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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. [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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The average family with children throws away £680 of food a year, according to research. The sum, which equals £13 a week, makes a total of £12 billion across the nation. The study found that the average household spends £68 a week on food but that 91% of households with children admit to throwing some [...]

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UK families are wasting £270 a year (£5.20 a week) on discarded food and drink, according to a survey of their kitchen habits. Most families massively underestimate the amount of food they throw away each week, according to new research. Despite the economic downturn they admit to buying more than they need, often tempted by [...]

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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 [...]

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My younger brother never has any money and for years my parents have bankrolled his various career changes and batty business ventures. Now he is in his thirties I feel it’s time for him to stand on his own feet. Constantly bailing him out only encourages him and I’m resentful that he’s received so many [...]

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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 [...]

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Grownup children still living with their parents get a pretty bad press. In Britain and America they’re labelled “Kippers” (Kids In Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings) or “Yuckies” (Young Unwitting Costly Kids). In Australia it’s “Slops” (Singles Living Off Parents). In Italy it’s “Bamboccioni” (Big Babies). The Japanese are even less delicate: their “parasaito shinguru” [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Babies born this year will not get their state pension until the age of 77 – and their own children will have to wait until they are in their eighties, a shock report has revealed. The findings raise the prospect of a baby girl, born today, retiring nearly two decades older than her grandmother who [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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What is it about men in the kitchen that makes them so outspoken? The latest to let off steam is the top chef, Marcus Wareing, who criticises the trainee cooks working for him as lazy and clueless, only interested in how many hours they have to work and having an exaggerated sense of entitlement. Asked [...]

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Four in 10 couples have shelved plans to start a family because they can’t afford it, according to research from the Skipton Building Society. A survey of 2,412 childless couples showed that 901 have been delaying having children for the past two years due to the poor state of their finances. Of these couples, 47 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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. [...]

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A former police officer is facing up to 12 months in prison after admitting she conned cash out of her colleagues by claiming her daughter was suffering from leukaemia…when she was actually show jumping. Mother of two Rachel Hewitt falsely obtained money from fellow employees at North Yorkshire Police and neighbouring West Yorkshire force between [...]

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The Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales has told the Treasury that the controversial plan to deny the benefit to families with a high earner “is seriously flawed in principle and in practice”.   In a confidential report seen by The Daily Telegraph, it urged ministers to rethink the plans when the Finance [...]

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The free vouchers will be distributed through Boots, the high street chemist, and will offer parents up to 10 two-hour sessions of advice on how best to bring up their children.   Initially, it will be piloted in three areas, Middlesbrough, Camden in north London and High Peak, Derbyshire, but it could be extended throughout [...]

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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 [...]

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Child minders may be allowed to look after more children, particularly toddlers, so that the costs associated with care are spread between a greater number of parents. Other rules may also be relaxed to make it easier for parents and grandparents to look after one another’s children. A recent study by the OECD found that [...]

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A controversial fertility doctor has raked in £25million in a single year. Mohamed Taranissi and his wife received the colossal sum through their IVF clinic, giving fresh evidence to critics who say that the creation of human life has become a multi-million pound industry. On Saturday the Daily Mail revealed that a human egg agency [...]

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Sophie Clucas, her mum Clair Clucas, 38, and her grandma Joy Parkinson, 64, will personally hand in the letter at 10 Downing Street. Sophie said she wanted the Government to change course as restoration work on Wakefield Cathedral, which she visits every Sunday, has ground to a halt due to rising costs.   Sophie, a pupil [...]

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When her husband, Jon gave Jessica Humphreys a £12,000 black Hermes tote two years ago, she thought she would never let it out of her sight. ‘It was a present for my birthday and I treasured it, keeping it in its luxurious soft dust bag and bringing it out on special occasions only,’ the interior [...]

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IVF procedures widely used in the UK are posing a ‘serious health risk’, healthcare experts have warned. Clinics are using ‘aggressive’ practices that improve success rates but have led to treatments becoming one of the biggest causes of maternal deaths in England and Wales, they said. There is increasing evidence that the most common treatment, [...]

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IVF clinics in the UK are practising aggressive fertility treatments that are putting women and children at unjustified risk, experts say. The commercially driven industry uses unnecessary procedures, high doses of powerful drugs and risky interventions to help desperate couples spending thousands of pounds to conceive. But a milder, safer approach to IVF could provide [...]

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Schools which find the most effective ways to help children from poor backgrounds could win £10,000, Deputy Prime Nick Clegg has announced. The awards will be made to 50 schools which make best use of the “pupil premium”, a £600 payment given for each child who receives free school meals. Mr Clegg said this would [...]

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I.M.writes: I am coming to terms with my diagnosis of terminal cancer and I am sorting out my financial affairs. I wish to leave my wealth divided equally among my four children, but my youngest son lacks full mental capacity. How can I arrange for him to have his share as an income, not a [...]

