ISC Daily News Summary

Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express

Children's Secretary Ed Balls is to ask the School Teachers Pay Review Board (STRB) to put forward a new system of 'rewards and incentives' for 500 new 'superheads', including some currently at grammar and faith schools. The system could see some head teachers earning up to £200,000 under plans to bring independent sector-style leadership and pay rates into state schools. Announcing his intentions, Mr Balls said: 'In the private sector, when you identify the best leadership, you put that leadership to work. We want to make sure the pay is there in schools in order that [heads] have got incentives.'

School 'superheads' to earn £200,000 a year (Times)
‘Superheads' to be lured by £200,000 wage deals (Daily Telegraph)
Superheads of failing schools could see salaries soaring to £200,000 (Daily Mail)
New superheads to earn £200,000 (Daily Express)

Country Life, Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard

The Country Life Spring 2008 guide to good schools, as referred to in yesterday's Daily News Summary, includes a league table of independent schools based on the 'perks' pupils receive, such as keeping pigs and sheep on school grounds. A large number of ISC schools are referred to in press coverage of this innovative ranking in the Daily Telegraph and Evening Standard. Headmaster of Tonbridge School, Tim Haynes, Second Master of Wellington College, Robin Dyer and Headmaster of Felstead School, Stephen Roberts, are quoted.

The Country Life top 50 schools (Country Life)
Pupils with the privilege to keep pigs (and a mistress) (Daily Telegraph)
Schools guide that reveals who can keep a goat or grow a beard (Evening Standard not online)

Today's TES includes a comment piece by former editor of the New Statesman and Independent on Sunday, Peter Wilby, discussing independent schools and the Charity Commission. The TES magazine features an interview with an anonymous independent school housemistress.

Real equality from the fields of Eton? It could just work (TES not online)
The drudge report (TES magazine not online)

Guardian, Daily Mail, Sun, Daily Mirror

Further coverage of the 'confusion' surrounding the government's diploma scheme, with the Guardian reporting that the number of pupils due to take the new qualification from September has been scaled down.

Number of pupils due to take new diplomas scaled down by a quarter (Guardian)
School diplomas: sheep and goats (Guardian)
Up to 40,000 pupils 'could be left with worthless diplomas' (Daily Mail)
Danger of diplomas (Daily Mail not online)
Diplomas 'a flop' (Sun)
Chaos warning for new school diploma (Daily Mirror)

TES, Independent, Daily Telegraph

The OCR exam board has put forward a series of proposals to develop its portfolio of GCSE syllabuses. Under the draft plans, pupils would get the chance to assess the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war as part of the history exam and answer questions on humanism as part of religious studies.

GCSEs in Bond and bombings (TES)
Terrorism and action movies for new GCSEs (TES not online)
Humanism to be added to GCSE religious studies (Independent)
Humanism to be part of religion GCSE (Daily Telegraph)

Daily Express, Guardian, Daily Mirror

A study by the Institute of Education (IoE) recommends that unruly children should get prizes for good behaviour instead of being punished for playing up in class. The research also suggests that separate social areas for younger and older pupils could make school-shy children more likely to attend school.

Rewards work better than punishments, pupil behaviour experts say (IoE)
Give naughty pupils prizes say the experts (Daily Express not online)
Play and study areas for shy pupils urged in report (Guardian)
Naughty children should be rewarded, say experts (Daily Mirror)

Independent, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, TES

The latest interim reports of the Cambridge University-led Primary Review suggest that a flurry of government education policy initiatives have led to children being viewed as 'targets and outputs' and taken the fun out of learning.

The Primary Review interim reports (Primary Review)
Primary schools devastated by 'moral panic' and 'policy hysteria' (Independent)
Fads, and a sense of failure (Independent)
Goverment policy has created 'impersonalised education' (Guardian)
Schools ruled by political 'whim' (Daily Telegraph not online)
Primaries are 'bedevilled by policy hysteria' (TES)

Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail

An 11-year-old boy in Merseyside was refused education for a year after a council wrongly accused his parents of lying about where they lived to get him into a better school. The local government om­buds­man has heavily criticised Wirral Council and ordered it to pay compensation.

Boy, 11, is denied education for a year by council (Daily Telegraph)
Boy missed year at school in battle over his address (Daily Mail)

Times

Proctors at Oxford University have fined graduating students more than £10,000 for their post-exam celebrations by sifting through students' Facebook pages and gathering evidence of 'disorderly behaviour'.

Rowdy students left with egg on their Facebooks (Times)

Times, Economist

'The teaching profession, through its unions' rigorous representation for equitable pay and working conditions, continues to be its own worst enemy.'

Teachers' pay (Times letters)
Truanting teachers (Economist)

Today's TES also includes articles on classrooms in supermarkets, the teachers' strike, and plans for all trainee teachers to join the General Teaching Council (GTC) register. This week's Times Higher Education includes articles on DIUS student juries and unrealistic prospectuses.

Independent, Daily Telegraph

'Geek speak' or 'Nerdic' has become the fastest growing language in Europe according to research carried out by pixmania.com, as new words are invented to describe technological advances. Experts claim about 100 new words are added to the language of technology every year - three times the number of new words making it into the Oxford English Dictionary.

‘Nerdic' language is fastest-growing in Europe (Independent)
'Nerdic' is fastest-growing language (Daily Telegraph)