The number of people in the public sector’s largest pension schemes retiring on incomes of more than £100,000 has more than tripled in the past seven years, according to figures obtained by a charity promoting intergenerational fairness. Pensions schemes covering the NHS, the civil service and the teaching profession were paying six-figure incomes last year…
Tag: Teaching
The Guardian view on shrinking breaks: the right to relax | Editorial
Few adults would place shorter break times high up their list of concerns about schools. Some of them may have shone at football but many will remember hours spent pointlessly milling around the playground or, worse, smoking in the toilets? For a minority of children, now as then, breaks are dreadful. If you don’t have…
One in four teachers say pupils are being forced out to boost school rankings
One in four teachers in England say they have witnessed pupils being illegitimately removed from schools, often to artificially boost a school’s performance, according to a new survey published by Ofsted. The figures suggest the practice, known as “off-rolling” – pupils being shunted off a school’s roll in order to manipulate its exam results or…
Education secretary calls on schools to expel fewer pupils
The education secretary, Damian Hinds, has called on headteachers in England to expel fewer pupils, as an independent study revealed that almost eight out of 10 children who are permanently excluded come from vulnerable backgrounds. The long-awaited review of exclusions in England, carried out by a former minister for children and families at the Department…
Something is going very wrong for vulnerable kids – but is the school to blame? | Gaby Hinsliff
Whose fault is it that more children are being excluded from schools? Teachers, parents, politicians and seemingly everyone else with a passing interest in children’s long-term happiness have been arguing over this one for years but now a long-awaited review of exclusions from the former schools minister Edward Timpson is shedding some carefully filtered light…
Hinds to seek views on funding for children with special needs
Damian Hinds is to call for a fresh look at educational funding for children with special needs in England, as concerns grow that schools and families are struggling to receive support. The education secretary will make the announcement at a conference of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) on Friday. It comes as the…
We’ll hold badly behaved pupils back a year, say academies
An academy chain has been criticised for saying it will hold pupils back a year if they break school behaviour rules. Outwood Grange Academy Trust (Ogat), which runs 31 schools across the north of England and the East Midlands, has previously been criticised for its high exclusion rate and for putting pupils in isolation for…
‘I cook, clean and fix’: how cuts are forcing headteachers to take on extra roles
They’re angry, they’re eloquent – and they’re no longer willing to sit quietly in the classroom. Eight consecutive years of real-term funding cuts in England have placed headteachers on the frontline of the battle against austerity. Traditionally conservative and apolitical figures have become radical and outspoken campaigners who are prepared to risk repercussions in order…
Why are teachers miserable? Because they’re being held at gunpoint for meaningless data | Jeremy Hannay
Everyone seems to be dancing around the elephant in the room. Jeremy Corbyn is talking about scrapping Sats. The DfE is on the workload warpath. Ofsted is myth-busting itself out of the dark ages into the 21st century, saying it doesn’t care about marking any more. Almost a third of teachers quit in the first…
‘I am called a bad teacher and my students overturn desks and chairs’
Monday Melissa floats around the English department at 3.50pm, not wanting to go home. She lives between her alcoholic mother – who spits at and abuses her – and her nan, who also looks after her five younger siblings and never speaks to her. I give her a novelty cow pencil, which delights her, and…
Minister says spending review will ease pressure on schools
Headteachers in England have been told to endure “the darkest hour” until the Treasury’s spending plans for future school funding are revealed, by an education minister. Nick Gibb, the schools minister for England, hinted in an interview with The House magazine that school leaders should see the benefits of an end to austerity when the…
Messaging apps ‘expose teachers to aggression from parents’
The rapid spread of email and messaging apps has triggered a surge in parents sending aggressive queries to their children’s teachers and demanding immediate answers, according to a teaching union. Chris Keates, the general secretary of NASUWT, said her members had reported an increase in messages being sent via specialist school apps such as Class…
Boys will be boys? How schools can be guilty of gender bias
People tend to be surprised when they first hear what Matt Pinkett does for a living. “They assume I’m a bouncer, or perhaps a barman,” says Pinkett, 33, who shaves his head and has an East End accent. “What do they expect a head of English to look like – should I be wearing a…
If ministers really want to trust teachers it’s time to ditch the number fairies | Michael Rosen
Do you think it is now possible to produce statistics on schools that not only ignore what teachers, headteachers and parents have to say about the children, but don’t even have to be attached to real pupils? Can there be fictive figures, floating above a school like number fairies? I had this thought at a…
Female teachers need protection from sexual harassment, says union
Female teachers are not being protected against “upskirting” videos and other forms of online sexual harassment by pupils, the leader of one of the UK’s main teaching unions has said, calling for schools and governments to take the issue more seriously. Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT, said her organisation had found multiple…
Year 6 pupils spend Easter at school cramming for Sats
Children at hundreds of primary schools in England are being asked to attend Sats revision classes over the Easter holidays, a teaching union official has revealed, warning that it was part of a disturbing trend. Darren Northcott, the NASUWT national officer for education, said revision classes for primary school pupils were unheard of five years…
Teachers risk dying in classrooms if illnesses ignored, union told
Teachers in the UK run the risk of “dying in their classrooms” if they are forced to work through serious illnesses, a teaching union conference has been told after a member revealed dramatic evidence. Neil Jeffrey, a secondary school teacher, opened his shirt to show the scars left by a triple heart bypass operation he…
One in five teachers using own money for school supplies – report
One in five teachers are spending their own money on classroom supplies, while nearly half say they buy food, clothes and even soap for poor pupils, according to a report charting the effects of austerity on schools. Among the more than 4,300 teachers who responded to the NASUWT education union, 20% said they paid for…
Teaching union warns of ‘super-sized’ classes in English schools
Class sizes in secondary schools in England will hit a 40-year high owing to a sharp increase in pupil numbers being compounded by the growing funding crisis, teachers’ leaders havesaid. Kevin Courtney, the joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), predicted that significantly more secondary school pupils would find themselves being taught in…
Teaching union calls zero-tolerance school policies ‘inhumane’
A teaching union has described increasingly draconian behaviour policies in schools in England as “inhumane” and “damaging to pupil mental health”. The National Education Union (NEU), which is holding its annual conference in Liverpool this week, said zero-tolerance approaches to discipline were resulting in schoolchildren spending inappropriate and harmful amounts of time in isolation. Anna…