General

Union says it has been flooded with enquiries about early retirement options once schools are past the worst of Covid

The Liberal Democrats want play-based education until age 7 and for teachers to earn at least £30,000 a year

DfE won’t reveal its estimate of its savings from cutting school pupil premium funding for the poorest, in case of ‘harm’ to its reputation

Pit your wits against Tes’ weekly general knowledge quiz

Whole-school in-service days and infrequent observations can’t deliver high-impact teacher professional development, says Damian Hayes, as he explains how his school made time for the ‘rhythm’ of incremental coaching

The TV presenter chats to Tes about her most memorable teacher, being suspended for shoplifting and almost being arrested on a school trip

With schools now focused on bridging lockdown learning gaps, differentiation is arguably more important than ever before. But many teachers aren’t using it properly and see it as a source of extra workload, expert Carol Ann Tomlinson tells Helen Amass. Rather than simply giving different groups different tasks, she says, it is all about putting the student above the subject and giving them true ownership over their learning

A government catch-up scheme aims to give tutoring to hundreds of thousands of pupils who otherwise might never have experienced it. But how successful will the programme be in helping children to make up for lost time? Irena Barker looks at the evidence on the impact of different kinds of tutoring

For teachers concerned about the effect that lockdown has had on children’s oral language development, a simple but effective intervention is to pick up a book, says Megan Dixon

When the government first announced that functional skills in English would include phonics, it sparked concerns about infantilising FE students. But the truth is that the method was already being used to teach reading in colleges and, with adaptations, it appears to have been successful with older learners, finds Chris Parr

Government was previously advised to consider if there is ‘value’ in ‘mandating’ schools to take trainees

Apparent SNP pledge to reduce contact time by 90 minutes per day turns out to be an error – the party meant per week