Daily roundup 3 April: Saturday jobs, school improvements, and shooting death

Teenagers should be encouraged to take on Saturday jobs to prepare them for their working lives, the Work and Pensions Secretary has said. The Independent reports that Esther McVey insisted she did not believe youngsters were "lazy" but warned there had been a fall of up to 60 per cent in the number with weekend jobs.


More than £500m has been set aside to improve and expand school buildings across the country and create more good school places. The Department for Education said a total of £514m is being allocated as part of the Condition Improvement Fund. It will support 1,556 projects across almost 1,300 academies and sixth-form colleges in England to help improve the condition or expand their facilities.


Two shootings in London in the space of an hour have left a 17-year-old girl dead and a boy, 16, critically ill. The BBC reports that the girl was found with a bullet wound in Tottenham on Monday night and pronounced dead at the scene. The boy had been found with gunshot wounds in Walthamstow earlier, with another boy, 15 who had stab injuries.


The Prime Minister has announced the establishment a Funeral Fund for grieving parents who have lost their child. Under the scheme, parents will no longer have to meet the costs of burials or cremations. Fees will be waived by all local authorities and met instead by government funding.


A hospital trust has been criticised for describing mothers who use formula milk as "artificially" feeding babies. The BBC reports that Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust made the comment in a letter that said it would no longer provide formula milk in its maternity units to mothers who had decided not to breastfeed. One woman who said she had been unable to breastfeed said the letter's wording made her "sick to the stomach".


Thousands of children with special needs are being left without a place at a school due to an education funding crisis in England, a teachers' leader has warned. The Metro reports that National Education Union leader Kevin Courtney said official statistics showed 4,050 special needs pupils were without a place in 2017 in England. He said it was a disgrace that such pupils were at home because councils were being "starved" of funds for them.