Parent Pages new website

For most parents, it’s an achievement to get the children to school in time with everything they need (homework, the signed consent forms, the right sports kit, musical instruments, the cake for the charity fundraiser). But it seems we should also now be weighing their school bags. The combined weight of everything they are having [...]

Read the full story

The new headteacher of a school called the strictest in Britain has unveiled plans to create a chain of similar schools. Peter Hughes, the principal of Mossbourne Academy in Hackney, is setting up another secondary school and wants to open a primary school in the borough. Mr Hughes has taken over from Sir Michael Wilshaw, [...]

Read the full story

Some of London’s most deprived children will be damaged further by being struck off the special needs list, a leading headteacher warned today. Children who act as carers, those who are homeless or whose parents have died could lose out on extra support, Jo Shuter, head of Quintin Kynaston school in St John’s Wood, claimed. [...]

Read the full story

Schools in England will be banned from taking pupils’ fingerprints and using face-recognition technology unless they get permission from parents. New government guidance says written parental permission must be obtained to use students’ biometric data. Pupils themselves will also be allowed to refuse to participate. Schools can use fingerprinting or face scanning for recording attendance, [...]

Read the full story

There is no clear link between performance pay for teachers and raising standards in schools, says an international survey. The OECD has examined data from its Pisa tests to find whether targeting pay improves pupil achievement. Previous studies have identified the importance of high-quality teaching. But the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher says the international evidence reveals [...]

Read the full story

Bronx high school teacher Charles Best found that the resources for his classroom were severely lacking. He and his fellow teachers bought pencils and copy paper out-of-pocket, and spent much of their time together discussing the ways they wished they could engage their students if they had the extra funding. “The resources our students needed [...]

Read the full story

Schools in England will be sent copies of the King James Bible from this week to mark its 400th anniversary. Education Secretary Michael Gove said the text had had “an immense influence” on the English-speaking world. He said pupils should learn about its role in the nation’s history, language, literacy and culture. The move is [...]

Read the full story

Charities, teachers’ leaders and campaigners yesterday condemned plans that could remove thousands of children from the special-needs register. Ministers have announced a series of reforms in the belief that too many children at schools in England have been wrongly labelled as having special educational needs (SEN). There will be a new single category of SEN [...]

Read the full story

The sheer demands placed on timetables are leaving schools with little opportunity to promote resilience, optimism, courage, generosity, empathy and good manners, it was claimed.   Anthony Seldon, the Master of Wellington College, Berkshire, said old-fashioned values were traditionally passed on to pupils through competitive sport, artistic performances and voluntary work in the local community. [...]

Read the full story

A schizophrenic who knifed a schoolboy to death and wounded three other pupils after failing to take his medication was today jailed for at least 20 years. Serif Aslan stabbed Kasey Gordon, 15, in the heart in front of horrified shoppers. Aslan, 34, who was free to roam the streets despite a long history of [...]

Read the full story

Children should not have to start school until they are six to prevent early ‘adultification’, an academic has claimed. Going against conventional wisdom that their intellect should be fed and stimulated early on, education expert Dr Richard House says that over-emphasis on the three Rs – reading writing and arithmetic – can actually cause long [...]

Read the full story

Pupils should not be subjected to full classroom tuition until the age of six to off-set the effects of premature “adultification”, it was claimed.   Dr Richard House, a senior lecturer at Roehampton University’s Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, said gifted pupils from relatively affluent backgrounds suffered the most from being pushed “too far, too [...]

Read the full story

A study led by a University of Bristol academic found that a child’s educational achievements can be harmed when a father loses his job. Using British Cohort Study data, Professor Paul Gregg studied job losses during the 1980s recession to assess the impact of unemployment on children’s academic performance.   The research found that children [...]

Read the full story

A head teacher boasted about breaking children down after reducing them to tears, a tribunal heard yesterday. Eirios Hall, in her 50s, is alleged to have humiliated and violently manhandled pupils at Ardwyn Nursery and Infant School in Welshpool, Powys. A General Teaching Council for Wales hearing was told that children would break down into [...]

Read the full story

Normally, it’s the teachers telling their easily-distractible students to concentrate and be serious. But at Abby Kelly Foster High School, the teachers are the ones who are the class clowns. Several of the teachers at the Massachusetts charter school agreed to dance in the background of the video as history teacher Mike Penny asked his [...]

Read the full story

Prince Edward has declined a Belfast pupil’s appeal for a royal reprieve from homework. The prince was visiting Lagan College on the outskirts of the city in the first engagement of a one-day visit. During a presentation in the main hall, year eight pupil Michael Hare asked the prince to sign a royal pardon which [...]

