Here are links to some of this week’s education-related news:

• Too many design and technology teachers in England are failing to keep pace with global technological advances, education inspectors have said.
• Thousands of children are being turned off maths and science at school because of “tedious” lessons, according to one of the world’s top physicists.
• Thousands of teenagers will learn a trade at a new generation of technical schools under Government plans unveiled in the Budget.
• A major two-year study found that student teachers in England had a weaker grasp of maths than trainees in nations such as China, Japan, Ireland, Finland and Russia.
• Teachers should receive bigger paypackets, according to one of Britain’s most influential businessmen, who argues that increasing their salaries would be good for the economy.
• The School Teachers’ Review Body’s (STRB’s) recommendations on pay for those unqualified teachers who earn a full-time equivalent salary of £21,000 or less have been published.
• Children at a comprehensive school are to become first in the country to be sent home early every Friday in an attempt to save money.
• More than 30,000 pupils from around the UK turned their classrooms into newsrooms as they made the news for real.

• A third of schoolchildren who took part in a UK-wide BBC survey say they do not believe in God, a majority help adults to use the internet and at least one in three is feeling the effects of the economic slowdown.
• Schools could be ranked by the number of pupils gaining university degrees under Coalition plans to drive up education standards.
• Students and academics at a world-leading London university want to build bridges between the Wikipedia website and formal research.
• A controversial “nappy curriculum” for under-fives will be radically overhauled after a Government review concluded almost half of children were starting school lacking basic social and language skills.
• Ministers are pressing ahead with a trial of a new-style phonics test designed to identify pupils lagging behind after a year of compulsory education.
• Children as young as 11 should be expected to read 50 books a year as part of a national drive to improve literacy standards, according to Michael Gove.
• Headteachers have accused the education secretary of being driven by an ideological agenda after it emerged that almost half the schools he has visited since taking power are – or have applied to become –academies.
• Plans to allow teachers in to search pupils for mobile phones and examine the phones’ content have been called “reckless” by a teaching union.
• Ofsted has launched a consultation on the inspection of maintained schools and academies in England. The changes aim to re-focus school inspection on what matters most: the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom, backed by excellent leadership and management, and good discipline and behaviour in schools.
• The process by which parents and other groups apply to set up so-called free schools is being tightened up.
• A walk around a Sheffield school has become a heroic quest to find weapons and magical items to defeat a monster.
• A third of 11 to 16-year-olds say their families have cut back on spending amid the economic downturn, according to a BBC survey about UK young people.

Next week’s Teaching Events include:

• 1st to 31st March- Tenner 2011
• 14th to 27th March- Cambridge Science Festival
• 26th March - Earth Hour
• 27th March - World Theatre Day
• 27th March - Census Day 2011

Here is another collection of links to the latest education news stories:

• SATs for 11 year olds have too high a margin of error to be used to compare schools in league tables, according to the NUT and ATL, who have urged the government to scrap the tests for Year 6 pupils. The leader of the NUT has given hints that there could be another boycott of the SATs next year, although more notice would be given this time around.
• Trade Unions were outraged by the £200,000 pay package of a primary headteacher in south London. Michael Gove has written to the School Teachers’ Review Body to say that he wanted no headteacher to earn more than the prime minister. The TES have published a related article which explains that rocketing headteacher salaries are justified by the ‘mammoth pay packets of singers and footballing megastars’.

Image – Decus Et Tutamen

• Michael Gove has also published the Department for Education’s key policy commitments and invited the public to hold them to account on delivery.
• The chairman of Ofsted has explained that it is not ‘an absolute disaster’ if schools contain bad teachers.
• The scrapping of school building plans has cost education authorities at least £160m, according to the Local Government Association.
• Empty shops could be converted into schools, saving a third of the cost of starting a new building. Meanwhile, a report from the Auditor General for Wales has said that that school buildings in Wales are in a poor state and there is a long way to go before all of them will be ‘fit for purpose’.
• Reforms that will allow every school to become an academy will be rushed through at a pace usually reserved for emergencies such as anti-terror legislation. However, the Director of Education at Civitas has explained that academies are failing to teach traditional subjects in favour of less challenging qualifications in an effort to drive up results.
• Students will have to pay more for university, possibly through a graduate tax, according to the Business Secretary Vince Cable. University students will also be able to take low-cost two-year degree courses in order to save time and money before entering the world of work.
• Thousands of people could miss out on a university place in the UK this year after 660,953 people applied to start full-time undergraduate courses. The Lecturers Union fears that up to 170,000 people could be disappointed.

Image – Graduation Cake Guy

• The debate about school lunches continues as the chairman of the School Food Trust has criticised parents for filling children’s packed lunches with junk food.
• A Scottish government pledge that all school children receive two hours of physical education a week is not being met, according to new figures.
• A group of primary school children have been honoured by the Royal Society of Chemistry for disproving the theory that spiders are afraid of conkers.
• Do you want to get your children more interested in Maths? Why not find out more about the maths buskers who want to communicate the wonder of maths to people in the street!