Funding boost to raise the game for school sports
School sports are in line for a multi-million-pound funding boost. Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to announce between #163;100 million and #163;150 million for school sport, as part of efforts to secure the Olympic legacy. It is thought the money will be heavily weighted towards primaries after concerns emerged following the Games that state primaries were ill-equipped to teach PE properly. Education secretary Michael Gove scrapped the #163;162 million in annual funding for schools sports partnerships in 2010 but was forced into a partial U-turn following widespread outrage.
Computer skills fail to match up to aspirations
Computer illiteracy could be destroying young people’s chances of a good career, a poll has suggested. Around one in eight young people said that they do not believe their computer skills are good enough for the job they want to do, according to a poll by the Prince’s Trust. This rose to almost one in five among young people who are not in education, employment or training. The poll asked more than 1,300 British 15- to 25-year-olds about their computer skills.
Schools left hanging over building projects
The majority of the 261 schools due to be refurbished or rebuilt under the Priority School Building Programme are yet to be told when work will start, according to the Local Government Association. The building programme, announced 10 months ago to target funding on the country’s most run-down schools, was launched after the Building Schools for the Future scheme was scrapped. Education minister David Laws insisted that work on the highest-priority projects was “ahead of schedule”, with the first rebuilt schools set to open their doors in September 2014.
Call for state and private to ‘cross-fertilise’
State and private schools should “cross-fertilise” their governing bodies to break down the walls between the sectors, a leading headmaster has said. Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College in Berkshire, said that every private school should have a head or governor from the state sector on their governing body. Equally, every head of a private school should serve as a governor of a state school, he told the annual conference of the Association of Governing Bodies of Independent Schools.
MP: schools made academy offers they can’t refuse
Schools are being offered contracts to convert to academy status that are “straight out of the Vito Corleone textbook”, a Liberal Democrat MP has said. John Pugh said aggressive brokers from the Department for Education were bullying headteachers into contracts that would turn their schools into academies. The former teacher said the academies programme had lost sight of trying to improve education. “It’s quite well documented that some of the behaviour of some of the brokers is markedly aggressive,” Mr Pugh added.
