Education

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The Department of Education has blamed a “rogue marker” for the online leak of a grammar, punctuation and spelling test. The test is being taken by 600,000 ten and eleven-year-olds. The BBC said a DfE source blamed an "active campaign by those people opposed to our reforms to undermine these tests". The answers to the test appeared Monday night for four hours on a password-protected website. Only three weeks ago a primary school exam was...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The government’s plans to force all of England’s schools to change into academies has been dropped, signaling a huge policy u-turn. George Osborne announced the initiative during his budget speech, but it was met with fierce resistance from teachers, parents and within his own party. The Chancellor described the move to academies as freeing schools from the "shackles of local bureaucracy". Nicky Morgan, Education Secretary, still wants all schools to eventually move towards academy status,...

When even school children are going on strike, it’s a pretty shocking state of affairs. If you’re undecided, unsure of the importance of voting in local elections, please read this and figure out where your local council is likely to stand on this issue worth billions of pounds of our local assets and the education of not just this generation of school children, but future ones too. This week, my nine-year-old joined thousands of other children in #LetKidsBeKids strikes around the country, protesting the...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Nick Gibb, Minister of State at the Department for Education, failed a SATs grammar question for 11-year-olds on radio today. He had spent the day defending the primary school exams system, which many parents think puts too much pressure on their offspring. However, he manage to get a question wrong, which features on the very tests he thinks eleven-year-olds should ace. Martha Kearney: Let me give you this sentence, “I went to the cinema after...

As someone in charge of education, surely some things may be a hint you may not be presiding over the most glorious era of our schools’ history. Firstly, the fact teachers are leaving the profession not in a trickle, but in a flood. People who have done a fine job for years are now obliged to give up the job they once loved and lived for. Secondly, parents are now in open revolt over the latest ludicrous round of SATs...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor A dedicated headteacher has quit in protest at Tory plans to force schools to become academies. Pupils and parents at the County Durham School are reportedly “heartbroken” that Jeremy Gargan has left his role. He wrote a scathing letter about the Conservative Government’s plans to change all schools into academies. Gargan wrote that he can’t work in “an education system that I do not believe in.” Until the letter was written he ran Aycliffe Village...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor A shocking number of children in England began school underweight in the previous year according to figures reported MPs. The All Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger said the increasing numbers of children do not get the right amount to eat. The group said: "For a minority of children, the school lunchtime represents the only chance each day to eat something substantial." To deal with this worry rise, the group asked that income from the new...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor By 2020 schools could be looking at a £7.5billion budget shortfall by 2020, the Labour party has announced. The black hole in education finances could lead to large scale redundancies and could mean class sizes could increase. The news has come as analysts have said that schools ware facing their first real term cuts since the 90s. Lucy Powell, Shadow Education Secretary, said: “Whilst the Tories try to pretend that they are protecting school budgets,...

Up and down the nation, parents of children aged around 7 and 11 will be doing battle with the horror that is SPaG tests – or, to the uninitiated, Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar. Large numbers of children are arriving in school so much further back in their development than they were 20 years ago – many have speech problems, many aren’t toilet-trained, many have never held a pencil or pen or been read a story before they arrive in school....