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England: Many parents face disappointment over primary school places

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England/ 16.04.2018/ From: www.theguardian.com.

Parents in England will find out on Monday whether their child got into their top choice of primary school to begin reception class in September, with many likely to face disappointment owing to the pressure on places in some areas of the country.

On what has become known as national offer day for primary schools, about half a million families will receive emails during the course of the day and letters later in the week confirming whether they have been offered a place at their first-choice school.

Despite fewer applications this year as a population bulge moves into secondary schools, thousands of families are still likely to miss out on their top choice, particularly in London, where just 86% got into their first preference last year, with that figure dropping to 68% in Kensington and Chelsea.

Early data suggested a slight improvement on last year’s figures in some areas. In York, for example, 94.2% of children were awarded places in their first-preference school this year – up from 92.9% last year – and just 11 children failed to secure a place at one of their preferred schools, down from 25 last year.

Last year, 97.2% of four-year-olds in England were offered a place at one of their top three primary schools. Many parents go on to lodge appeals in a last-ditch attempt to secure a place at their first choice of school.

According to the Good Schools Guide, the success rate of primary school appeals varies widely. In 2016-17, a third of appeals in the north-east went in the child’s favour, while the success rate was just 7% in London.

Elizabeth Coatman, the guide’s state education consultant, said: “Children are still being offered places which their parents consider to be inappropriate. Appealing is an option, but with huge regional disparities in the success rates, you shouldn’t count on it going your way.

“However unfair it may feel, the length of your school run, having siblings at other schools, super-sized classes and poor Ofsted reports are unlikely to be successful grounds for appeal.”

Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said “In an increasingly fragmented school system, we lack a coordinated approach to place planning. The government’s own figures show that an extra 654,000 school places will be needed in England by 2026 to meet the 9% rise in pupil population.

“Until the government creates a national strategy to guarantee there are enough school places for every child in England, the annual anxious wait for families will continue.”

From: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/16/many-parents-face-disappointment-over-primary-school-places

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United Kingdom: Measures to deliver quality education across all settings

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United Kingdom / April 15, 2018 / Author: Editorial Staff / Source: Government of the United Kingdom

A package of measures to help make sure children receive the best possible education either at home or outside of school have been announced today (10 April).

A package of measures to help make sure children receive the best possible education either at home or outside of school have been announced by School Systems Minister Lord Agnew today.

The announcement will support the families of the estimated 45,500 children that are educated at home, providing parents and local councils with strengthened guidance so both understand their rights and responsibilities.

A Call for Evidence has been launched to ask for the views of parents and local authorities on how to ensure children receive the expected standard of education at home, including:

  • How local authorities can monitor the quality of home education to make sure children are taught the knowledge and skills they need;
  • How effective registration schemes are for children who are educated at home; and
  • How government can better support those families who choose to educate their children at home.

The Education Minister also announced £3 million to support the joint working of local authorities, the police, Ofsted, the government and other agencies in tackling the minority of out of school settings that seek to undermine British values or expose children to other harmful practices. This work will help to share best practice across the country.

Today’s announcement builds on the recently launched Integrated Communities Strategy, which had education at its core. It is part of the drive to ensure all children receive the best possible education, with 1.9 million more pupils in good or outstanding schools than in 2010 thanks to the government’s reforms and the hard work of teachers.

Minister for School Systems Lord Agnew said:

Across the country there are thousands of dedicated parents who are doing an excellent job of educating their children at home, and many selfless volunteers working for clubs and organisations that help to enrich children’s education outside of school.

It is right that we should build on the high standards we’ve set in our schools so that every child receives a suitable and safe education – no matter where they are being taught – and that we can act quickly in the rare instances when this is not the case. This support for families and local communities will help ensure all children get the education they deserve.

The Call for Evidence will run for 12 weeks and will ask for views from families that choose to educate their children at home, local authorities and home education support groups. The issues raised include the registration of children who are home educated and the monitoring of home education provision by local authorities. It will build on the existing requirements for local authorities to identify children they believe are not receiving a suitable education and their powers, which can ultimately include serving a School Attendance Order.

The government is also consulting on revised guidance for parents and local authorities to support them in making sure home education provision is of the highest possible standard. This guidance will set out the processes by which local authorities should identify children who are being educated at home and how best to intervene if they are not receiving a suitable education. For parents, it will offer support and advice on whether or not home education is the right decision for them and their child, while also making clear the powers that local authorities have and the steps parents should take if concerns arise.

