Due to the recent successful yet work heavy French exchange I am behind on my TES reading!
Summaries from the 17 June edition below:
Academies
Gove to force the 700 worst performing primary schools to switch to academy status using existing outstanding Secondary Academies as sponsors. However, NAHT is wary of using academies as an over arching solution to improving performance and believes schools that have the opportunity to pair up with other schools on their own terms have more chance of succeeding.
Major unions warning against schools switching to academies as they loose the "safety net" of local authority support.
Gove announced recently that he is raising the floor standard for secondaries so all schools must see 50% of their pupils achieve five good GCSE's, including English and maths by 2015.
BSF (Building Schools for the Future) / PFI (Private Finance Initative):
Despite tighter capital allowances Gove has pledged to rebuild or refurbish around 700 schools since scrapping the £55 billion BSF programme, using PFI. A capital investment programme be set out for 2012-13 onwards.
Search Powers :
Ministers must water down plans to dramatically extend teachers' search powers because they infringe pupil's human rights, a panel of MPs and Lords has warned.
Curriulum Review:
High-performing countries achieve better secondary results by ensuring that primary pupils are not allowed to progress at different rates, according to the Government adviser heading the national curriculum review. They do fewer things at greater depth and don't move on until everyone has "got" it. Their emphasis on thorough understanding challenges the trend here towards accelerating pupils with early exam entries.
The national curriculum review may replace key stages with a year by year structure.
EBac
The EBac debate continues with continuous backlash against the absence of Arts subjects. Also fears of social divides where schools may focus on particular pupils to improve their scores.
