Eleven Plus Education News Service
Eleven Plus News - We trawl through numerous news websites so that you don't have to! Please find a selection of interesting news articles on Independent, Private, Grammar, Secondary schools and Universities. Contributions welcome, please write to
11plus-news@ElevenPlusExams.co.uk.
GCSEs should be scrapped, says former education secretary
SFS - 10th Mar 10
Children should no longer be expected to take GCSEs at the age of 16, the former education secretary Baroness Morris has suggested.
The tests should instead be taken two years earlier as they are currently useless, the Daily Telegraph reports her as saying.
Free our schools
Telegraph - 9th Mar 10
Britain is starting to see a small but growing movement of parents who want to open their own schools. Not comprehensive, not private, but a throwback to the all-encompassing state schools of old.
The Tory comprehensive school scam
Guardian - 8th Mar 10
So Michael Gove wants to encourage the creation of more "socially comprehensive" schools and is hoping to recruit more private schools into the state system in order to do so.
Parents useless when it comes to answering GCSE questions
Metro - 8th Mar 10
But if you’re stumped, don’t feel too bad – most parents struggle to answer typical GCSE questions, a new survey has revealed.
On average, only 19.7 per cent responded correctly to questions from the maths, science, history and geography curricula.
Fathers did better, with, on average, 27.2 per cent of their ten answers right. Mothers got just 12.1 per cent correct.
Conservative-endorsed report calls for science boost
BBC - 8th Mar 10
The profile of science in the UK must be raised to help diversify the economy and boost growth, a report endorsed by the Conservatives has urged.
The report's author, entrepreneur Sir James Dyson, called for more support for science teachers and tax breaks for high-tech firms to conduct research.
Comprehensive schools 'can fail brightest pupils'
This is London - 8th Mar 10
A key architect of Britain's comprehensive schools admitted today that they may fail some of
the brightest children and drive parents into the private sector.
Baroness Williams, 79, who extended the system as education secretary under Labour in the Seventies, said there was “tension” between the egalitarian principles of comprehensives and the service they give to brighter pupils.
Speaking on Radio 4 documentary A Good School, she said: “That is why an awful lot of people send their children to private schools.”
Superheads cashing in on failing schools
Daily Express - 7th Mar 10
SALARIES equivalent to more than £100,000 a year are being paid to so-called “superheads”, drafted in to help turn around failing schools.
The headteachers negotiate their own fees and are cashing in on schools that are often desperate for help after being placed in special measures.
One trouble-shooter is being paid £1,200 a week for two days’ work at a struggling school in Manchester, according to a colleague.
School places farce hits twins
This is Kent - 7th Mar 10
Hight- achieving twins from Edenbridge have been left in floods of tears after missing out on all four grammar schools they opted for.
Despite sailing through their 11-Plus exams, Isobel and Milly Money, 10, have not been given a grammar school place and have instead won places at the non-selective Skinners' Kent Academy.
Parents Stuart and Liz, of Goodwin Close, have slammed Kent County Council for isolating children from Edenbridge who want to attend top Kent schools.
Sacking of school headteachers 'rises by 75%'
Guardian - 7th Mar 10
Record numbers of headteachers were sacked last year for failing to boost their schools' GCSE grades, it will be claimed today.
At least 163 heads or their deputies were fired in 2009 – 75% more than in 2007, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) will reveal at its annual conference in London.
Too many GCSEs make children ill
Times - 7th Mar 10
The new children’s commissioner has said school pupils should sit no more than eight GCSEs, because too many tests are making them ill.
Maggie Atkinson said one of the risks to children was “the pressure that we as a society seem determined to continue to put our children under in terms of how hothoused they are at school”.
Limiting the exams would reduce homework and give children more “down time”, she said.