The Department for Education has also published its response to the consultation on regulation for out of school settings – environments that enrich children’s education. The department has carefully considered over 18,000 responses and has already taken action by establishing a £3 million targeted fund which will go to selected areas to support work between local authorities and relevant agencies. It will be used to show how existing legal powers can be most effective in addressing safeguarding and welfare concerns, alongside community engagement and outreach. This work will inform the need for any future regulation.

A consultation on a voluntary code of practice for out of school settings will be published later this year to set out what is expected of providers, and the Department will work with local authorities to provide guidance to parents on out of school settings.

Source of the News:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/measures-to-deliver-quality-education-across-all-settings

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Denuncian afectaciones a sector educativo por recortes en Reino Unido

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Reino Unido/10 de abril de 2018/Fuente: http://prensa-latina.cu

Los recortes realizados por el gobierno británico afectaron a alrededor de cuatro mil 50 niños con discapacidades o necesidades educativas especiales en 2017, denunció hoy el Sindicato Nacional de Profesores del Reino Unido.
Mediante un comunicado, dicha organización señaló que, debido a las medidas de austeridad implementadas por la administración conservadora, esos pequeños no pudieron acceder a centros escolares especializados o al tipo de enseñanza que requieren.

Además, alertó que la cifra de menores perjudicados durante el año pasado es casi el triple de la registrada en 2016 (mil 73) y es la mayor reportada desde 2010.

También indicó que dichas afectaciones forman parte de una crisis en el sistema educativo, provocada por la mala gestión del gobierno.

Es una vergüenza que la dirección del país prive a las autoridades locales de los recursos necesarios para atender a los niños con necesidades especiales, aseveró Kevin Courtney, secretario general adjunto de la Unión Nacional de Educadores.

Los menores están en sus casas porque no hay suficiente dinero para proporcionarles una educación adecuada. Los padres y maestros están desesperados. El Gobierno le está fallando a miles de pequeños y sus familias, por lo que debe actuar de inmediato para resolver esta crítica situación, añadió.

Fuente de la Noticia:
http://prensa-latina.cu/index.php?o=rn&id=164680&SEO=denuncian-afectaciones-a-sector-educativo-por-recortes-en-reino-unido
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Children stuff food into their pockets and turn up to school in dirty uniforms as poverty worsens, headteachers warn in United Kingdom

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United Kingdom/ 09.04.2018/ From: www.independent.co.uk.

Los niños que viven en la pobreza llegan a las puertas de la escuela con «piel gris, dientes pobres, cabello y uñas». Los niños desnutridos están llenando sus bolsillos con comida y yendo a la escuela con uniformes sucios a medida que crece el número de personas que viven en la pobreza , han advertido los directores.

Malnourished children are stuffing their pockets with food and turning up to school in dirty uniforms as the numbers living in poverty grows, headteachers have warned.

Pupils are arriving to school on Monday wearing uniforms they have been in all weekend, while others do not turn up to school because they have no shoes, staff have said.

And schools are going out of their way to give parents debt advice – and one primary school headteacher recently opened his school during the severe snow to ensure his pupils got a hot meal that day.

Number of children in poverty surges by 100,000 in a year

Speaking at the National Education Union (NEU) conference, NUT section, conference in Brighton, school leaders described how pupils arrived at the school gates with grey skin, poor teeth, hair and nails.

A survey, by the NEU and the Child Poverty Action Group, found that three in five (60 per cent) school staff believe child poverty has worsened since 2015.

And the vast majority (87 per cent) say it is having a significant impact on the learning of their pupils.

A head from a school in Cumbria, who would only give her name as “Lynn”, said her pupils put “food in their pockets to take home because they’re not sure if they’re going to get another meal that day”.

“In some establishments I would imagine that would be called stealing, but in ours it’s called survival,” she said.

Lynn added that her members of staff have washed dirty uniform for pupils and they have used their own money to buy families beds.

She added: “You can go into the town where we are and the children are wearing uniform, often something that we’ve given them, and they are wearing that at weekends.”

And Lynn described seeing children from a nearby affluent secondary school and comparing them to youngsters who had been to her school.

“My children who have gone from me up to the local secondary school have grey skin, poor teeth, poor hair, poor nails, they are smaller, they are thinner,” she said.

Louise Regan, from a Nottinghamshire primary school, said she noticed a difference when taking pupils to sporting events with other schools.

“You think ‘our kids are really small’, you don’t notice it because you’re with them all the time. When you then see them with children of the same age that are in an affluent area, they just look tiny.”

Ms Regan added that her school gives out food and clothing, such as winter coats and shoes, to those families in need.

She said: “We’ve had children who haven’t come to school because they didn’t have shoes, we’ve gone and bought shoes, taken them to the house and brought the child into school,” she said.

