Daily roundup 29 June: Fire safety, children's services review, and social mobility

Ministers are being asked to order urgent checks of fire safety measures in England's schools. The BBC reports that the National Union of Teachers, the Fire Brigades Union and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers are calling for cladding to be analysed urgently, in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire. The unions have also asked for clarity on whether plans to water down fire safety rules for schools are being scrapped.


Gloucestershire County Council has agreed to commission an independent review into its children's services following a damning Ofsted report. The Gazette Series reports that at an extraordinary meeting of Gloucestershire County Council yesterday, it was agreed to establish an improvement board made up of representatives from all parties at the council.


Children's rights charity Article 39 has launched an appeal to try to raise funds to legally challenge the unjustified use of restraint on vulnerable children escorted to and from secure children's homes. The charity claims escort custody officers working for the private firm GeoAmey have been trained and authorised to deliberately inflict pain on children during escorts to and from secure children's homes - a form of restraint that has been banned within secure children's homes since 2011


Academics have found that high IQ in childhood is linked to a longer life. The Telegraph reports that researchers at Edinburgh University, Oxford and University College London followed up more than 65,000 people who took part in The Scottish Mental Survey in 1947, aged 11 to find out if intelligence as a young person had affected their life and death. They discovered that by the age of 79, having a high IQ lowered the risk of dying from heart disease, stroke, cancer, and respiratory diseases.


Julia Margo, chief executive at the Family and Childcare Trust since 2015, is to leave the organisation to join the Genesis Research Trust. Since April, Margo had been joint chief executive at the trust, sharing the role with Ellen Broome, who will take sole charge from August. See an interview with Broome in the July edition of CYP Now.