Happy New Year!
Here are links to some of this week’s education-related news:
Schools:
- The education secretary is being urged to ditch regulations limiting infant class sizes to 30 pupils, in order to save money.
- Education Secretary Michael Gove has accused those who oppose his academies programme of being “happy with failure”.
- The Education Secretary loses the concentration of his young audience shortly after beginning his defence of academies.
- Dozens of teachers facing allegations of incompetence and misconduct will escape official hearings owing to the abolition of the General Teaching Council for England, new figures suggest.
- A third of parents are so unhappy with their child’s school they would advise other families not to send their children there, new figures from Ofsted have revealed.
- Schools are routinely cheating Ofsted inspections by bribing pupils, sending troublemakers home and rehearsing lessons, teachers have warned. Read the response from Ofsted here.
- The school day should be lengthened to prepare pupils for work, says Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg.
- Too many exams are ruining children’s enjoyment of their time at school, a former schools adviser has said.
- How well children perform in the classroom could be linked to how physically active they are, suggests a Dutch review of previous studies.
- Children who grow up without a daily routine of set bedtimes and mealtimes do worse at school, a report suggests.
- The Commission on School Reform has urged Scottish schools to abandon what it called the “bog standard” model of comprehensive education.
- Schools are being encouraged by the UK’s top scientific body to bring cutting edge science into the classroom.
Universities:
- University application numbers could be making a sharp recovery – according to figures from a university.
- A new type of privately-funded science and technology university has been announced by the universities minister.
Other News:
- Children’s access to smartphones and computers should be limited to stop them becoming “addicted” to electronic gadgets, according to a schools’ leader.
