Public Education

There has been a rise in the number of children eating school lunches in England, data suggests.

But this still leaves less than half of primary pupils and just over a third of secondary pupils eating school lunches, the School Food Trust says.

Take-up in primaries was 41.4%, up 2.1 percentage points on 2008-9, and 35.8% in secondaries, up 0.8 percentage points, it adds.

The government is reviewing school food policy.

The figures come a week after Health Secretary Andrew Lansley criticised TV chef Jamie Oliver’s campaign to improve the quality of school meals.

He said “constantly lecturing people” was “counterproductive”, saying the number of children eating school meals had gone down in the wake of the campaign.
Healthy message

The School Food Trust said the latest rise was the biggest since the school meals revolution and that the message about healthy school meals was finally getting through. Read the rest of this entry »

The government has announced a review of guidance for nurseries and childcarers, which includes controversial “toddler targets”.

Ministers have ordered a review of the Early Years Foundation Stage framework, which sets learning and welfare standards for under-fives.

They are concerned it is too rigid and leads to a “tick-box” approach.

The framework was part of a Labour drive to improve nursery education and other early years provision.

Former children’s minister Margaret Hodge said the framework was about ensuring children got the best start in life, no matter what childcare setting they were in.

But many childcare professionals complain the EYFS framework leads to their spending less time with children and more time on paperwork.

Others argue that with its challenging early learning goals, to be achieved by age five, it sets many children up to fail. Read the rest of this entry »

Many parents see schools as “bossy” or “interfering” when they tell them what they can and cannot put in their children’s lunch box, Ofsted warns.

Instead parents wanted more advice on how to prepare healthier packed lunches, inspectors said.

They also said heads often felt uneasy about issuing edicts on lunch boxes.

The report also found some secondary schools in England still used systems which made pupils receiving free school meals readily available.

Inspectors visited 39 primary, secondary and special schools in England between September 2009 and January 2010 to see how they were getting the healthy eating message across.

They found more primary than secondary schools complied with the standards set out for school lunches.

In primaries, the guideline most often not met was the requirement to provide a piece of fruit for every pupil eating a school lunch.

In secondaries, the standard most often not met were those restricting meat products, deep-fried foods and starchy foods cooked in oil. Read the rest of this entry »

The city school board on Monday is expected to approve a $1.95 million contract for online tutorials for students struggling in math and writing.

With only one year of test scores for backup, the vote will be based on scant evidence that Stanford EPGY (Education Program for Gifted Youth) works, particularly in a district hard-pressed to have three working computers per classroom.

Memphis is the only large U.S. school district using the program, based on research done by Stanford University professor Patrick Suppes in the 1960s using computerized modules to help gifted learners.

As Stanford worked to broaden the model, it offered free access to tens of thousands of Memphis City Schools students while it monitored results and tweaked the program.

Last year, for instance, the district paid only $900,000 for access for 30,000 math students; Stanford subsidized 30,000 to 40,000 additional students, said Deputy Supt. Irving Hamer. Read the rest of this entry »

With effective teaching a top policy priority, certain school districts, the federal government, and nonprofit groups are renewing efforts to pilot and study strategies for pairing effective teachers with students in low-performing, high-poverty schools.

The results could offer clues about how to rectify an imbalance in the distribution of the best teachers within districts—a requirement of both the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the 2009 economic-stimulus law, and one of K-12 education’s most intractable problems.

The initiatives differ from earlier attempts to equalize teacher talent by using more sophisticated techniques to identify and target top teachers, including the use of value-added data.

They also go beyond narrow transfer incentives to include targeted retention strategies, improved professional development, and a focus on the caliber of the school leaders and peers that teachers new to such schools will be working with every day.

Some of the districts are even working to place whole teams of educators—rather than just individuals—in challenging schools, a promising approach, some scholars say, at a time when individual teacher performance has galvanized much policy attention.

“All this focus on individuals, on getting the best and brightest and placing them into schools, is a limited strategy,” said Susan Moore Johnson, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “It is driving so much of what’s going on right now, that we risk neglecting the context of these people’s work.” Read the rest of this entry »

The threat of cuts still hangs over the programme to build new schools in England, with ministers refusing to confirm spending plans.

Education Secretary Michael Gove was pressed repeatedly in the House of Commons to end the doubt over school rebuilding projects.

Mr Gove told MPs that building plans remained under review.

The construction industry has warned that firms will be shut down if school building projects are axed.

Recession

The £55bn Building Schools for the Future programme has been renovating and rebuilding schools across England.

Last autumn saw the biggest opening of new schools since the Victorian era.

