Tag: Press Release

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.