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The worst thing about politics is how easily it can land you on the wrong side of an argument. If, for instance, you consider yourself an old-fashioned Tory, you may have found yourself spluttering into your cornflakes at the Government’s plan, announced as part of the Queen’s Speech, to give fathers more paternity leave. Men, [...]

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I opened a child trust fund with HSBC for my son and nominated my husband as the main contact. We have since moved and my husband tried numerous times to change the address. We recently learned that it has been registered with my husband’s first name as Michael; he is Mark. HSBC refuses to discuss [...]

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I was always determined to earn my own cash, even when I was at school and growing up at home. My mother asked me in the school holidays to do some chores in the garden, which I did a lot of anyway, but this time she said she would give me £10 to do it. [...]

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Once a month, usually on a Saturday, Kasiani Papadopoulou packs a bag with children’s presents and takes the bus from her one-bedroom flat in a dusty suburb of Athens up into the cool hills outside the Greek capital that overlook the sea. The 20-mile journey is an emotional one for her, but she would not [...]

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Johann Lamont will say that the huge cost to the taxpayer of providing Scottish and EU undergraduates with a degree has forced universities to balance their books by recruiting more fee-paying students from elsewhere.   She will claim this has restricted places and opportunities for Scottish school leavers but will warn that SNP ministers are [...]

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The cost of living has been rising more quickly for the poorest households as a result of higher energy and food bills, according to new research. he TUC said CPI inflation for the poorest tenth of households in February was 4.1 per cent, compared to 3.3 per cent for the richest 10 per cent. Poorer [...]

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Top chef Marcus Wareing has criticised young cooks for chasing 15 minutes of fame on television shows like MasterChef. Wareing, whose restaurant at The Berkeley has two Michelin stars, said trainees needed to put in hours of graft because being on TV was not the key to success. The 41-year-old, speaking at the launch of [...]

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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 [...]

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Millions of mothers who have chosen to take time out of work will no longer be penalised once they are pensioners, Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has announced. However, the overhaul is expected to hit wealthier workers, as the state second pension will be scrapped.   At the moment, people who do not [...]

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The nine year old boy, called Gran, has become a celebrity in his town of Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province, after the blotch on his body was first publicised last month.   The family, which has been too poor to send Gran to school, have since been inundated with offers of help from patriotic [...]

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With fewer than 80 days to go until the start of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games it would be easy to conclude amid the hype that the “future” of sport is restricted to only a few weeks in July and August. However, those involved in the industry are already looking beyond the games [...]

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The number of international adoptions has plummeted to its lowest point in 15 years, a steep decline attributed largely to crackdowns against baby-selling, a sputtering world economy and efforts by countries to place more children with domestic families. Globally, the number of orphans being adopted by foreign parents dropped from a high of 45,000 in [...]

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Safety checks aimed at spotting improper spending by schools and academies are inadequate, MPs will warn today. The Department for Education is far too reliant on whistleblowers to detect wrong-doing, says the Commons Public Accounts Committee. via ‘Poor checks’ on school accounts – Education News – Education – The Independent. » Inline Ad Purchase:  Intext Link

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The UK’s poorest families are facing the tightest income squeeze of any group due to higher rates of inflation and lower wage boosts, according to new analysis of official figures conducted by the Trades Union Conference (TUC). The bottom 10% of the country by income are facing effective inflation rates of 4.1% versus just 3.3% [...]

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Children’s life chances are more likely to be linked to parental achievement and wealth in this country than almost any other developed nation, it was claimed. The Education Secretary said the “sheer scale” of the dominance exercised by former private schoolboys pointed to a “deep problem” in British society. In a speech, he said public [...]

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The scale of private school dominance of top jobs in Britain is “morally indefensible”, Education Secretary Michael Gove told a conference of independent school heads today He said it was “remarkable” how many of the positions of wealth, influence, celebrity and power in Britain were held by former independent school pupils. “On the bench of [...]

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Richard Cairns, the headmaster of Brighton College, said school leaders should be given greater incentive to control the worst teachers to stop them being “palmed off” to other schools. He said society would be shocked if hospitals tuned a “blind eye to incompetent doctors or nurses” but poor teachers were routinely tolerated in the education system. [...]

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A man who moved from Yugoslavia to New York without even knowing English is now graduating with an honors degree from an Ivy league university. Gac Filipaj, 52, first moved to the United States in 1992 when his home country was in the midst of a massive civil war. Upon his move state-side, he started [...]

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A couple who had IVF treatment after struggling to conceive for years have advertised their 18 leftover embryos on Craigslist so they can donate them to others in need. Deb and Kevin McCrea had two boys after undergoing fertility treatment and a baby girl after In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) when they were left with 18 [...]

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