ISC Daily News Summary

Daily Telegraph
The weekend section of the Daily Telegraph continues its new series comparing two local state and independent schools. This weekend Beneden School in Kent was profiled.
Town vs gown (Daily Telegraph)

A number of newspapers have reported on the news this weekend that a British schoolgirl who fell 30ft from a hotel window in Venice was saved by a canopy that broke her fall. ISC would like to extend its best wishes to Su Cangatin-Ripley, a pupil at Emanuel School, London.
Choirgirl saved by canopy in Venice hotel fall (Daily Telegraph)
Horror fall of school trip Su, 16 (Daily Mirror)
16-year-old Su Cangatin-Ripley falls from hotel window ‘broken by canopy' (Times)
Hotel plunge choirgirl cheats death after bouncing off canvas canopy on school trip to Venice (Daily Mail)

Independent
‘You report that some universities are to shun A-levels in favour of their own admissions tests (17 July). Such entrance exams will give private-school pupils yet another advantage over state-school pupils in winning places at the better universities. Private schools have both the resources and the time to train the pupils to pass these exams.' A letter from Independent reader Espen Eie Bowen, Swansea.
Entrance tests favour private school pupils (Independent)

All national newspapers
Extensive coverage over the weekend and today on the SATs results debacle. The school inspection system could grind to a halt because it cannot depend on this year's test results, head teachers have said. The National Association of Head Teachers, which has been inundated with complaints from schools, says the validity of the Standard Assessment Test (Sat) results is in serious doubt. This calls into question the publication of league tables by the Government, which rank primary and secondary schools according to the results, and the whole Ofsted inspection system, which relies heavily on the data.

In addition, the American testing firm responsible for the exam marking fiasco is expected to lose its £156m contract, potentially landing the taxpayer with a multi-million pound compensation bill. Lawyers for the government's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) are negotiating with ETS to ensure the firm's deal ends, if possible by mutual consent, once the debacle has been resolved. Ed Balls, the schools secretary, is not intervening directly but sources say he is keen that the talks should extricate him from the embarrassment of having to compensate ETS for ending its five-year contract early. Such a deal could also mean that ETS escapes having to pay compensation for the delays in marking standard assessment tests (Sats), taken by 1.2m pupils aged 11 and 14.
Talks on Sats (Financial Times)
500,000 pupils to sit new tests as heads scorn Sats (Independent)
Full scale of Sats fiasco revealed (Times)
US exam firm to get the sack (Times)
Ofsted inspections in doubt after Sats fiasco (Sunday Telegraph)
Sats chaos company ETS could be sacked (Daily Telegraph)
SATs still unmarked (Daily Mirror)
Incompetence, chicanery and class hatred - why Mr Balls failed his SATs (Daily Mail)
500,000 children face exam resits because 'SATs system is on brink of collapse' (Daily Mail)
Testing Times - comment (Daily Mail not online)
Passing the buck - comment (Daily Mail not online)

Guardian
The Guardian front page today reports that the biggest school building programme in a generation is on course to produce billions of pounds worth of "mediocre" facilities, an audit conducted by the government's own architecture watchdog has revealed. An estimated eight out of 10 designs for secondary schools proposed under the £35bn Building Schools for the Future (BSF) initiative are "mediocre" or "not yet good enough" and less than a fifth are considered to be "good" or "excellent". Among the problems discovered in a detailed review of 40 proposed designs for schools across the country are bullying hotspots in secluded yards, noisy open plan areas which make teaching difficult and classrooms which are too dark or prone to overheating on sunny afternoons.
The findings from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe) were released following a freedom of information request by the Guardian and represent the latest blow to a flagship New Labour programme which Gordon Brown had promised would deliver schools that are "the best equipped in the world for 21st-century learning".
£35bn revamp will produce generation of mediocre schools (Guardian)

Letters - Sats results reveal true cost of education reforms (Daily Telegraph)
World-class apprenticeship schemes should be maintained and promoted (Financial Times)
Chris Woodhead: Answer the question (Sunday Times)
School tests and girls (Times)
The Sats-marking fiasco will lumber schools and children with false targets (Daily Telegraph)

Most national newspapers
Widespread coverage on the news that more girls aged 17 to 18 are to be offered vaccination against human papilloma virus (HPV), a leading cause of cervical cancer. Dawn Primarolo, the Public Health Minister, said that an extra 300,000 girls could be included in the programme because it has chosen to use a cheaper vaccine.
More girls offered cervical cancer vaccine (Times)
Cervical cancer vaccine extended to 300,000 more teenage girls (Daily Telegraph)
Gardasil: a cancer jab I don't regret (Times)
Sixth-form girls to be given sex-disease cancer jab (Sunday Times)
Girls 17 and 18 get cervical cancer vaccine (Independent not online)

Daily Mail
School uniforms are being expanded to above-average adult sizes to meet soaring levels of childhood obesity. The high street chain Bhs has extended its 'generous fit' range because many pupils can no longer squeeze into traditional-sized clothes. Dresses will now go up to size 18, larger than the average among grown-up Britons.
Shops sell size 18 school uniforms as child obesity soars (Daily Mail)

Times
Students are running up substantial debts but earning less than they expect on graduating, research indicates. The authors of a report say that government ambitions to push half of all school-leavers into higher education could be to blame for the mismatch between expectations and reality. On average, students misjudge their starting salaries by more than £2,000, according to the research led by John Jerrim, a PhD student at Southampton University's department of social statistics. New graduates were paid an average of £16,600, rather than the £18,600 that they had expected. Some had been ambitious enough to anticipate a six-figure pay packet.
Debt-ridden students get reality pay check (Times)

Times, Daily Star
Young Muslims are to be taught British citizenship in mosque schools to stop them becoming extremists. Trials of the new classes will begin in several cities at the start of the new term in September. The initiative, designed to show youngsters there is no conflict between their religion and being British, was part of a package of measures unveiled last Friday.
Ministers try again to solve Islamic radicalism (Times)
Young Brit muslims in class war (Daily Star)

Financial Times
City personnel managers who think applicants' CVs look too good to be true may be right after all, according to research published on Monday that reveals high rates of "embellishment" and downright "false information". The survey of almost 4,000 job applications by graduates underlines the pressure they are under amid sharp competition for high-paid finance jobs, particularly as the pool of people educated at university increases. Graduates with less than a 2.1 face an especially high temptation to hide the mediocrity of their academic achievement because many large employers reject them before even the first-interview stage - sometimes through automated computer systems that ruthlessly sift them out.
A degree of creativity on CVs (Financial Times)

A school's decision to reward well-behaved pupils with chocolate has been hailed a success by the headteacher. No children had been excluded since the controversial half-term treats began three years ago. Previously, there were 65 exclusion days in one year at Redcastle Furze Primary in Thetford, Norfolk.
Choc reward (Daily Mirror not online)