Tag: Department for Education

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 30 November 2010.

The Schools Minister writes in response to Chris Keates’ comments published in the Yorkshire Post on 25 November 2010 regarding academies and free schools.

Dedicated people working to build great school

What a shame that the hostility Chris Keates obviously feels towards academies and free schools (Yorkshire Post, 25 November 2010) blinds her to the facts.

The truth is that academies, introduced by the last government, have raised educational standards: GCSE results have improved twice as fast in academies as the national average and in some academies much faster than that.

International evidence shows that free schools also raise standards in schools. So in Bradford, the passion and determination of inspirational teachers to make a real difference with new free schools should be celebrated, not attacked.

Contrary to what Ms Keates says, free schools will not be established without rigorous checks and independent schools that become free schools will have to stop charging fees.

The schools white paper sets out our plans to raise standards and start to close the gap between rich and poor. It’s shocking that the latest figures show that only 40 of the 80,000 children in England eligible for free school meals secured places at Oxford or Cambridge.

It is the children from the poorest backgrounds who have been let down the most so, yes, we want to move fast.

Fortunately, passionate teachers, parents and charities are working flat out to create more great schools and give pupils more choice. It is they, not Ms Keates, who are leading the way.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 23 November 2010.

The 2010 Ofsted annual report published today shows that while generally across the schools sector the number of inspections this year resulting in an inadequate rating has doubled, academies have bucked the trend using their freedoms to raise standards across the board with more than ever being rated as outstanding.

Commenting on the report, Education Secretary Michael Gove, said:

This report shows us the real picture of our schools revealed by the new, more rigorous inspection regime. A worrying 576 schools, up from 360 last year, are either in special measures or have been given a notice to improve, with the number rated as inadequate in the last year twice as high as the year before. Even taking into account the new inspection system, this is simply unacceptable. No parent wants to send their child to a failing school and they shouldn’t have to.

There are also concerns in safeguarding, children’s homes and fostering. Whilst the vast majority of professionals in this area do an incredible job in very difficult circumstances delivering high-quality care, there are some areas that can be improved. The Munro review will look at child protection to help professionals get the support they need so that they are able to spend more time with children and families and less time on paperwork.

The report shows that solid leadership, high-quality teaching, freedoms over the curriculum and strong governance all add up to high standards and rapid improvements. Academy schools which have these freedoms have bucked the national trend and have seen an increase in the numbers getting the top Ofsted rating despite the new tougher inspections. That’s why our White Paper this week will outline further plans to make these freedoms a reality in as many schools as possible.

There has been a marked improvement in children’s services inspected and the best foster homes, children’s centres and social workers are turning around the life chances of some of society’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable people. There is a lot we can learn from and I’m determined that we will free up both the education and the children’s sectors so that professionals can learn from the best, adapting delivery to their local needs rather than having to follow a set system dictated from Whitehall.

Key points on academies in the report include:

• Academies are bucking the trend with 26 per cent being rated outstanding compared to 13 per cent of secondary schools nationally.
• The percentage of academies judged outstanding has increased since last year and the percentage judged inadequate has decreased despite the more demanding inspection framework. This is the opposite trend when compared with all schools.
• Academies are continuing to achieve big year-on-year above-national-average increases in their GCSEs, including English and mathematics results, which highlights the excellent progress they are making.

Commenting on the quality of teaching, Michael Gove said:

The biggest factor in raising standards in schools is the quality of its teachers. The best education systems in the world consistently draw their teachers from the top tier of graduates by academic ability and select them carefully to ensure they are taking only those people who combine the right personal and intellectual qualities.

There is consensus amongst the highest performing countries that the most important thing we can do for teachers is train them well and then throughout their professional career. Too much teacher training involves either teachers being told how to comply with government criteria, or what John Bangs called quite rightly ‘death by PowerPoint’.

Teachers need to learn from other teachers. I have been impressed by arguments that the way to ensure we have good continual professional development is by getting teachers to observe superb practitioners of the craft and to learn from them. Today’s Ofsted report is a ringing endorsement of this, highlighting how schools with outstanding teaching frequently have senior school staff monitoring lessons which allows others to learn from the best teachers. That’s why our White Paper tomorrow will outline plans to give schools more flexibility to do this by removing restrictions on the time heads and other senior staff are allowed to monitor lessons.

But this has to start right from the outset with initial teacher training, and the Ofsted report is also clear that teachers need more practical classroom training to back up their theoretical training. Our White Paper will also outline plans to ensure trainee teachers spend more time in hands-on learning in the classroom.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 22 November 2010.

