Statistics show school bullying decline
A Government study shows that, compared to
2005, 30,000 fewer children are being bullied in
England’s schools. The Government attributes
the decline to the introduction in 2010 of new
powers for teachers to help them tackle bullying
and violence in schools, including training in
tackling serious behaviour issues and new
powers to search pupils.
Spending watchdog confirms teacher
shortage is increasing
Teacher shortages in England are growing and
the Government has missed recruitment targets
for four years, the official spending watchdog
has said. The report by the National Audit
Office indicates that 28% of secondary physics
lessons are taught by teachers with no more
than an A-level in the subject.
It found that more than half (54%) of head
teachers in schools with large proportions
of disadvantaged pupils find attracting and
keeping good teachers is “a major problem”,
compared with a third (33%) of those in other
schools.
Large employers liable to an apprenticeship
levy of 0.5% of their payroll from 2017
The Chancellor in his recent spending review
announced that large employers (those with
a wage bill of £3 million or more) will have
to commit to spend 0.5% of their payroll on
funding apprenticeships from April 2017. The
Government estimates that this will affect less
than 2% of UK employers. You can find more
details on this topic on page 9.
Call for ‘common sense’ approach to term
time holidays
The Local Government Association (LGA) has
recommended the law be changed so that head
teachers can give reasonable consideration to
term-time leave requests. There have been a
number of successful legal challenges to the
legislation and it is seen as becoming harder to
enforce.
In addition, absence statistics show just a 0.1%
rise in pupil absences from state-funded schools
since the previous academic year to 4.5% in
autumn/spring 2014/15 (4% in primary and
5.2% in secondary). Persistent absence rates
have followed a general downward trend since
autumn/spring 2010/11, and the percentage
of pupils who are, or may become, persistent
absentees across state-funded primary and
secondary schools has decreased from 4.1% to
3.9% last year.
DoE admits its GCSE and A-level reforms
could disadvantage SEN pupils
A report by the DoE indicates that reforms
to GCSE and A Levels due to come into force
in September will disadvantage some SEN
students. Pupils with dyscalculia “will potentially
be disadvantaged” from succeeding in Stem
subjects, which require strong mathematics
skills.
New e-safety website launched to prevent
radicalisation
The Government has launched the Education
Against Hate, to support schools and parents
identify and deal with the risks of young people
becoming radicalised. Find out more at
www.educateagainsthate.com.
Only eight financial penalties ordered
Since 2014, Tribunals have been able to
impose financial penalties of up to £5,000 on
employers who breach workers’ rights where
there is some form of “aggravating conduct”.
Despite this, only eight penalties have been
ordered and of these six remain unpaid.
Recruitment is not ‘name blind’
The Government has announced that a number
of large private and public sector organisations
(who together employ 1.8 million employees
in the UK) have committed to name-blind
recruitment processes following research which
showed that people with “white sounding”
names are nearly twice as likely to get call-backs
as those with “ethnic sounding” names. This
means that applicants’ names will not be visible
on application forms. It is hoped that this step
will help improve diversity.
Grandparents to get shared parental leave
The Government has announced that the
right to take shared parental leave will be
extended to grandparents. It is not yet known
if mothers will only be able to select one
person to share the leave with (which would be
relatively straightforward if this simply included
the option of selecting a grandparent rather
than their partner) or if grandparents can be
chosen as well as the partner (which would be
extremely complicated and potentially involve
three different employers).
Zero hours guidance published
The Government has published guidance for
employers on the use of zero hours contracts
which sets out when they should, or should not,
be used. Employers are not obliged to follow
this.
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