The Independent - Schools RSS Feed

Niel McLean: Technology can bridge the gap between parents and schools

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:33:56 GMT

Parental engagement is vital to a child’s learning and known to help raise attainment. Good communication with schools enables parents to learn more about their child’s progress, lesson plans and grades whilst also helping to identify any development or performance issues early on.

Tackling the North-South divide: How a northern sport is migrating to schools in the South

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Imagine a village cricket tournament in France – or perhaps a string of ice hockey clubs in the Egyptian desert. Well, a sporting trend almost as incongruous is taking root in schools across the South-east of England, and there's striking evidence of it on the playing field of Brentwood County High School in Essex, where, for an hour after school every Wednesday, close to 100 teenagers play rugby league, a sport traditionally confined to former mining and mill towns across Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Education Quandary: My husband and I are getting divorced. Will this harm our children's education, and what can we do to prevent it?

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Cherie Blair, QC

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Cherie Blair, 55, Queen's Counsel, part-time judge and co-founder of the radical Matrix Chambers. She is the wife of Tony Blair and daughter of the actor Tony Booth. Her autobiography, Speaking For Myself, is out now in paperback. Next Thursday she will present one of the Women of the Future awards at London Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square.

Leading Article: We need a crackdown

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Ian Craig, the Schools Adjudicator, is a man on a mission. He wants to get the message out to parents that lying to secure a place for your child in a popular school is wicked. It is a form of "theft", he says, because it deprives another child of a place, and we should be saying wherever we can that this is not right.

Education Quandary: Is there really a right age for children to start school? Why do we spend so much time arguing about it?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Why has the popular head of a Catholic school in west London been suspended?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:01 GMT

Cardinal Wiseman School in Ealing, west London, is proud of its headteacher. Its website trumpets a "track record of outstanding achievement" beginning in September 1997 when "a new headteacher, Mr Patrick, arrives." The school's GCSE results in 1998 and 1999 were the best it had known. In 1999 it was named the second most improved school in London by the Times Educational Supplement and one of the country's best technology schools by the Technology Colleges Trust. The next year Ofsted called it "outstanding". And so on, pages of it, right up to another "outstanding" from Ofsted in 2008 and one from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster this year.

Dude alert: How to keep beach teens in the classroom

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

As they pour out into the sunshine at the end of a school day the bronzed sixth formers in Newquay have another thing to remember apart from their school bags – and that is their surf boards.

Education Quandary: Parents have been banned from drinking lager at the school gate. What other school gate behaviour should we clamp down on?

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Digital resources: Find out what teachers think of the latest educational products to reach the classroom

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Education Quandary: My teacher brother is switching to an easier exam board in the hope he gets better results. Why don't all students sit the same exam?

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Different class: How a new online approach aims to revolutionise language learning

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Kicking a football about and discovering the joys of augmentative suffixes might not sound like obvious bed-fellows, but making languages relevant to contemporary life is all part of the game at Bradford City Football Club. It has teamed up with a local boys' comprehensive school to improve Spanish learning among both players and pupils with the hope of challenging the linguistic insularity common to many people in the UK.

How to get past the spin at school open days

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Open days at independent schools are full of pizzazz and performance, giving students and teachers a chance to shout about what they love about their school, but it can be difficult for parents to see past the shiny surfaces and into an establishment's daily life.

Leading Article: Fee-paying victory

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The news that the Charity Commission has climbed down and given independent schools five years to put their house in order has baffled observers. Two days after Andrew Grant, chairman of Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, had railed at the Government for making it difficult for fee-paying schools to come into line with new charity law, the commission's chairman, Dame Suzi Leather, threw in the towel. Was she really persuaded that private schools couldn't cope, or had the Schools Secretary Ed Balls read her the riot act and told her to make friends with the independent sector in advance of an election? We shall never know.

Making the grade: The Kent school pupils who are leading the way for thousands of others

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Schools in Kent are failing, says the Schools Secretary Ed Balls, and he isn't going to stand for it. Twenty-two schools are still not meeting his target of having 30 per cent of their pupils getting five good GCSEs including English and maths, so he is sending in advisers to sort them out.

Education Quandary: Most computing jobs now go to foreign graduates. Why do our schools do such a bad job of encouraging pupils in this crucial area?

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Look East: Why Chinese lessons are booming

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Two East London schoolgirls are chattering animatedly about their families, but not in English, or in their home languages of Urdu or Bengali. Instead Shajedah Kayum and Johura Hasna are gassing confidently in Mandarin Chinese.

Michael Church: This plan misses so many key points about education

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

So, Ed Balls is rethinking his plans to turn 11 million Britons into paedophile suspects: not much of a surprise, given the near-universal derision that greeted it. The plan may need "adjustments", he says, which we can take as code for a total retreat: yet another crack-brained New Labour notion is about to bite the dust – and so it should. The Vetting and Barring Scheme requires everyone having regular contact with children, in any context outside a family one, to be approved by the Government after registering on a state-run database.

Class of 2009: Can St George's ever live down the murder of its headteacher?

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Central to the Government's high-profile commitment to education over the past decade has been pouring millions into shiny, new school premises. These steel and glass temples of learning – some new-build, others lavish refurbishments of existing, run-down premises – are intended as proof positive of a determination to give youngsters a better start in life.

Education Quandary: We are a musical family. Do our two children have to go to private schools to get a decent music education?

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Can crafts close the gender gap?

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Agroup of African-Caribbean boys cluster around a table scattered with hammers, bits of metal and unidentifiable tools, their green aprons squeezed over smart uniforms and Nike trainers. They're not watching a burly craftsman, but a neat, trendily suited man hammering a piece of metal in a vice.

Martin Stephen: 'It's madness for Ed Balls to say that heads are mere bureaucrats'

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

Ed Balls' panacea for failing schools and government debt is to propose new "chains of schools, run by a single overall leadership". As part of this plan, up to 3,000 senior posts, including heads and deputies, could be axed, he says. This should be knocked firmly on the head, like a road-kill animal that needs to be put out of its agony as soon as possible.

Education Quandary: Should we be worried about the large amount of time our daughter is spending on maths with the teaching assistant in her class?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The league table that has big hitters at the bottom

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

The most satisfied students in Britain are at the University of Buckingham, the liberal arts college established under the auspices of Lady Thatcher in the 1980s, according to figures compiled by the Complete University Guide (CUG) and based on the National Student Survey. This is the first time that Buckingham has appeared in the CUG. In previous years it was omitted for technical reasons.

Last resort: When schools are forced into makeshift classrooms

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:00:01 GMT

A whole class of London children began school last week in a converted church hall because of a shortage of school places in a London borough. Twenty-three four-year-olds in Camden began their journey through more than a decade of formal schooling in a temporary classroom that isn't part of a normal primary school, but situated in a two-storey brick building alongside the imposing Victorian edifice of All Hallows Anglican church in Gospel Oak. A similar number of children are due to form a second class in another room in the same building in January next year.