All children will be given a phonics-based progress check in year 1 so teachers can identify those not at the expected level in reading and in need of extra support, Education Secretary Michael Gove announced today.

Mr Gove said too many primary school children were failing to reach the expected standard and that the short, light-touch test would be designed to assess how well year 1 pupils could read simple, decodable words. He added that the screening check would be based on systematic synthetic phonics as it was internationally proven to drive up basic reading skills from a young age.

Mr Gove said it would be administered by pupils’ teachers and would be designed to

• confirm whether individual pupils had grasped the basics of phonic decoding by the end of year 1
• identify those pupils who needed extra help, so the school can provide support.

Today the government is launching a public consultation to ask teachers, parents, professionals and the public to submit views on how the check might work. It will be piloted in summer 2011 and will take place nationally from summer 2012. To help schools select an effective synthetic phonics programme, the government has published the core criteria that define the key features of such programmes.

Michael Gove said:

A solid foundation in reading is crucial to a child’s success as they progress through primary school, into secondary school and then in later life.

But, in spite of the hard work of teachers and pupils, too many children are currently not reaching the expected reading levels at age 7 and age 11.

We are determined to raise literacy standards in our schools, especially of those not achieving the expected level – a light-touch phonics-based check will provide reassurance that children in year 1 have learned this important skill, will enable us to pinpoint those who are struggling at an early age and will give them the help they need before it is too late.

It will be impossible to drill for and will be a true gauge of a child’s reading skills.

Parents want to know how their children are reading and this will tell them.

On phonics, Schools Minister Nick Gibb, speaking on a visit to Elmhurst Primary School in Newham, London, said:

There is more to reading than phonics – but there is also a weight of evidence that systematic synthetic phonics, taught in the first years of a child’s education, gives children key building blocks they need to understand words, underpins children’s attainment of a good standard of reading and can inspire a lifetime love of reading.

The government is determined to raise the standard of reading in the first years of primary school so that children can master the basic decoding skills of reading early and then spend the rest of primary school reading to learn.

The fact is that alternative methods have left too many young people with poor literacy levels, especially among children of more disadvantaged families, and we are determined that every child can read to their full potential.

Provisional figures released earlier this year showed that in 2010:

• 15% of 7-year-olds failed to reach the expected level (level 2) in reading at key stage 1
• 19% of 11-year-olds did not achieve the expected level (level 4) in reading at key stage 2.

England has also slipped down the international table for reading in primary schools. The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) of 10-year-olds saw England fall from third out of 35 countries in 2001 to 15th out of 40 countries in 2006.

Shahed Ahmed, the Headteacher of Elmhurst Primary – one of the schools where the check will be pre-trialled, said:

At Elmhurst Primary School we firmly believe that the best way to teach how to read in the early stages is through a rigorous, systematic, engaging phonics approach. I believe that all schools would benefit from taking this approach. It’s important that schools know for young children how good their phonics knowledge is.

An end-of-year-1 phonics check would encourage all schools to teach early reading properly through phonics, and they would then know then the strengths and weaknesses of their pupils.

Ruth Miskin, a leading authority on teaching children to read, said:

Despite numerous well-meaning initiatives over recent years, we still have 20% of children who are unable to access a secondary school curriculum. However, there are many determined heads who ensure that every child learns to read by 6- or 7-years-old. There is no reason why this success cannot be replicated across the whole country.

This reading check will help all headteachers focus their efforts upon the children who are most likely to slip through the net. If we catch these children early, they will have an equal opportunity to make the most of their education and lives.

Ofsted will inspect the teaching of reading and phonics in schools and the impact on pupils’ results, and on 14 November 2010 it published a report showing best practice in the teaching of phonics. The information provided from this test will allow Ofsted and schools to have a better conversation about each school’s teaching of phonics.

The government has also revised the core criteria that define the key features of an effective systematic synthetic phonics programme, to help schools in selecting a suitable programme. Publishers of products have been invited to submit new self-assessment forms for their products, assessing them against the new criteria.

Jan Tyson, headteacher at Turnfurlong Infants School in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, said:

Systematic synthetic phonics is key to teaching children reading and writing. It provides them with strategies to decode words, which is especially important because English is such a difficult language to learn with the many different ways to make the same sounds from different letters or combinations of letters.

How phonics works

Phonics focuses on sounds rather than, for example, having children try to recognise whole words.

In analytic phonics, words are broken down into their beginning and end parts, such as ‘str-‘ and ‘eet’, with an emphasis on ‘seeing’ the words and analogy with other words.

