Daily roundup 9 December: Runaway children, academies, and social work recruitment
Jess Brown
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Inquiry launched to examine safeguarding of "missing" children; schools report feeling pressure to convert to academies; and mixed results for Coventry social worker recruitment campaign, all in the news today.
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Missing Children and Adults has launched an inquiry into how children's services, schools and police safeguard children who are deemed "absent" from home, care or education. The group intends to examine how the introduction by police of "missing" and "absent" categories in 2012 has affected safeguarding responses for children who run away.
More than 80 per cent of schools in England feel pressured to convert into academies, but around half of head teachers and school leaders don't want their school to change status. Research by education finance firm HCCS Education has found that 41 per cent of schools say the main reason they would convert to an academy is because they could be forced to.
More than a quarter of social workers recruited under Coventry’s "Do it for Daniel" campaign have already quit their roles, the Coventry Observer reports. The campaign – named after four-year-old Coventry schoolboy Daniel Pelka who was murdered by his parents in 2012 amid agency failings – aimed to recruit more child protection social workers. But a Coventry City Council report states the recruitment campaign has now closed after 13 of the 47 appointments made through it withdrew after accepting the roles.
Children's reading abilities improve faster when they use ebooks, a study for the National Literacy Trust has found. The Independent reports that over a four-month period, boys' reading ability improved by eight months, and girls by seven months.
Easter eggs were referred to as "chocolate eggs" at a school linked to the Trojan Horse plot in order to avoid offending Muslim parents, according to a former teaching assistant. The Daily Mail reports that another member of staff told an employment tribunal that Muslim children were excluded from Easter basket-making sessions.
Government research shows that affluent teenagers are twice as likely as the poorest to be regular drinkers. The study found that 70 per cent of boys and girls aged 15 in the least deprived areas had tried alcohol, compared to 50 per cent in the most deprived. Those in the richest areas were twice as likely to be regular drinkers, the Times reports.
