Daily roundup 27 November: Boarding schools, obesity, and teaching standards

Government has published a paper to encourage education professionals, local authorities and social workers to consider a boarding place for vulnerable children. The Department for Education says there is evidence of a correlation between the boarding environment and improved educational outcomes for vulnerable children.


New figures show that half of children involved in the Millennium Cohort Study had been classed as overweight before the age of 11. The Daily Mail reports that researchers at the Institute of Education also found that 20 per cent of children born between 2000 and 2002 had been classed as obese by the time they left primary school.


New research suggests that poor children living in wealthy parts of the south east are falling behind their peers because they are being forgotten by their teachers. The Telegraph reports that the study, by a consortium of charities and teachers groups, highlighted reading standards as a particular cause for concern.


New advice for schools on how to provide good quality sex and relationships education in relation to HIV has been published by the Sex Education Forum. The advice, set out in the latest edition of the Sex Education Forum’s e-magazine, is being published to mark World AIDS Day. It provides teachers with facts about HIV transmission, prevention, testing and treatment and lesson ideas that ensure myths and prejudice are challenged.


Statutory guidance on promoting the health and welfare of looked-after children hs been published for local authorities, clinical commissioning groups and NHS England. The guidance from the Department for Education and the Department of Health. It is for local authorities, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and NHS England and applies to England only.


Thirteen men have been found guilty of systematic sexual abuse of vulnerable schoolgirls and teenagers in Bristol. The Guardian reports that the men, all of Somali origin, groomed the victims, some of who were in local authority care, sexually abused them and passed them around to other abusers, often for money.