Schools face ban on sex bias in careers advice
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Schools will be ordered to offer impartial careers guidance to pupils amid concerns that teachers’ “sexist” attitudes are promoting hairdressing courses to girls and construction apprenticeships to boys.The education bill due to be debated in parliament today will also force schools to promote all qualifications to pupils equally - including the new diplomas which ministers [...]
Heads face tougher rules on exclusion
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Headteachers will find it much more difficult to exclude children they suspect of serious offences such as drug dealing, carrying a knife or violent bullying if a major legal challenge is successful in the High Court.Lawyers say that children accused of the most serious wrongdoing are not being given a ‘fair trial’ and that government [...]
Faiths come together in school experiment
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It will be a faith-based school like no other; one that unites rather than segregates. Tomorrow night a group of Irish parents, religious leaders and academics will start enrolment to a unique educational experiment teaching Christians, Jews and Muslims together.They claim their school will be the first of its kind in Europe: one based on [...]
Wouldbe students checked on Facebook
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A Cambridge University admissions tutor has admitted he checks up on students applying to his college by browsing their Facebook profiles. Dr Richard Barnes, senior tutor at Emmanuel College, confessed in the college magazine.”This has been the year in which I joined Facebook,” he wrote. “I have to confess that I actually joined to see [...]
State teachers views of Oxbridge stop pupils from applying
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Teachers at state-run secondary schools are out of touch about the number of pupils from their sector who apply successfully to Oxford and Cambridge Universities, according to a survey today.More than a third think that fewer than 20% of Oxbridge students come from state schools, even though the latest figures show that the figure is [...]
School lessons may start later for children born in summer
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Children who are born in the summer could be allowed to start school a year later in an attempt to end their relative underachievement in exams, under plans being considered by the government.Ed Balls, the children’s secretary, yesterday asked Sir Jim Rose, who is conducting a review of the primary curriculum in England, to consider [...]
Why pick a fight with Open University
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Tony Blair was famous for wanting to pick fights within the Labour family in order to define himself favourably with middle Britain’s voters. The Brown government is in danger of stumbling into scraps by accident.This week, MPs debated John Denham’s plans to shift %26pound;100m from the %26pound;7.5bn higher education budget - in England only - [...]
GCSE success masks fall in pupils picking harder subjects
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Headteachers yesterday blamed school league tables for a dramatic decline in the number of children taking languages.As the government published the latest tables for GCSE and A-levels in England, John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said they created perverse incentives for schools to skew the curriculum for 14- and [...]
Best in the business
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When new teacher Amy Popple discovered her first school placement was to be in Staines, off London’s M25, gloom set in. This was the home of Ali G, TV comedy’s “rude boy”.”I thought I’d find rough white kids trying to act very ‘hip hop’, wearing hoodies, dropping a shoulder, walking with a limp and throwing [...]
The footballer
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I started playing football when I was seven. When I was 10, a scout for Queens Park Rangers saw me play at a football tournament. He approached my dad and offered me a six-week trial for their schoolboys’ team.I played for them until I was 16. It was a big commitment - training twice a [...]
