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 »

Ten percent of students who left UK colleges last year were unable to find work, according official figures, up from 8% the year before.

The jobless rate among 2009 graduates is the highest in seven years, says the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

And the number of students who managed to find employment within six months has dropped from 62% to 59%.

The figures also reveal how the chances of students finding work depend on their choice of college subject.

The agency’s figures are based on the experiences of 205,000 students six months after graduation.

This snapshot suggests that no medical students are out of work, but that 9% of language students are unemployed, rising to 14% of communications students, and 17% of those on computer science courses. Read the rest of this entry »