http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-11228678
A “baby boom” in Southampton has led to city councillors drawing up plans to increase school places by more than 350 within two years. The authority said there has been an “unprecedented increase” in the number of children being born. The council is trying to find schools where expansion is possible, with plans for 160 extra places by September 2011 and a further 195 by 2012. A six-week consultation on the proposals start on Tuesday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11197833
Some Asian families are struggling to retain their mother tongue as their children and grandchildren attend English-speaking schools. But complementary schools that teach children the language of their forefathers could be redressing the balance. ”My mother tongue and that of my children’s is English and I’m proud to say that,” says Zee, a second-generation British Asian and a mother-of-three from Birmingham. Her children, nieces and nephews now only speak English, despite being brought up in an Asian family.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/07/health-and-safety-children-school-play
A generation of “cotton wool” children are growing up without being exposed to risky play, experts have warned, as new research finds that parents are increasingly concerned about the health and safety culture in schools. In a survey of more than 2,000 parents of primary school children commissioned by Play England and the British Toy and Hobby Association, almost three-quarters said they felt schools were too concerned with health and safety during playtime. The survey found the average child got just 37 minutes of time to play in the school day. Two-thirds of parents told researchers they felt this was not enough.
Pupils should not progress to the next school year until they acquire the knowledge they require, a senior Government adviser has claimed. Frank Field, the former Labour minister who is now the Coalition’s “poverty tsar”, said it is “simply folly” for children to continue moving through the education system if they are not learning. He pointed out that many teenagers in his deprived constituency left school this summer without a good GCSE in Maths, yet a five year-old girl had achieved a C grade in the subject. The controversial policy of American-style “grade retention”, whereby students who “flunk” exams are held back a year, could be suggested in a future report to David Cameron on improving life chances for the poorest in society.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/06/new-free-schools-next-year
Schools offering training in etiquette and fine dining in Bradford, compulsory Latin in London, and lessons for all children in a musical instrument in Bedford were approved today by the government as part of a radical experiment in English education. A new wave of free schools founded by parents, teachers or private firms will open in England next September, under plans announced by the education secretary, Michael Gove. While the number who won initial approval today was small – just 16 – Gove welcomed them and said they were all a response to local demand.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11193196
An estimated 5,000 primary school pupils will be taught in temporary classrooms in London when the term starts this week, it has been claimed. London Councils said it feared children taking classes in portable buildings would suffer academically. And hundreds of millions of pounds were needed to tackle the issue, it added. The government said had already given London’s boroughs an extra £140m to provide additional places and pledged it would not ignore the problem.
Schoolchildren learn more quickly if the brightest and most confident are prevented from putting up their hands, according to a teaching expert. Those who are less willing to answer teachers’ questions rapidly switch off when a minority dominate, according to Professor Dylan Wiliam, deputy director of the Institute of Education at London University. He is pioneering an alternative technique in which all children in a class are made to answer questions, by writing their answers on small white boards they are given. They then reveal their answers simultaneously to the teacher.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5ie1UDgZNExt-HeTa4RTte8rX07-w
Education Secretary Michael Gove has outlined what he described as “a formidable reform programme” for schooling. Mr Gove, who announced the first 16 free schools which he hopes will open in a year’s time, promised greater decision-making powers for the best performing schools and simplified Ofsted inspections. He also fleshed out his idea for a British version of the international baccalaureate which will award a school leavers’ certificate to pupils with good GCSE grades in English, maths, science, a modern or ancient language and a humanities subject. He said the GCSE qualification was still a “resilient” qualification and the scheme would take the best from both systems. Mr Gove said he was “deeply concerned” about falling numbers taking languages and wanted to make sure Britain could compete with successful Asian markets in scientific fields.
Poverty has a far greater influence on the performance of white British pupils at school than any other ethnic group, according to research published today. Figures show a 31 percentage point gap between rich and poor white British pupils obtaining five A* to C grade passes at GCSE compared with just five percentage points for Chinese pupils and seven percentage points for Bangladeshi youngsters.
Schoolchildren are to be given etiquette lessons in how watch films properly amid concerns they can no longer concentrate on movies without texting and talking throughout. Teachers are being asked to tell children to turn off their mobile phones, refrain from throwing popcorn, and not bash the backs of seats while viewing movies at the cinema. The guidance comes organisers of National Schools Film Week ahead of the 15th schools film week, a festival where 500 cinemas will put on 2,500 free screenings for more than 400,000 pupils, which begins on October 14.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1308879/No-room-school-2010-baby-boomers.html
Hundreds of children have no primary school place with term already started as the recent baby boom triggers an admissions crisis. Thousands of other children are having to be taught in makeshift classrooms because of the overspill, which has been further increased by a recession-fuelled exodus from fee-paying private schools. Councils in many parts of the country, including London and Birmingham, say applications for places are still being received. Yet even some parents who applied in good time have yet to be allocated a school for their child.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11179448
Fewer children are learning to play a musical instrument than in their parents’ generation, a survey suggests. One third of children play a musical instrument compared with two thirds of their parents at the same age, research for BBC Worldwide found. And just 44% of the 1,046 parents questioned said it was important for their child to be involved in music. The most popular instruments for children are the guitar, the keyboard and the recorder.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11175850
One in four state primary schools in England has no male teacher, statistics show. Just one in eight primary teachers (12.5%) is a man, according to data from the General Teaching Council for England. Teacher numbers have grown in recent years – but women account for most of the growth. The data also suggests more people from ethnic minorities are becoming teachers and that teachers are getting younger. In March this year, there were 25,896 men working in England’s primary schools and nearly 182,000 women. Across the profession, three in four teachers are women. Men are most likely to teach in secondary schools, where they make up 38% of the teaching staff. While the number of registered teachers in England has risen by nearly 30,000 in the past four years, the number of male teachers rose by just 2,000.
Controversial admissions lotteries established to break the middle-class stranglehold on good schools are failing, according to a study. Researchers found no evidence that the system – in which places are allocated by a random ballot – dismantled the “social segregation” between rich and poor pupils. The report said they were undermined by the fact that people living within school catchment areas still had priority in the lottery – limiting children’s chances if they lived in poor estates miles from a decent comprehensive. This suggests that school boundaries would have to be radically expanded or redrawn to give more deprived children an equal opportunity of winning a place.
Jamie Wilson is the last of a dying breed – the only young man left working in a state-run nursery school in the country. Figures published yesterday by the General Teaching Council show the 23-year-old from Liverpool is the only male under 25 in England working with under-fives as a state school nursery teacher. They also highlighted the dearth of male role models for primary school pupils of any age. A total of 28 per cent of the country’s primary schools – teaching around 950,000 pupils – now have no male teachers. Jamie, who works in a Merseyside children’s centre, believes young children benefit from being taught by male as well as female teachers. He has been working with a project based at Edge Hill University in Lancashire aimed at raising awareness of the need for more men to work in early-years and primary school teaching.
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