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Education Journal No.99 (2006-9) Editorial Vocational education moves centre stage. The inclusion in the Queen’s speech of the Further Education and Training Bill gives the Government an opportunity to tackle some of the long-standing weaknesses in the vocational education and skills area. Features section “Less Ado about Everything” Ofsted and the Commission for Social Care Inspection published the second round of Annual Performance Assessments (APA) for just over two thirds of local authorities in England. Meanwhile H. M. Chief Inspector for England wrote to all local authority chief executives about future inspections. |
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Care Matters Our children’s services editor, Chris Waterman, discusses the implications of the Government’s new Green Paper on children in care. Decade 1996-2006 In the latest in our series of decade retrospectives marking our tenth anniversary and 100th issue, John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of Schools and Colleges, looks back at how school leadership has changed over the past ten years. Children’s Health This month’s health column covers childhood obesity, addiction to television, the recent rise in cases of measles, Youth Offending Teams’ lack of healthcare workers, and underage sex. Higher Ground In a new regular column, John Izbicki casts an eye over recent events in higher education. This month he covers issues from the new science teaching and research facility at London Metropolitan University to Marie Antoinette’s lack of blame for causing the French Revolution. Overall, Not Good News from Wales Our Wales editor, Professor Ken Reid, writes about the issues that have dominated the educational headlines during the past month or so in Wales. Fun Page Media Watch Two city academies singled out as poorly performing schools; as many as 1,557 schools failing to provide a decent education in spite of government spending; Scottish research claiming that all five-year-olds should be screened for early signs of offending behaviour to prevent them from becoming criminals; and research claiming that badly designed classroom furniture has led to a rise in the number of teenagers with back problems. General section Conferences We report on the Goodison Group and FEdS Consultancy’s A Meeting of Minds seminar at Warwick University. Opinion As the nation once again marks Armistice Day, international consultant on adult literacy, Tom Sticht, from America, acknowledges the work of the Special Training Units that the Army put into operation to teach young soldiers how to read, write, and speak the English language. Reference section Document Reviews The documents reviewed this month are Care Matters: Transforming the Lives of Children and Young People in Care from the DfES; Progress with Student Teacher Placements from HMIE; and Science Teaching in Schools in Europe, Policies and Research from the Eurydice European Unit. Document Digest Reports Digest Reports from LEAs and CSAs, produced by EMIE at NFER, include those covering a framework for voluntary and independent organisations covering good practice in child protection in Birmingham; the education of children and young people in public care in Buckinghamshire; protocol and guidance for sharing information in Essex; and the Wave 1 Care Pathways Report in Reading. Research section Research Digest Research Notes Our research editor, Michael Marshall, looks at an evaluation of inspection reports on primary school attendance, by Professor Ken Reid of the Swansea Institute of Higher Education. The Impact of New Labour’s Education Policies on Classroom Practice at KS2 Professor Rosemary Webb and Graham Vulliamy of the School of Education, University of Manchester and Department of Educational Studies, University of York, discuss findings from the first phase of an ongoing research project into the impact on primary school teachers’ work of the New Labour government’s education policies. The research was commissioned by ATL. Short Research Reports Recommendations for earlier sex education; academics’ unhappiness at the level of bureaucracy; more evidence that fish oil can help control children’s behaviour; and the damaging effect of parents not reading to their children. Parliament section Two More Education Acts Become Law We report on the passing of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 and the Education and Inspections Act in October. Early Years Inquiry Report As the report of the Scottish Parliament’s Education Committee on early years provision is published, Arabella Hargreaves, editor of EPM Scotland, reports on a debate in the Scottish Parliament about its findings. Safeguarding Vulnerable Children in Wales Helen Grimmett, editor of EPM Wales/Cymru, reports on a debate on the Welsh Assembly Government’s response to Keeping Us Safe, the report of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Children Review. Parliamentary Questions Answers to written parliamentary questions from Westminster cover the proportion of schoolchildren who took part in inter-school sports competitions in each local authority in the last academic year, and the percentage of schoolchildren who received two hours of physical education or sport each week in each local education authority area in the last academic year. From the Scottish Parliament are figures for the number of special schools and rural schools closed, by local authority. From the Welsh Assembly there is a table giving the number of children with special needs emotional and behavioural problems, by LEA. Phoenix Investors in Families and the new Scottish Education Minister, Hugh Henry MSP. |