In synthetic phonics, children start by sequencing the individual sounds in words – for example, ‘s-t-r-ee-t’, with an emphasis on blending them together.

Once they have learned all these, they progress to reading books.

The ‘synthetic’ part comes from the word ‘synthesise’, meaning to assemble or blend together.

Children who learn using synthetic phonics are able to have a go at new words working from sound alone, whereas those using analytic phonics are more dependent on having prior knowledge of families of words.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 18 November 2010.

Responding to reports that 80 per cent of local authorities cannot guarantee they will fund their children’s centres at the same level in the next financial year as in the current year, Children’s Minister Sarah Teather said:

We have ensured there is enough money in the system to maintain the network of Sure Start services. We have secured funding for free childcare for three- and four-year-olds as well as the most disadvantaged two-year-olds. As councils make their spending decisions in the coming months, I hope they recognise the priority the Government has placed on early education.

We know high-quality Early Years support can have a lasting impact on children’s lives, so we will expect local authorities to channel resources at those who will benefit most from the excellent support children’s centres can offer.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 2 September 2022.

Funding will increase access to English and maths schemes in schools, and the Education Endowment Foundation is backed to continue to improve attainment.

Education trials and interventions to improve attainment will be carried out across schools, colleges and early years settings, backed by a new multi-million government grant.

The Department for Education is to continue funding the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) with a new grant of £137 million, cementing the independent charity’s role as a central part of the education landscape for at least the next decade.

The EEF will continue to support the Government’s teacher training reforms, whilst expanding activity in the early years. This will include working as the evidence partner for the Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs, which are due to launch in November 2022, to share effective evidence-based practices with local settings to help boost young children’s development.

The Government is also announcing a further £66 million for the next phase of the Accelerator Fund to increase access to high-quality literacy and numeracy programmes in schools over the next three academic years. This forms part of the Government’s commitment to ensuring that any child who falls behind in maths or English will get the support they need to get back on track.

As part of this, the EEF will be given up to £41.5 million to continue to increase its evidence around effective programmes, scale-up existing programmes, and support schools with implementation. Up to £21 million of the funding will also support Maths and English Hubs to roll out high quality programmes to schools.

Schools Minister, Will Quince, said:

The re-endowment of the EEF, in addition to funding to continue the Accelerator Fund, will provide the evidence base that allows schools and teachers to give children the best start to their education.

This work, in addition to our ambitious education recovery plan, will help to improve the attainment of millions of pupils and level up opportunities across the country.

Over the past decade, the EEF has carried out over 200 evaluations to understand which interventions and approaches are most effective in closing the attainment gap, engaging 23,000 nurseries, schools, and colleges in trials and reaching over 1.8 million children, including 500,000 pupils eligible for free school meals.

Today’s funding for the Accelerator Fund also follows a successful first year of the initiative, in which the EEF supported 20 programmes across more than 1,500 settings, including those in regions that experienced significant learning loss during the pandemic. Some of these programmes included ‘Reciprocal Reading’, an intensive 12-16 small-group programme to improve reading comprehension and ’1stClass@Number’, which supported 6–7-year-olds with low attainment in maths to improve their skills.

English Hubs and Maths Hubs programmes also helped to deliver programmes to over 5,000 schools, giving them access to phonics and numeracy programmes. These programmes have experienced strong demand and will continue to be rolled out to additional schools as part of ongoing funding announced today. Schools can contact their local hub for more information.

Areas with high proportions of children from disadvantaged backgrounds will continue to be prioritised for the schemes to help level up attainment.

Sir Peter Lampl, chair of the EEF since its inception, said:

Over the past decade, the EEF has built a reputation as a trusted and independent source of evidence. The new endowment will allow us to continue to evaluate and spread best practice across the country, as well as expand our work in the early years sector.

High-quality evidence plays an important role in supporting education practitioners’ own professional judgement, as they work to make sure that every child and young person has access to a great education.

These initiatives form part of the Government’s wider ambitious education recovery plan worth nearly £5 billion. This includes £1.5 billion for a national tutoring revolution, through which over two million high-quality tutoring courses have already started. A £1 billion Recovery Premium is also supporting some of the most disadvantaged pupils across the country to catch up on lost learning.

