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The Labour Party will tackle the “national scandal” of off-rolling, an illegal practice that “lets down thousands of young people”, the shadow education secretary has said. Ahead of the party’s annual conference, Angela Rayner told Schools Week the fact that schools are “incentivised” to remove underperforming pupils before they sit their GCSEs is “a disgrace”. […]

A Panorama investigation this week accused the Bright Tribe academy trust of making repeated false claims for building and maintenance grants. Schools Week can now reveal at least two more trusts have misused the same funds, and that academies minister, Lord Agnew, responded to concerns about such misuse by admitting “there will always be bad […]

A new multi-million pound government scheme will seek to bring more “career changers” into the classroom. The Department for Education recently invited organisations to tender for two teacher recruitment and retention support services, with contracts totalling £20.5 million between them. The first contract, worth around £13.5 million, is for a company to “aid the recruitment, […]

Veteran Labour politician Frank Field and high-profile Tory donor David Ross have been granted permission to jointly open a free school with a view to taking control of some existing schools later this year. The Frank Field Education Trust is the brainchild of the MP for Birkenhead, and Ross, the millionaire founder of Carphone Warehouse, […]

The new teacher and school leadership pay rates for 2018-19 have been confirmed by the Department for Education. In July, the DfE announced pay rises of 3.5 per cent for those teachers on the unqualified and main pay scales, 2 per cent for those on the upper pay scale and 1.5 per cent for those on leadership […]

The government’s flagship opportunity areas policy was “slow getting going” because of last year’s snap election, according to an ex-civil servant who now steers the programme in one of England’s most deprived districts. Tim Coulson, a former regional schools commissioner who now chairs the partnership board for the Norwich opportunity area, told Schools Week the […]

The government has cancelled a key strand of its social mobility action plan, withdrawing £18 million of funding that would have helped secondary schools improve the performance of the brightest poor pupils. The future talent fund was unveiled by former education secretary Justine Greening last December. It was one of the most significant new proposals […]

The government has quietly scrapped a £20 million scheme to provide free transport to grammar schools. Nick Gibb, the schools minister, confirmed in a written answer to a question from the shadow education secretary Angela Rayner last week that the scheme, which could have cost up to £5,000 per pupil in taxi fares, would not […]

Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) pupils are being let down in their education because of funding cuts, the lack of an inclusive curriculum and a failure to tackle racist bullying, MPs heard today. Witnesses at a hearing of the parliamentary women and equalities committee, which is conducting an inquiry into inequalities faced by GRT communities, […]