Barclays puts up £1.25m for parents starting free schools

Bank backs coalition education policy with funds, advice and work experience for free schools and their pupils Barclays bank has thrown its weight behind one of the coalition’s most controversial education reforms by offering £1.25m to parents hoping to set up free schools. Since the coalition came to power, parents, charities and businesses have been [...]

Stephen Twigg admits he would cut £2bn from Labour schools plan

Shadow education secretary admits last administration failed to get value for money from its school building programme Stephen Twigg, the shadow education secretary, has admitted that Labour did not always get “value for money” in education and that he agrees with more than half of the government’s cuts to school building programmes. Twigg, who was [...]

Independent schools deserve their charity status | Matthew Burgess

Don’t knock private schools – they have a powerful positive impact on local communities Fiona Millar likens the debate over the charitable status of independent schools to “a saga that has had as many twists, turns and false dawns as Downton Abbey”. But I believe it is her views, on the place of the independent [...]

Grammar schools worked. Now we must reinvent them | Roy Greenslade

While selection at 11 is wrong, grammar schools provided a step on the ladder to a better life. Their value should not be dismissed Melissa Benn is concerned about the creeping return of the grammar school. Thirty years ago I would have been nodding vigorously in agreement. For a considerable time now, however, I have [...]

The US schools with their own police

More and more US schools have police patrolling the corridors. Pupils are being arrested for throwing paper planes and failing to pick up crumbs from the canteen floor. Why is the state criminalising normal childhood behaviour? The charge on the police docket was “disrupting class”. But that’s not how 12-year-old Sarah Bustamantes saw her arrest [...]

Single-sex schools are more likely to produce high-flying career girls

A study claims pupils educated within an all-female environment are much more likely to take chances than their coed peers If you want your daughter to be a high-flying businesswoman or banker, send her to a single-sex school. This is the startling conclusion drawn from new research charting the complex relationship between gender and risk-taking. [...]

Schools’ careers crisis

Michael Gove’s actions regarding the careers service (Careers service and literacy hit by schools cuts, 27 December 2011) threatens the continued existence of the careers guidance profession itself, as few careers guidance practitioners will be able to survive on temporary, seasonal and part-time arrangements resulting from the squeeze on schools’ budgets. The government’s so-called commitment [...]

Letters: Guarding the guardians of academy schools

The new head of Ofsted, Michael Wilshaw (Report, 28 December), wants to appoint local commissioners of schools to spot failing academies and believes “these people would be non-political … they would not be like LEAs responsible to a council, they would be people who would report directly to the secretary of state”. So people whose [...]

Careers service and literacy hit by schools funding cuts

Research challenges Michael Gove’s claim that savings will help the government in ‘protecting the frontline’ Pupils are being denied careers advice at a time of record youth unemployment, schools are scrapping projects to help the neediest children catch up on their reading, and teachers of music, art and sport are losing their jobs, a Guardian [...]

How spending cuts are hitting schools – despite coalition vow to protect them

David Cameron pledged to shelter education from the worst of the cuts, yet some heads are struggling to fund basic resources At Richard Lee primary school, the building is in such dire condition that when teachers put up children’s work they find the next day it has been ruined by sodden classroom walls. The school [...]

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