Headlines from around the world of education and schoolswork:
- Children with SEN need ‘safe’ areas, research shows: Schools and colleges need to help students with learning difficulties feel safer between lessons, new research finds
- Children in care separated from their siblings need time together: If children in care must be parted from their siblings, they need space and time together, say campaigners.
- State schools failing to find governors: State schools are short of 40,000 governors, according to a report being published today. inner-city schools have been worst hit by the crisis, with few parents volunteering to come forward to help run them, say researchers at Bath University.
- Mary Richert: Can video games encourage reading?: Authors and publishers are using video games to hook young readers. It’s a smart move, but the proof is in the programming
- GCSEs in jamming: new rock-style lessons make music more popular: A radical new approach to teaching music that gets pupils to “jam” like rock stars has led to a sharp rise in the number of children wanting to take GCSE music. Rock-style music lessons boosted the popularity of GCSE music by 40 per cent, as well as improving pupils’ behaviour and concentration in lessons, an evaluation by academics from London University’s Institute of Education concluded.
- Most schools break policy on admissions, says inspector: Half of the schools in England are breaking new admissions rules designed to stop pupils being cheated out of places, the chief schools admissions adjudicator, Philip Hunter, has warned.
- Students get free access to a century of news footage: Academics and students will get unprecedented access to news clips of everything from the moon landing to the rise of Jade Goody, thanks to an alliance between ITN, Reuters and universities
- Apprentices are victims of the credit crunch: When Mark Rood began his apprenticeship in electrical installation at Eastleigh College a year ago, he could never have believed that, just 12 months later, he would be a victim of the credit crunch.
- Francis Gilbert: Monitoring my pupils for evidence of extremism will only stifle classroom debate: The government’s plan for teachers to monitor their pupils for signs of extremism stifles debate and encourages secrecy
- Vacuum inventor James Dyson abandons plan for engineering school: The millionaire entrepreneur pulls out of school plan after government rejects his £12.5m funding bid
- A new goal for football stars: to spread love of languages: It may be hard to imagine but the 20 or so pupils in the French lesson are bursting to ask their teacher a question. After all, languages are boring and that is why so many pupils have given them up.
- A-level exams system is ‘not fit for purpose’: A-levels “strangle scholarship” and are not “fit for purpose” in preparing students for university, according to Sir Mike Tomlinson, who led a government inquiry into exam reform.
- Dyslexic pupil wins £25,000 compensation: Council pays out after school fails to identify his condition
- When a mentor does more harm than good: A new study argues that those volunteering to help young people should always be trained and qualified. Janet Murray reports
