All posts filed under: Education

King’s birthday honours recognise school leaders

King’s birthday honours recognise school leaders

Published by skeptic

Headteachers, academy leaders, trustees, school support staff and charity leaders are among those recognised for their services to education in the King’s birthday honours. Sixty people who work in or with schools in England have been named on the list. Thomas Attwood, chair of trustees at the Attwood Academy Trust, has received the CBE, as has former Tory special adviser Jon Yates, now executive director of the Youth Endowment Fund. Jon Yates Yates said he was “honoured and almost lost for words to receive this award”. “Over the last two decades, I have had the immense privilege of leading and working with remarkable colleagues who are passionate about changing things for children, whether at the Youth Endowment Fund, Ofsted, the Department for Education or The Challenge Network. “These days, it is easy to be down-heartened, but – when I turn off the screen – I all too often find that I am in fact surrounded by good and dedicated people in our charities, schools, colleges, children’s services, youth services and nurseries working to improve things …

Key changes to school inspection from September 2026

Key changes to school inspection from September 2026

Published by skeptic

Ofsted inspectors will look more closely at whether pupils with “barriers to their learning or wellbeing” are achieving well in schools from September. The watchdog has also updated its guidance for inspectors to bring it in line with new requirements on allergy safety, inclusion bases and mobile phones. A new school inspection toolkit has been published today, with it set to come into force in September. Here’s what you need to know…   1. Are schools helping pupils facing ‘barriers’? A section on gathering evidence about achievement across the curriculum has been updated. From September, inspectors will check that pupils “make progress from their starting points, in that they know more, remember more and can do more; they learn what is intended, and develop broad and deep subject knowledge across the curriculum”. They will also check that pupils “produce high-quality work that reflects the breadth and depth of their learning”. Ofsted has also said that to meet the ‘expected standard’ for achievement, schools will need to show they help pupils with barriers to their learning …

£2.5m fund to study how AI tools are affecting learning

£2.5m fund to study how AI tools are affecting learning

Published by skeptic

The government’s go-to education research body has opened a £2.5 million research fund to fill an “urgent evidence gap” on how tools like ChatGPT have impacted the way pupils learn. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) said the project will aim to understand how generative AI (GenAI) influences learning processes and outcomes. The foundation is especially interested in how the technology may lead pupils to “offload” thinking tasks such as recall, planning, reasoning or drafting, onto the tools. The project will look at whether it supports deeper learning, or whether it weakens pupils’ engagement, reduces their ability to remember what they have learned, or risks making them overly reliant on AI. Another key aim is to explore how AI affects different learners, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The EEF will use the fund to commission several studies which will examine a range of educational uses of AI, such as summarising content, solving problems, essay planning and receiving feedback. It will also investigate how AI use impacts outcomes, such as knowledge acquisition, working-memory and problem-solving, as well as motivation …

Ofsted: Grammar schools are inclusive

Ofsted: Grammar schools are inclusive

Published by skeptic

Ofsted has branded every grammar school inspected so far under its new framework as inclusive, prompting a backlash from social mobility campaigners. Schools with very small numbers of pupils with SEND and with free school meals rates at a fraction of the national average are among those judged as ‘expected standard’ or even ‘strong standard’ for inclusion. Inspectors began rating schools on inclusion when the new framework launched last year.  Source link

Cleaners consider strike as Ark cancels wage agreement

Cleaners consider strike as Ark cancels wage agreement

Published by skeptic

One of England’s most influential academy trusts has stopped offering the real living wage to staff this year, blaming stretched budgets and falling rolls. Ark Schools, which runs 39 schools, made the admission as cleaners in one of its London academies vote on whether to strike over the move. The union representing the workers argued that the pay changes have forced the lowest paid “to shoulder the burden of financial pressures while others higher up the organisation remain protected”. Source link

what this means for the process of learning

what this means for the process of learning

Published by skeptic

Deep in Book VII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates describes prisoners chained inside a cave, mistaking shadows cast on a wall by firelight for reality itself. They name the shadows, debate them and develop expertise about them. The prisoners are completely, sincerely wrong, and they have no idea. The cave isn’t a place of stupidity, it’s a place of convincing, well-organised illusion. But Plato’s real interest wasn’t the cave, it was in the periagoge – a Greek word meaning the turning of the soul away from shadows and toward the light. For Plato, this was education itself: not the filling of an empty vessel with facts, but a fundamental reorientation of how a person relates to truth and how they come to know that truth. The shadows persist but today they aren’t cast by firelight, they are generated by machines. Large language models (LLMs), image making and AI-powered search produce outputs that are fluent, confident and immediate. But here’s the crucial difference from Plato’s original problem, his shadows were at least connected to something real. What …

