Daily roundup: sexual abuse, primary school inspections, and 16-18 education
Neil Puffett
Friday, June 28, 2013
Grooming and sexual abuse of children to be denounced in mosque sermons, Ofsted begins week-long inspections of Medway primary schools, and new figures show a drop in 16-18 year olds in full time education, all in the news today.
Imams will denounce the grooming and sexual abuse of children in sermons being delivered in 500 mosques across Britain today. The Guardian reports that the co-ordinated effort is a response to the convictions of Muslim men in British courts for a series of abuse offences. Yesterday, five men were sentenced to life imprisonment and two others to long sentences for the abuse of girls in Oxford.
Ofsted is carrying out a week of inspections in Medway to find out why 40 per cent of primary schools in the area are under performing. Ofsted’s latest data, found that almost 8,000 children are attending a primary school that, at its last inspection, was judged to be less than good, a rate the inspectorate says is worse than the national average and an "unacceptable situation". Ten focused school inspections will be taking place in the authority, alongside a telephone survey of schools not being inspected.
The proportion of 16-18 year olds in full-time education fell from 68.6 per cent in 2011 to 67.2 per cent in 2012, according to latest figures from the Department for Education. Overall participation in education and work-based learning fell by 1.1 percentage points, to 78.2 per cent, the first fall since 2001.
A project in Ipswich has received more than £300,000 from the Big Lottery fund to train up volunteers as mentors for disadvantaged families. Ipswich Community Service Volunteer’s Respect project, will target at least 120 families, helping 140 adults and 150 children and young people up to the age of 18. The project, which will launch in September, will focus on young mothers vulnerable to exploitation, fathers needing positive development to become good role models and assisting families, including migrantrants and those who have language barriers, to access services.
Huw Lewis has been named as the new education minister in the Welsh government. The BBC reports that Lewis replaces Leighton Andrews who resigned following a row over his support for a school in his Rhondda constituency which faced closure under his own surplus places policy. Lewis said he wants to build the “fantastic foundations” Andrews laid in terms of standards within Welsh education.
And finally, a study by the University of Strathclyde found smoke alarms failed to wake children up when they went off in all but a handful of cases. The study conducted 204 tests on 34 children, aged between two and 13, in their own homes. It found that 27 children slept through the alarms on all six of the tests carried out, while only two girls, both aged 10, woke on every occasion, the Metro reports.