General
Thursday
General election: what are the 3 main parties’ education policies?
With polling stations open today, we look at the main political parties’ plans for schools if they win power
All schools ‘should be ordered to offer ITT places’
Teacher training should be free to all – but those who leave the state sector for private schools or to teach abroad should repay fees, says NASBTT
Maths teachers lack subject-specific training, EEF finds
An Education Endowment Foundation review also highlights ‘plateauing’ in attainment after secondary transition
Wednesday
Sir Kevan Collins ‘agnostic’ about school structures
Former catch-up adviser and EEF chief also says variation between schools needs to be ‘faced down’
New call for complete ban of mobile phones in Scottish schools
Smartphones in classrooms cause ‘severe loss in focus’ among pupils and fuel ‘hostility’ towards teachers, suggests petition to Scottish Parliament
Teachers get ‘minimal’ training in helping pupils to write
A quarter of secondary teachers surveyed by the EEF report having no training on writing in the past two years
Tuesday
7 demands from North East leaders ahead of the election
School leaders’ network Schools North East’s manifesto calls on the next government to recognise the impact of long-term poverty on schools
Teaching assistant cuts expected in half of deprived schools
Proportion of senior leaders predicting cuts to TA spending has risen sharply since last year amid budget struggles, survey finds
DfE property firm helps sell 1 surplus school site in 5 years
LocatED director previously claimed that schools were sitting on surplus land ‘the size of central London’
Friday
Scottish councils reject requirement to maintain teacher numbers
Local authorities say they ‘recognise the vital role of teachers’ but that ‘progress cannot be made by focusing on teachers alone’
Ofsted report card model should have ‘slim’ set of standards
The Association of School and College Leaders has called for the creation of a new statutory set of standards to underpin school accountability reforms proposed by Labour
Weekly round-up: ITT recruitment trouble and staff leaving
This week’s essential education news includes high rejection rates for ITT applications for subjects with staff shortages, and the scale of the teacher retention crisis