The £137 million re-endowment of the EEF is in addition to around £40 million of remaining funding from the EEF’s original endowment. The £66 million in funding for the next phase of the Accelerator Fund includes up to £41.5 million for the EEF, up to £21 million to Maths and English Hubs, up to £3 million for a procured supplier to provide capability building support to programmes to help them scale-up, and up to £500,000 for an evaluation of the EEF element of the Accelerator Fund programme.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 18 November 2010.

Tim Oates, Group Director of Assessment Research and Development at Cambridge Assessment, has today published ‘Could do better: using international comparisons to refine the national curriculum in England’, an analysis of international curriculums and the lessons we can learn as we reform our own national curriculum.

Education Secretary Michael Gove said:

This fascinating and insightful paper offers a concise analysis of some of the problems with our current national curriculum and helps explain why so many other nations are outpacing us in educational performance. The debate about our cational curriculum now has to be seen in an international context. The best-performing education nations deliberately set out to compare themselves against international benchmarks – learning from each other and constantly asking what is required to help all children do better.

Shortly, my department will launch its own review of the national curriculum and the remit will explicitly, for the first time, require benchmarking against the most successful school systems. This – as Tim Oates makes clear – has to be done with great care to avoid learning the wrong lessons from countries with very different cultures. But it is essential if we are to keep pace with the world’s best.

Tim Oates said:

We should appraise carefully both international and national research in order to drive an evidence-based review of the national curriculum and make changes only where justified, in order to avoid unnecessary disruption to the education system.

However, simply importing another country’s classroom practices would be a gross error. A country’s national curriculum – both its form and content – cannot be considered in isolation from the state of development of these vital ‘control factors’. They interact. Adjust one without considering development of the others, and the system may be in line for trouble.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 17 November 2010.

Education Secretary Michael Gove will today announce the opening up of the route to academy status so that every school can become an academy by allowing existing schools that are strong performers to work in partnership with weaker schools.

Michael Gove will today make the announcement alongside the Prime Minister at an event at Downing Street, with more than 150 outstanding school headteachers who have already applied to open academies.

Alongside outstanding schools, all schools that are ranked good with outstanding features by Ofsted will automatically be eligible for academy status. All other schools – primary or secondary – that wish to enjoy academy freedoms will also be eligible, providing they work in partnership with a high-performing school that will help drive improvement.

In addition, for the first time, special schools will also have the opportunity to become academies, providing them the opportunity to operate with greater freedom and autonomy in order to better respond to the needs of children with special educational needs or disabilities. Special schools will be able to apply to convert in January.

Speaking ahead of an event with academy headteachers, Prime Minster David Cameron said:

Improving education is central to our reform agenda and we are committed to giving governors, headteachers and teachers more control over how they run their schools. We know they are best placed to decide how to give their pupils the best possible education and that is why we are encouraging more schools to become academies.

Many more schools will now be able to become academies and I am pleased they will be able to enjoy the additional freedoms, responsibility and empowerment that comes with academy status.

Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, said:

Inspirational school leaders like Mike Wilkins at Outwood Grange, David Triggs at Greensward, David Hampson at Tollbar, and Barry Day at Nottingham Academy have all secured exceptional results for children at their own schools and are now extending their reach even further. They have used academy powers to take weaker schools under their wing and help raise standards in local underperforming schools.

We know that the best way of improving schools is by getting the professionals, who have already done a brilliant job, to spread their wings. That is why we are now allowing more schools to benefit by enabling all schools to apply for academy status, if they are teamed with a high-performing school.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 16 November 2010.

The Education Secretary Michael Gove has today set out radical new measures to help tackle entrenched underperformance in England’s schools.

Speaking today at the National College New Heads conference, Mr Gove announced plans to more than double the number of National Leaders of Education (NLEs) – outstanding headteachers committed to supporting struggling schools.

The number of NLEs will rise from 393 to 1000 by 2014. Superb heads joining the programme will be expected to use their skills and experience to advise struggling schools and help them improve. The role of NLEs will also be strengthened and extended in the white paper, with new incentives for the most dramatic improvements in performance.

NLEs need to have demonstrated sustained high performance in their own school before being awarded this new status, and they will only maintain NLE status if they succeed in turning around underperforming schools. The NLE model has a proven track record. Primary schools that received NLE support in 2007-08 saw a ten percentage point increase in pupils reaching the expected level by age 11 and in secondary schools pupils’ success at GCSE improved twice as fast as the national average.

Michael Gove said:

“Great schools are the product of great leadership. There are many superb heads in our state system doing a wonderful job. But there are also many schools which are still not giving children the start in life they deserve. We still have one of the most unequal education systems in the world and half of young people leave school without the basic qualifications you need to succeed.