Boys want to challenge harmful ideas about manhood – working with them, not lecturing them, is the key

Boys want to challenge harmful ideas about manhood – working with them, not lecturing them, is the key

Published by skeptic

In a recent BBC documentary, former England men’s football manager Gareth Southgate explored the challenges facing young men in Britain, including low school attainment, declining employment opportunities, low self-esteem and poor mental health. The positive masculinity Southgate promotes focuses on ambition to achieve, emotional openness, resilience and learning from setbacks, advocating for the role of positive male role models. But there is a part of boys’ lives where low expectations cause the most lasting damage and where the consequences fall hardest on girls and women as well as on boys themselves. That part is intimate relationships. Too often sex education misses the deeper opportunity to examine the messages about male-female relationships young men absorb – be tough, don’t show emotion, pursue sex as conquest. Southgate’s documentary, Gareth Southgate: Changing the Game for Young Men, didn’t cover relationships with girls or sex education explicitly. Boys told him that they feel like they’re seen as a problem. “There’s a bad stigma around young men – it’s obviously not good,” one said. And a teacher in the documentary …

More than 500k pupils in schools with EHCPs

More than 500k pupils in schools with EHCPs

Published by skeptic

The number of pupils with an education health and care plan has reached another record high, with more than 500,000 children now receiving statutory support for special educational needs in school. Annual data released by the Department for Education today shows there are 11.6 per cent more pupils with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) in schools in the 2025-26 academic year, a total of 538,547. This is up from 482,640 in 2024-25, and represents 6 per cent of the school population. It is the second time there has been a jump of 11.6 per cent – the highest since 2016 – in the past decade. The number of pupils receiving SEN support but without an EHCP has also increased by 2.8 per cent, to more than 1.3 million. In total, around 1.8 million pupils in England have SEN, up by 5.2 per cent from last year. Mainstream school increase The proportion of pupils with an EHCP in mainstream state-funded schools has increased from 56.2 per cent in 2024-25 to 57.8 per cent in …

Almost half of the disadvantage gap ‘locks in’ by age 11

Almost half of the disadvantage gap ‘locks in’ by age 11

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Almost half of the GCSE attainment gap between poorer pupils and their better-off peers is “locked in” by the end of primary school, new research has warned. By the time they reach the end of key stage 4, disadvantaged pupils are 18 months behind those from less deprived backgrounds. Research from the Education Policy Institute and Education Endowment Foundation found lower prior attainment at age 11 was the “largest contributor” to the gap, adding 6.8 months, Pupils’ lower prior attainment at age seven also contributes 1.6 months. The report said this reinforced “that early intervention has a ‘protective’ factor against gap-widening later on”. Overall, lower prior attainment in the early years and primary contributes 44 per cent of the gap seen at key stage 4. But pupils’ past performance isn’t the only factor in the gap. The report found disrupted schooling – notably pupil absence – plays a “progressively larger role as children progress from primary to secondary school”. Absence contributes around a fifth of the attainment gap at key stage 2, rising to a …

‘Early education partnerships’ to get grants of up to £50k

‘Early education partnerships’ to get grants of up to £50k

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New partnerships between primary schools and early years settings will be given grants of up to £50,000 to improve reception readiness. The Department for Education has set out how new “early education partnerships”, announced last year in the best start in life strategy, will work. Early education minister Olivia Bailey said the partnerships will create a “more coherent and connected early years landscape”. Partnerships will focus on inclusion and support for children with SEND and additional needs and from disadvantaged backgrounds. Strengthening transitions Guidance released by the Department for Education today states the primary objectives of the partnerships are to strengthen transition between early years and school and improve reception readiness. In 2023-24, around 67 per cent of children achieve were judged to have a “good” level of development across areas like language, personal development, maths and literacy. Ministers want to increase this to 75 per cent by 2028. The partnerships will build the evidence base for effective transitions, especially among vulnerable pupil groups. This will ensure more reception teaching time is spent on the …