all permanent teaching and support staff in England. This programme aims to reduce the cost of advertising and fill school staff vacancies through ‘talent [...]

When members of most school management teams are asked, “what do you do to motivate your teaching colleagues and boost their morale?” there is generally a long pause. That is not to say that nothing is being done, but rather that what is being done is not immediately obvious. This means that if it is [...]

One of the aspects of teaching that has fascinated me through my career is the movement towards giving children an understanding of as many different cultures as possible. That might sound naive but the fact is, when I started teaching we didn’t do this – either in my specialist subject of music (world music was [...]

The European Union, in conjunction with the anti-racist campaign Kick it Out, have produced a brochure promoting the multi-ethnicity of Europe, and of football in Britain, to coincide with the European elections on June 4. We’ve put copies of the brochure in two different formats at: http://www.schools.co.uk/images/EuropeanElectionsP.pdf http://www.schools.co.uk/images/EuropeanElectionsL.pdf and they can be downloaded from there. [...]

One of the problems with mentioning a company in these emails and saying that they seem to be worth talking to is that the company in question often comes back and says, “could you also mention…” I do try to be fair and cover as many of the organisations that send me information as I [...]