But there have been unresolved questions about whether the building programme is going to be stopped by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.

Construction industry organisation, the Construction Products Association (CPA), says the school building programme is worth £10bn a year - and has helped to protect recession-hit businesses. - reports BBC. Read the rest of this entry »

Religious education is “inadequate” in one in five secondary schools in England, according to watchdog Ofsted.

Its study suggested many teachers were unsure of what they were trying to achieve in the subject.

Inspectors, who visited 183 primary and secondary schools in 70 areas, also criticised schools for not providing enough training in religious education.

The Church of England said the report was concerning but the National Secular Society said RE should become optional.

Quality decline

Ofsted chief inspector Christine Gilbert said: “This report highlights two things - first the need for better support and training for teachers and, secondly, the need for a reconsideration of the local arrangements for the oversight of RE, so schools can have a clear framework to use which helps them secure better student achievement in the subject.”

The report, Transforming Religious Education, found the quality of religious education had declined since 2007.

RE is not part of the National Curriculum and the content of lessons is determined at a local authority level.

Ofsted found that there was a wide variety in the amount of support and training provided to schools by local authorities.

However the study praised both primary and secondary schools for supporting the appreciation and understanding of pupils from different faiths. Read the rest of this entry »

Some schools in England can expect to have their budgets frozen under new government proposals to reform the funding system.

Four options have been published for consultation, suggesting different ways of calculating extra funding on top of a basic entitlement.

Different areas would benefit or lose out - depending on the option - in a range from +5.3% to -3.2% of current funding, on average.

The effect will depend on how much the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, gives to education - ministers are promising only that no school will actually be worse off in real terms.

Click here to see the possible effects

Phasing

The proposals are the result of lengthy discussions by a working group made up of local and central government representatives, set up following the government’s green paper on modernising local government finance, which came out in September 2000.

The consultation on the latest education options ends on 30 September this year.

The Department for Education said the new formula that was finally chosen would be phased in.

All local authority areas would be guaranteed “year-on-year increases that will ensure they can at least maintain schools funding in real terms.”

The length of the phasing-in period will depend on how much education gets from the chancellor in the spending review, which is expected to be announced in the next week. Read the rest of this entry »

The coalition government has pledged to create more university places in England but stopped short of saying whether tuition fees will rise.

It would instead await the findings of Lord Browne’s independent review of student funding.

These would be judged against the impact of student debt and the need to widen university access.

The Liberal Democrats, who wanted to scrap fees, would be allowed to abstain in a vote on the issue.

The government has not yet said how many extra places would be funded.

The coalition’s Programme for Government says it will review Lord Browne’ s review of higher education before making a decision on the future of university funding.

Abstentions

But it pledges to “judge its proposals against the need to - increase social mobility; - take into account the impact on student debt; - ensure a properly funded university sector; - improve the quality of teaching; - advance scholarship; and - attract a higher proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

It adds: “If the response of the government to Lord Browne’s review is one that the Liberal Democrats cannot accept; then arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain in any vote”.

The issue is a policy difference between the two parties in government.

The Lib Dems campaigned on a ticket of phasing out tuition fees over six years, while the Tories said they would await the official review of fees. Read the rest of this entry »

Students should pay higher fees to go to university in England, says the Russell Group of leading universities.

The group’s submission to Lord Browne’s funding review sets out how the £3,225-a-year fee could rise to £9,000 without extra costs in taxpayers’ subsidies.

“An increase in graduate contributions is the fairest and only viable option for addressing the funding shortfall,” says the Russell Group statement.

Students described the proposals as a “nightmare scenario”. - reports BBC News.

The National Union of Students said this lifting of the cap on fees would mean “mortgage-style debts” of more than £40,000.
Higher repayments

The UCU lecturers’ union said that such an increase in tuition fees would be “the most regressive piece of education policy since the war” which would “price a generation out of higher education”.

The Russell Group wants the level of tuition fees to be high enough to create a range of different charges for different courses - and for students to re-pay loans at a higher interest rate.

This combination of higher fees and reduced subsidies would mean that fees could be raised to £9,000 per year, without extra cost to the Treasury, says the report.

Lord Browne’s cross-party review, set to report later this year, is considering how universities in England should be funded.

This includes asking whether there should be any limit on fees - and whether the current maximum of £3,225 per year should be lifted.

The influential Russell Group, representing 20 prestigious universities, has now told the review that the only practical way of funding higher education is to have higher charges for students.

There would also be a reduction in the subsidy on student loans, with repayments at more of a commercial rate. Read the rest of this entry »