Daily roundup: Risky play, teacher death inquest, Welsh measles vaccinations

Children should be given more opportunities to take risks, the chairman of the Boarding School Association is to say. The Telegraph reports that Christian Heinrich will warn at the Boarding School Association’s annual conference that private schools are at risk of becoming "exam factories" and should instead encourage children's curiosity.

A head teacher found hanged at a school in Worcester in November was concerned her school would be downgraded at its next Ofsted inspection, the BBC reports. An inquest into Helen Mann’s death heard she was "very concerned" the school she had worked at for six months would lose its outstanding rating. The hearing continues.

Following the measles outbreak in west Wales, health bodies have launched an MMR vaccination programme taking in up to 4,000 secondary and primary school pupils. Children in Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion who have not yet received the MMR immunisation are particularly being targeted after nearly 1,000 confirmed cases of the highly infectious virus in the region since last November. BBC Wales quotes Teresa Owen, director of public health in Hywel Dda Health Board, as praising parents for their co-operation with the immunisation programme to date.

Two children in Nottingham suffered “significant neglect” because the local authority failed to carry out proper assessments, the Nottingham Post reports. A Local Government Ombudsman report found Nottingham City Council incorrectly chose to support the children’s mother to care for them. The council has been ordered to pay each child £5,000 compensation and £1,000 to their grandmother, who first complained.

A project designed to help children overcome a fear of being in hospital is being launched across Scotland. The Scotsman reports that a hospital passport scheme developed by psychologists at the Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow proved so successful that it will be taken up by other hospitals in the country. Under the scheme, children are given a hospital passport and collect stickers and stamps as they go through various treatments, or visit different departments.

As backgrounds for the job go it is hardly conventional, but John Wilson, Wakefield Council’s new corporate director of children’s services, is a former rocket scientist, reports the Wakefield Express. Wilson joins Wakefield in the summer from East Riding Council, where he has been assistant director of children and young people’s services since 2009. A former physics teacher and head teacher, Wilson also worked as a rocket scientist for British Aerospace.