That’s why we will invest in recruiting more great heads to turn round our weaker schools and extend the academy model so more strong schools can help weaker schools. The coalition government is relentlessly focused on making our school system one of the best in the world and making opportunity more equal.”

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 2 September 2022.

Schools are being advised to work in partnership with councils and consider targeted family support or home visits where there are barriers to attending school.

This is part of a package of new and innovative measures to ensure that more children are in school every day, including targeted support for individuals who need it and improved data tools that will better identify and solve consistent issues.

The Department for Education is also launching a three-year 1-2-1 attendance mentoring pilot from this term, aimed at tackling the factors behind non-attendance such as bullying or mental health issues. It is being launched in Middlesbrough this year, before expanding to other areas of the country next year. The pilot will provide tailored support to over 1,600 persistently and severely absent pupils over the three-year period.

Schools, academy trusts, local authorities and the government will also have access to a powerful new attendance data visualisation tool is also being launched to help to spot and respond to issues. This data is supporting the launch of the new, interactive national attendance dashboard alongside the publication of the first full fortnightly attendance data of the term. This is expected later in September and will provide ongoing transparency and vastly improved potential for insight and analysis of daily, weekly and termly trends.

The majority of schools are now seamlessly sharing daily register data with the department, where it is aggregated and presented back in dashboards to schools, academy trusts and local authorities. This enables teachers to analyse attendance with greater ease, allowing issues with individual pupils, or groups such as children on free school meals, for example, to be spotted more quickly.

With millions of pupils set to return to schools and colleges over the coming days, there will be a renewed focus on maximising pupils’ time in the classroom, as evidence shows that the students with the highest attendance throughout their time in school gain the best GCSE and A Level results.

As outlined in the Schools White Paper, the government is introducing a wide range of tools and programmes to tackle low attendance, including new best practice guidance on improving attendance for schools, trusts and local authorities.

The guidance makes clear that schools should provide individualised support to families that need it, for example through referrals to other organisations and services, including councils, and issue fines and other sanctions where absence is unauthorised.

There are now over 10,000 academy schools open in England as a result of over 100 new academies converting yesterday, Thursday 1 September. This represents well over half of all students and more than four in five secondary schools.

29 local authorities have expressed an interest in setting up local authority-established multi-academy trusts as part of the trial planned for this year, driving momentum towards all schools becoming academies and receiving the support of a strong academy trust to raise standards across curriculum, attendance, and teacher development. The scheme will be carefully tested via a limited number of successful applications this year.

Education Secretary James Cleverly said:

I want to wish all pupils starting the new school year the very best of luck. From making new friends to learning from inspirational teachers, this is a really exciting time for them.

All the evidence shows that being in school is vital for helping pupils achieve their potential. That is why it is so important for them to attend every day they possibly can.

It’s also great that we can mark the new school year with a major milestone – over 10,000 academies are now open in England. The academies programme has been transforming children’s education for over a decade now and I look forward to building even more momentum so all schools can join strong academy trusts in the coming years.

Since 2010, there has been nearly a 20 percentage point rise in the number of good or outstanding schools, reaching 87 per cent of all schools in December 2021. Academy trusts played a crucial part in this, taking on poorly-performing schools and turning them around.

More than seven out of 10 sponsored academies which were found to be underperforming as an LA maintained school in their previous inspection now have a good or outstanding rating.

But there is more to do. New regulations that came into force yesterday allow the government to intervene for the first time in schools that have more than one consecutive rating of requires improvement or inadequate.

This will support the transition of these schools into strong trusts, which consistently drive school improvement.

Sylvie Newman, executive headteacher at Donisthorpe Primary School said:

Donisthorpe Primary School is a good school with many strengths and we have been exploring joining a multi academy trust for a number of years, but choosing the right one has been very important.

The primary motivator is keeping our unique identity but to also providing Donisthorpe with group strength and an opportunity for us to feel part of something ‘bigger’ and to draw knowledge and share expertise.

We will be able to provide opportunities for staff to progress their careers within the trust thereby strengthening retention.

Alongside this, schools will shortly be provided their budgets for free period products for this year, which they are strongly encouraged to use to access the wider range of products expected to be available through the scheme, to help ensure that no child feels the need to miss school as a result of their period and help end period poverty.

Finally, from this month teachers will be able to claim the government’s levelling up premium. This is for teachers of high demand STEM subjects in the country’s most disadvantaged schools and worth up to £3,000 tax-free this academic year, as well as the next two years afterwards.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 2 September 2022.