In 2015/16, there were four million children in the UK living in poverty, according to the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) – equivalent to nine in every classroom of 30 pupils.

A Department for Education spokesman said they have launched a social mobility action plan – which sets out measures to close the attainment gap between disadvantaged students and their classmates.

He added: “Alongside this we continue to support the country’s most disadvantaged children through free school meals, the £2.5bn funding given to schools through the Pupil Premium to support their education and the recently announced a £26m investment to kickstart or improve breakfast clubs in at least 1,700 schools.”

 Many of the union members described the situation facing their poorest pupils and families as “heartbreaking”, the study said.

One headteacher told the press at the NEU conference in Brighton said that league table positions were becoming secondary to dealing with the impact of financial hardship among pupils.

Jane Jenkins, from a Cardiff primary school, said that children have turned up with just a slice of bread and margarine in their lunchbox. “It is really tough,” she said.

“When people are asking you about standards and you know, “why is your school not higher in the league tables”, often that is very much a secondary consideration for us these days,” Ms Jenkins added.

From: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/child-poverty-headteachers-schools-teachers-national-education-union-neu-austerity-a8283956.htm

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England: Cambridge ranked last in university fair access table

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England/ 09.04.2018/ From: www.theguardian.com.

A new measure looking at how successful individual universities have been in trying to widen participation to students from all backgrounds has ranked University of Hull as the best-performing institution and Cambridge the worst.

The experimental fair access rankings, drawn up in a research paper by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi), rate the University of Derby, Edge Hill, Chester and Plymouth School of Art as among the top performers.

Close to the bottom are some of the country’s oldest and most prestigious universities, including St Andrew’s, Bristol, Oxford and Aberdeen, which perform only marginally better than Cambridge on this measure.

While overall university participation rates among young people have gone up from 10-15% of the population in the 1980s to more than 45% today, there are still wide discrepancies in intake, with fewer students from disadvantaged backgrounds attending the most elite institutions, the Hepi paper points out.

Written by Iain Martin, the vice-chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University, which comes ninth in the rankings, the report advocates the use of the Gini index – a statistical measure of distribution developed by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1912 – in conjunction with so-called Polar measures of university participation in different local areas.

“Widening participation and ensuring that students from all backgrounds are provided opportunities to study at a university that matches their talents and aspirations has been a pivotal part of English higher education policy and strategy for many years,” said Martin. “While much has been achieved, it remains that we do not have an educational level playing field.

“Benchmarking fair and equitable participation using the Gini index – a well-understood and recognised measure of the equitable distribution of resource – provides a single way to measure our transition to a higher education system where all students attend a university that matches their talents and aspiration.”

Cambridge University said its admission rate for state school students had gone up to more than 63% and the proportion of successful applicants from postcodes with the lowest rates of participation in higher education had also increased, from 3.3 % in 2016 to 4.5 % last year.

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From: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/05/cambridge-ranked-last-in-university-fair-access-table

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United Kingdom: Special needs children ‘paying price’ for education funding ‘crisis’

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United Kingdom/April 3, 2018/By: Press Association/ Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk

Thousands of children with special needs are paying the price of a «crisis» in education funding, a union has claimed.

Official figures show the number of youngsters with special educational needs plans or statements that are awaiting school places has more than doubled in a year.

The National Education Union (NEU) claimed that local councils are being «starved» of the money they need for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), with youngsters forced to stay at home because authorities do not have the cash to provide a suitable education.

Overall, as of January last year, there were 287,290 children and young people, up to the age of 25 in England, that had an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP), or a statement of special educational needs.

Of these, the vast majority (279,582) were aged 19 or under.

The year before, there were 256,315 children and young people with an EHCP or statement, and again the vast majority were 19 and under.

The government data also shows that as of last January, 4,050 youngsters with an EHCP or statement were «awaiting provision» – effectively waiting for a place in education.

This is up 137% compared with January 2016, when the number stood at 1,710, and up 372% compared with 2013 (858 children).

The NEU argued: «Children facing some of the greatest challenges are paying the price for the crisis in education funding.»

NEU joint general secretary, Kevin Courtney, said: «It is an absolute disgrace that the Government is starving local authorities of the resources needed for children with SEND.

«Children are at home because local authorities don’t have enough money to provide suitable education.

«Local authorities are being placed in an impossible position. They have a legal duty to plan high quality education for every child with SEND, but cuts have taken away the resources they need to educate children with complex needs.

«Extra money is urgently needed for SEND but it must be new money and not come from the already challenged school budgets. Parents and teachers are in despair. The Government is failing thousands of children and families and must act now to resolve this critical situation.»