Read the full story

Plans to change the “special needs” system in schools will have a big impact upon teachers like me, as well as millions of pupils and their parents. That said, the system does need an overhaul. Far too many pupils are judged as having “special educational needs” (SEN). Last year, an Ofsted investigation found that one [...]

Read the full story

England’s schools should take lessons from Japan and the Far East on how to improve performance, the shadow education secretary says. Stephen Twigg says despite many school reforms, there has been little change to the style of classroom teaching since Victorian times. Labour’s number one priority for education is raising the quality and status of [...]

Read the full story

Thousands of parents whose children fall behind in reading will get vouchers to spend on private tutors under plans unveiled by Nick Clegg today. It marks a major new drive to provide “catch-up lessons” for struggling youngsters from poorer families in their first year of secondary school. Mr Clegg hailed the Evening Standard’s Get London [...]

Read the full story

Sheffield’s Labour city council has succeeded with a bid for £1,800,000 to the Arts Council which will pay for all children and young people in the city to learn a musical instrument or sing in a choir. They don’t have to. Older readers may recall terror in the classroom at having to pluck away in [...]

Read the full story

I’m cold. I’m shattered. My hands are searing with the coldness. I’ve got no job, and nowhere to live. I’m all on my own, with no one to comfort me. Every night I go through this agony. Will I be mugged? Will I be kidnapped? Will I be hurt? No one cares about the homeless. [...]

Read the full story

Pupils are being distracted from exam studying due to their college sending them ‘top revision tips’ by text, Twitter, and Facebook, it was claimed today. Students at Havering Sixth Form College in Hornchurch, Essex, say the ‘obvious’ messages are ‘annoying’ and are actually interrupting their A-level preparation. Daily tips aimed at revising pupils include ‘buckle [...]

Read the full story

Under the biggest shake-up of the system for 30 years, ministers will toughen up rules on the diagnosis of behavioural and learning problems. It follows concerns that schools are abusing the system to disguise poor teaching and climb league tables. For the first time, rigorous screening measures will be introduced to prevent pupils from being classed [...]

Read the full story

The Government will not ring-fence the £2.5bn a year to be handed to schools for the most disadvantaged pupils to ensure all of it is spent on them, Nick Clegg admitted yesterday. The Deputy Prime Minister said it would be wrong to “micro-manage” every school from Whitehall by dictating how money allocated under his “pupil premium” scheme [...]

Read the full story

Mega-wealthy Chinese parents are paying out hundreds of thousands of pounds for their children to have lessons in the art of chit-chat – to help them get into Oxbridge. The families are doing their utmost, including paying out the huge sums to British ‘education consultants’ based in China in order to give their children the [...]

Read the full story

As many as 450,000 children could be removed from school special needs registers because they have been wrongly labelled as requiring extra help, the Government will announce today. Campaigners fear the cuts could leave thousands of children “cut adrift”. One in five schoolchildren in England is on the register. The rules are designed to toughen [...]

Read the full story

Parents in England are to be given control over their children’s special educational needs (SEN) budgets, allowing them to choose expert support rather than local authorities being the sole provider. In what the government described as the biggest reform of SEN for 30 years, the measures will also legally force education, health and social care [...]

Read the full story

A study by the Welsh Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD) suggests undergraduates completing the course fare less well than those who have not. The findings are revealed on BBC Radio Wales’ “Eye on Wales” programme. The Welsh Government says it will widen research into the Welsh Bacc’s impact. The qualification [...]

Read the full story

For those of you actively job seeking at the moment don’t forget that finding and applying for a new role couldn’t be simpler with our help. Firstly take a look at the thousands of jobs on offer at Schools Jobs and then skip to our lovely new careers page here where you will find top [...]

Read the full story

The primary school was in Surrey, the head teacher recalls, but its catchment area was far removed from the affluent image enjoyed by much of the county. Among the four-year-olds joining the reception class, she had several who had not been toilet-trained. She put it down to inadequate parenting and sent them home until they [...]

Read the full story

Though I went to four girls-only schools and only ran away from one of them, I can’t get over one difficulty about educating girls apart from boys. There’s a lot to be said for it: the girls don’t have to worry about what boys are thinking of them when they’re trying to learn; they do all the tasks [...]

Read the full story

On Thursday, the education secretary, Michael Gove, eloquently described how much of this nation’s talents and capabilities are strangled at birth by the power of the old school tie. “Those who were born poor are more likely to stay poor and those who inherit privilege are more likely to pass on privilege in England more [...]

Read the full story

Seventy thousand primary school leavers will take part in intensive two-week summer schools this year to keep them from falling behind during the six-week break. Nick Clegg will announce tomorrow that the “top-up” lessons will be provided to children from poor backgrounds by two-thirds of secondary schools, as part of a drive to highlight the [...]

