TweetThese are the education links we found interesting between June 22nd and July 2nd:
- Parents spend less on their children’s sport | The Sun |News|Sun City|Cashflow –
She said the London Games would be a giant “missed opportunity” to inspire young Brits. And she blasted Education Secretary Michael Gove for slashing funding for the Schools Sports Partnerships from £162million to £35million. Schemes shown the red card include free swimming for the under-16s, proposed cycling routes in 18 cities, and plans to fund 1,300 new playgrounds.
- School funding reform: Final arrangements for 2013-14 – Schools – We will not set a minimum threshold for the basic entitlement or pupil-led funding for the first year. We are however clear that most funding should be pupil-led and so we will review this once we have reviewed local authorities’ formulae for 2013-14 – with a view to setting a threshold for 2014-15. We have also reviewed the income deprivation affecting children index (IDACI) banding proposal and produced new bands which we believe provides both simplicity and sensitivity. Local authorities will now be able to use six IDACI bands, rather than five.
- Children’s Centres: Birmingham: 28 Jun 2012: Hansard Written Answers and Statements – TheyWorkForYou – The Early Intervention Grant is unringfenced and unhypothecated to allow local authorities to make funding decisions according to local needs. Since funding decisions are devolved to local authorities, it is not possible for us to provide a breakdown of funding by constituency. Birmingham City Council’s Early Intervention Grant allocation was £64,771,476 in 2012-13. Funding levels for 2013-14 have not yet been announced.
- Newly qualified shock– Education Guardian was contacted by shocked readers seeking clarification after our article last week about the bullying of newly qualified teachers in some schools, including academies, which mentioned that new regulations offering potentially worsening working conditions to NQTs would come in this September. The Department for Education was quick to dismiss this as nothing new.That is not quite the case, however. Revisions to the Induction Statutory Guidance, published in draft form earlier this year, and included in a Q&A; on the DfE’s own website, state explicitly that “as academies and free schools are classed as independent schools, there is no requirement for statutory induction to be offered or to have been served by teachers employed in these settings”.
- Breadline Britain: 83% of teachers see evidence of hungry children in their class | News | guardian.co.uk– The headline figures from the survey show that 38% of teachers consider there to be more than a quarter of children hungry in their classes:Another important question asked if the number of hungry children is increasing or decreasing in the past two years. The survey showed that over half the teachers saw increasing numbers in their classes, but 42% didn’t know if there was an increase or decrease:
The reasons given range from lack of parenting skills, general poverty and pressures of the cost of living.
