David Cameron’s promise of 30 hours of free childcare a week for nursery-age children is in jeopardy because too few early-years providers are willing to offer places, parliament’s spending watchdog has found. Under an initiative outlined by the prime minister during the general election campaign, the current entitlement of 15 ... Read More »
Only a handful of multi-academy trusts are up to the job of improving England’s schools, Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw has told MPs, before accusing the Department for Education of being too slow to intervene in struggling schools. Speaking to the education select committee, the outgoing chief inspector of ... Read More »
More than half of teaching assistants say they have experienced physical violence in the classroom in the past year, according to a report published by trade union Unison. One respondent claimed to have been “kicked, punched, slapped, headbutted and insulted verbally by children”. Another, a teaching assistant at a school ... Read More »
Amanda Spielman, banker-turned-academy chain adviser, will be the next Ofsted chief inspector, it has been announced. A few formalities are necessary, a cross-party coalition of MPs will talk to her next Wednesday before giving her the final nod, but presuming no funny business occurs Spielman is in. Overstating the importance ... Read More »
During the second world war, my late father-in-law was conscripted into the army and forced to fight for Nazi Germany. My mother was a young girl in London, running to air raid shelters and seeing local streets destroyed by the blitz. A first meeting of the in-laws might have been ... Read More »
I am a migrant from the European Union. You have probably heard lots of things about people like me in the referendum campaign, but you may not have actually heard from any of us. We have got more to lose than anyone else – our livelihoods depend on the outcome ... Read More »
Britain must leave the EU to stop immigration having a devastating impact on schools, Priti Patel, a Tory minister and leading Brexit campaigner, will say on Wednesday. Patel, a member of the Vote Leave campaign, said class sizes were already overstretched with an 8% increase over the last year in ... Read More »
Ofsted’s common inspection framework, launched in September 2015, introduced a system of short inspections for “good” schools and changed how inspectors are employed. A few months later, when The Key surveyed 979 governors for its annual State of Education report, nearly 40% of respondents said they had found preparing for ... Read More »
In the first four years of Emma’s life, her parents had to deal with a diagnosis of autism and then leukaemia, but the most difficult challenge they faced was the battle with their local authority for special educational support, which saw them pitted against a specialist law firm. Their experience ... Read More »
A project helping disadvantaged UK pupils go to US universities has seen undergraduates accepted for courses starting in September 2016 at all of the prestigious Ivy League colleges. Between them, the 66 state-school pupils will receive scholarships worth $17m (£12m) from US universities. The numbers of UK students in US ... Read More »
Ofsted has criticised an Islamic independent school, after inspectors found leaflets which claimed music and dancing were “acts of the devil”. Inspectors made an unannounced visit to the Darul Uloom Islamic High School in Birmingham after having previously rated the school as “inadequate”. Inspectors said pupils were not being protected ... Read More »
A teacher who had sex with a student has been banned from the profession. Simon Bickford-Smith, 39, began a relationship with the girl when she was 17, while he was a teacher at Sixth Form College, Farnborough in Hampshire. A National College for Teaching & Leadership (NCTL) panel found he ... Read More »
