Daily roundup: school testing, hungry children and education services
Laura McCardle
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Academics call for a suspension of Gove's education reforms; study finds more children go to school hungry; and decision due on Welsh education services, all in the news today.
“Incessant testing” and school performance targets risk damaging the quality of childhood, says a group of 200 leading academics and authors. Led by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, they wrote a letter to The Times calling for Education Secretary Michael Gove to suspend his school reforms. The letter, published today, coincides with Gove’s speech at the Conservative party conference this afternoon.
The number of children going to school without eating breakfast is increasing, according to a Daily Mirror poll. Carried out in conjunction with the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Child Poverty Action Group, the study found that 85 per cent of teachers are seeing more children come to school hungry. Around 83 per cent of teachers also said that they are seeing an increase in the number of children unable to afford school trips.
The Welsh government is due to make a decision on a report calling for up to a third of local authority education services in Wales to be cut. The BBC reports that the 22 council education services are “bracing themselves” for an imminent decision. Robert Hill, former adviser to Tony Blair, made the recommendation for the cuts and said new "slim-line elected local authorities” could run the services.
The National Deaf Children's Society has called for parliamentary debate on cuts to school support services for deaf children. The society has been running a campaign to end council cuts with a petition highlighting the issue being signed by more than 52,000 people.
Walsall Council has apologised for causing “serious distress” to a vulnerable teenage girl, after trying to make her move schools. The BBC reports that the council tried to make the girl move from her current residential school to one closer to home in an attempt to save money. A report by local government ombudsman Dr Jane Martin said the 13-year-old started at the school in 2011 but the council’s education panel withdrew funding for her place in July 2012 after it considered her not to have special educational needs.
And finally, the “overwhelming majority” of teachers in the east of England, the Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber are taking strike action today over adverse changes to their pay, pensions, working conditions and jobs. Members of the NUT and NASUWT want the government to recognise that their “pay and conditions of service are directly linked to the provision of high quality education”.