A new report from MPs on the Education Select Committee calling for sex education to be made statutory, has much in it to be welcomed by those who have been campaigning for improvements in the provision…
What’s the optimum size?
Primary school via Air Images/Shutterstock
Ed Miliband’s pledge that Labour, if elected, would limit school classes for five, six and seven-year-olds to 30 pupils reignites a core question about how best to spend money to improve education. In…
There’s this much evidence for our academies policy.
Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire
It is not yet possible to tell whether the government’s flagship academies policy has been “a positive force for change” in the English education system. That’s the finding of a long-awaited report by…
Lining up to take stock at the election approaches.
Tim Ireland/PA Archive
The thorny issue of what democracy is, what it’s not and whether it is an appropriate system for government has been at the top of the agenda at the start of 2015. At the same time, we are in the lead-up…
Parents in Durham will have a little less choice.
ADTeasdale
The Durham Free School is to have its government funding removed in a snap decision made by Nicky Morgan, the secretary of state for education. The move comes after a damning Ofsted report which found…
BBC Three’s show ‘Excluded’ follows children at The Bridge AP Academy.
BBC/Keo Films/Oliver Groves
In 2013, 3,900 young people were permanently excluded from secondary schools in England. The most common reason for these children to be removed from the mainstream school system was persistent disruptive…
Education reforms in the spotlight.
Students in class via Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
Only a tenth of education reforms carried out around the world since 2008 have been analysed by governments for the impact they have on children’s education. A new report by the Organisation for Economic…
The teachers need teaching too.
Students in class via Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
As politicians get out of their starting blocks early this year now campaigning for the general election has begun, it’s hard not to be sceptical about new education policy announcements. Politicians on…
An overdose of self-esteem won’t build character.
Pessism concept via Ivalin/Shutterstock
In the last few months the UK’s two main political parties have entered into an apparent bidding war over which of them can elevate the teaching of character highest on their educational agendas before…
Trainee teachers may need a lot of convincing.
Stefan Wemuth/PA Wire
Barely one month after the current government was elected in 2010, the secretary of state for education Michael Gove announced the abolition of the General Teaching Council for England. Now, only a few…
Testing times for future students.
Ben Birchall/PA Wire
The teachers of tomorrow should be eager to prepare for “your future, their future”, according to the National College for Teaching and Leadership’s new teacher-training recruitment campaign. Sadly they…
The headmaster of Tristram Hunt’s former school in Hampstead has given him a telling off.
John Stillwell/PA Wire
The furore over the suggestion by shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt that private schools need to contribute more to state education or face the removal of their tax breaks has been predictable…
Following in Gove’s footsteps.
Joe Giddens/PA Wire
The longest and most enthusiastic applause during Nicky Morgan’s first conference speech as secretary of state for education was for her predecessor Michael Gove. This seemed apt for a pre-election effort…
Spell it out.
Alphabet soup via Brian Mueller/Shutterstock
Teaching children to read with phonics has been a central plank of recent “Govian” education policy. A new set of statistics shows that 74% of children in the first year of primary school now meet the…
Let’s do this democratically.
Andrew Yates/PA Wire
Devolving power to English regions and cities could offer a real chance to introduce more local oversight of the way academies and free schools are being managed. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have…
The shortage of foreign language skills in the UK is now a permanent preoccupation, with some sources placing the estimated cost of the deficit as high as £48 billion a year. Britons are now seen as a…