Meanwhile, a separate survey by NASUWT union has shown more than a half (59%) of all special educational needs teachers said they had been attacked by their pupils in the last year.

Staff among the 1,615 polled said they had been head-butted, punched, kicked and spat on – including, in a handful of cases, on a daily basis.

Almost three-quarters (74%) said they experienced verbal abuse in addition to physical assault. Some 7% said they were not encouraged to report such incidents to their school.

One respondent said: «I receive more abuse as a teacher than friends of mine who are in the police force and prison service.»

Speaking from the annual NASUWT conference, union general secretary Chris Keates said: «No one should go to work expecting to be assaulted, yet all too often teachers who are attacked are told it’s all part of the job.

«Pupils with special needs who exhibit violent and disruptive behaviour need more help and support and all too often their needs are not being met.»

A Department for Education spokeswoman said: «Core schools and high needs funding has been protected in real terms per pupil and will rise to its highest ever level – over £43 billion in 2020, 50% more per pupil spending in real terms than in 2000.

«The budget for pupils with special educational needs is £6 billion this year. Local authorities now have more money for every pupil in every school.

«Our new Education, Health and Care Plans are putting the views of young people with special educational needs and disabilities and families at the heart of the process so they can help shape the support they receive.

«This is a hugely significant reform but local authorities are rising to the challenge and have reviewed almost 222,000 cases with initial inspections showing positive outcomes for young people.»

Source:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/01/special-needs-children-paying-price-education-funding-crisis/

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Zero tolerance approach to bad behaviour in schools amount to ‘child abuse’, teachers claim in United Kingdom

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United Kingdom/ 02.04.2018/ From: www.independent.co.uk.

‘Las políticas y  reglas estrictas sobre la conducta de los alumnos «son crueles, victorianas, dickensianas». Y castiga más a los niños de la clase obrera ‘

A zero-tolerance approach to discipline in schools amounts to “child abuse”, teachers have claimed.

Extremely strict behaviour policies unfairly punish working class children who may not be as focused in class or as well-behaved because of difficult circumstances at home, teachers have suggested.

The remarks came as the NUT section of the National Education Union (NEU) raised their concerns about the state of children’s mental health at their annual conference in Brighton.

Social media sites are damaging children’s mental health, heads warn

Jonathan Reddiford, from North Somerset, said he felt ‘zero tolerance’ behaviour policies in schools were a “key cause” for mental health problems among young people.

He added that it was “incredibly harsh” to exclude pupils for misbehaving and he said using strict behaviour policies with vulnerable children was “nothing short of child abuse”.

Michael Holland, from Lambeth, added that punishing disadvantaged children with strict behaviour approaches was an “abuse” of their rights.

 He said: “Zero tolerance is intolerance. Zero tolerance doesn’t work. Zero tolerance is cruel, Victorian, Dickensian. It punishes working class children the most.

“It punishes black children and children from black ethnic minority groups [they] are far more likely to be excluded from schools.”

Mr Reddiford told the conference that one Year 7 student he had taught was not very “focused” in class – but it was because he was sharing a bed with three family members and he did not get much sleep.

“For me to then try and exercise some sort of zero tolerance behaviour policy would be nothing short of child abuse,” he said.

Mr Holland added: “We believe in a different vision of education. One where children are not sent home because they have a sharp haircut, or their shoes aren’t totally black. We believe in an education service that respects each child.

“If a child is disruptive because they are exhausted or hungry or both. Or if a child kicks another child because the previous night they witnessed domestic violence at home. We respond with patience. We respond with compassion.»

There was unanimous support from conference delegates to opposing «the move towards ever more punitive behaviour policies in schools» which it said was «feeding a mental health crisis for our children».

The motion said: “The increasing use of detention, isolation and exclusion, often talked of as being ‘zero tolerance’ approaches, usually mean ignoring the varied difficulties children have.”

Delegates also highlighted other experiences of growing mental health concerns about their pupils, which some linked to a narrowing of the curriculum in schools.

Paul Power, of Haringey, who has been a head of year in a secondary school for 16 years, said: “I have seen an increase in anxiety, an increase in depression, an increase in stress, an increase in students talking about suicide, an increase in self-harming.”

He added that reforms to exams had led to more stress. “And to be honest there is only one word for them – and that is child abuse,” Mr Power told the conference.

Delegates voted that high stakes testing has harmful effects on children’s mental health, and called for a renewed campaign to oppose Sats.

On Monday, delegates will debate whether to boycott high stakes tests in primary schools – including the Sats.

From: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/strict-behaviour-school-punish-children-child-abuse-teachers-national-education-union-a8283276.html.

 

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