For many years I have been calling on successive governments to place greater emphasis on vocational and technical education. Slowly but surely, the government appears to be moving in that direction. This week saw the announcement of how T-levels – the new technical alternative to A-levels – will be rolled out and marked. The government…
With World Mental Health Day taking place this week, the focus has quite rightly been on how we look after ourselves and others. As part of this, the Department for Education published its first State of the Nation report on children and young people’s wellbeing. The report highlighted that teenage girls who do six or more hours…
August saw one of the education success stories of the year. You may have read about the Michaela Free School in London and its inspirational headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh recording GCSE results any grammar school would be proud of. Michaela, which is based in the deprived area of Brent, saw more than half (54%) of its students…
From next year it will be compulsory for every Year 4 student to sit a quick five–minute times table test. It’s already been piloted in some schools and already there are critics crawling out of the woodwork. Some are bemoaning that children are being taught to the test and others have complained it’s making the…
Primary schools up and down the country would have received this year’s SATs results yesterday and spent all day digesting the figures to see where they stand. And with predictable great timing, a survey of primary school teachers was published yesterday morning just as headteachers were crunching the headline figures. Low and behold, 97% of…