Read the full story

You might not have realised it, but men are being oppressed. In many walks of life, they are routinely discriminated against in ways women are not. So unrecognised is this phenomenon that the mere mention of it will appear laughable to some. That, at least, is the premise of a book by a South African philosophy [...]

Read the full story

Stubbs, 51, made her name as an actress with the Royal Shakespeare Company and had notable roles as Desdemona in Othello and Viola in Twelfth Night. But she admitted she could often find the texts impenetrable and it could be “frustrating” to get into character.   Stubbs told the Radio Times: “Shakespeare can be terrifying, [...]

Read the full story

According to Nick Clegg, who announced a range of education measures on Saturday, the pupil premium will play a key role in boosting social mobility. But just what is the pupil premium, and what effects will it have? The policy will redistribute funding to schools with poor pupils, and this is clearly to be welcomed. [...]

Read the full story

Michael Gove’s easy ride on academies is coming to an end. Until now, the financial advantages of academy status have encouraged a steady flow of conversions. This perhaps gave the impression of an ideologically popular policy, but the reality is that schools have just been pragmatic. From here on in, it will be much tougher. [...]

Read the full story

Nine out of 10 academies are selling pupils junk food such as crisps, chocolate and cereal bars that are banned in maintained schools to protect children’s health, research has revealed. The findings from a study by the School Food Trust (SFT) contradict the education secretary Michael Gove’s claim that the academies he champions are following [...]

Read the full story

Oversleeping or being late for the bus are both excuses that teachers across the world have to put up with from pupils who are late. But one primary school pupil in Chongqing, south west China had somewhat different reason last week for being delayed. This boy became stuck when he tried to squeeze his body [...]

Read the full story

Schools across England will be assessed on how they spend the Government’s new pupil premium and could be judged as “failing” if the money does not help reduce inequality among the children they teach. The plan is among a package of measures to ensure the £600 bonus that schools get for each of the most [...]

Read the full story

It started with a music teacher’s request for two of her pupils to sing at her wedding. Ginette Brown chose the song, The Prayer, and teenagers Jonathan Antoine and Charlotte Jaconelli performed it at her church ceremony. When the pair sang the same duet to audition for Britain’s Got Talent, their performance earned acclaim from the [...]

Read the full story

Morale among state school teachers is at “rock bottom”, according to a former chief inspector of schools, who speaks out as unions warn that a “perfect storm” of government meddling threatens an exodus of talent from the profession. Christine Gilbert, who resigned as head of Ofsted last year, said there was evidence of widespread disillusionment [...]

Read the full story

When Sir Michael Wilshaw took up his role as the head of Ofsted in January, he made it clear he had no intention of softening the combative style that marked his spell as head of the high-achieving Mossbourne Academy in Haringey. “If anyone says to you that ‘staff morale is at an all-time low’, you [...]

Read the full story

When they came to power, David Cameron and Nick Clegg said they were determined to raise the status of teaching because “the most successful countries, from the Far East to Scandinavia, are those where teaching has the highest status as a profession”. These are places where only the top graduates enter teaching, and where training [...]

Read the full story

Karen David is wearing a vibrant floral vintage dress and a beaming smile when we meet at Soho House in Los Angeles. She has a lot to feel happy about. The actress and singer is soon to marry Swedish record producer Carl Ryden, she’s starring with Kiefer Sutherland in his new TV series Touch, and [...]

Read the full story

This picture shows me as a Girl Guide aged about 11, shortly after I’d joined up. I loved the Guides (I’m still a supporter) and rose to the heady heights of patrol leader. Camping was the bit I enjoyed most, especially if it involved getting together with the Scouts! The eldest of three girls, I [...]

Read the full story

I was 10 and it was my first school trip – my first time away from home. It was to Nethercott farm in Devon, where, our teachers promised us with a certain sinister relish that we would be working as farmers for a full week. We were city children, urban ones, with at least some [...]

Read the full story

A school has become entangled in a legal row after confiscating pupils’ phones and refusing to hand them back for weeks. City of London Academy Islington has brought in a new hardline policy of hanging on to mobiles, refusing even to return them to parents, until the end of term. But a lawyer says the [...]

Read the full story

Pupils at Nick Clegg’s old school sang Hey Jude during prayers and staged a water fight in a Facebook-organised end-of-term rebellion. Students at the £23,000-a-year Westminster School refused to sing Deus Misereatur during Latin prayers and instead gave a rousing rendition of the Beatles classic. Up to 80 were said to have staged the water [...]

Read the full story

A cross–party group of MPs said some of the schools, which are free of local authority control and funded directly from Whitehall, were making “very high” payments to head teachers and leaders of academy chains. The Commons public accounts committee raised concerns over a quango’s failure to “pick up warning signs of improper spending or [...]

Read the full story