Some headlines from the last week:
- More parents jailed as truancy rates soar: A parent is jailed every other week during term time for failing to prevent their child’s truancy, and there has been a substantial rise in the number made to sign parenting contracts promising to make their child go to school, official figures show.
- Teachers ‘need lessons in breaking up fights’: Teachers are demanding lessons in restraint techniques to help them stop fights between pupils.
- Primary teacher facing jail over sex text to boy, 14: A primary school teacher was facing jail after she admitted sending sexually explicit text messages to a 14-year-old schoolboy.
- Don’t send children to school at four, warn experts: Plans to lower the mandatory school starting age to four could trigger a wave of stress and anxiety among children according to new research which suggests starting formal lessons so early can damage some youngsters’ education for life.
- Students need to know Bible’s ‘great stories’, poet laureate says: Children should be taught the Bible throughout their education because it is an “essential piece of cultural luggage” without which they will struggle to fully understand literature, according to the poet laureate, Andrew Motion.
