ISC Daily News Summary

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Guardian, Daily Telegraph, BBC News Online
Widespread reports today that the government is to abandon the most significant education reform of the New Labour era in order to end the centralised control of schools and grant headteachers more powers.
Labour to junk Tony Blair's flagship school reform (Guardian)
Schools to get more freedom over lessons (Daily Telegraph)
Key schools policy to be ditched (BBC News Online)

A selection of articles in today’s TES:
'Extend 10k bonus to primaries, too' (TES)
Oh joy, swine flu plus Ofsted (TES)
Sats in hands of below-par markers (TES)

Scotsman, Financial Times
More than £2.2 billion of student loans have still to be repaid, figures revealed yesterday. The outstanding student loan balance at the end of 2008-9 was £2,227.4 million – the highest amount ever and 9 per cent more than the previous year. This is the total amount of cash still to be repaid since the introduction of student loans. However, the amount of money that was loaned to students by the Student Loans Company last year fell. The figures revealed higher education students received £191.3m during 2008-9 – 10 per cent less than the previous year.
Outstanding student loan debt the highest ever at £2.2 billion (Scotsman)
Students rush for government loans (Financial Times not online)

Times
Tens of thousands of students graduating this year will have to join the dole queue, according to research that paints a grim picture for the class of 2009. This year’s graduates — the first to pay full tuition fees — face a bleak job market with a 20 per cent reduction in graduate vacancies, said High Fliers Research, a market research company. It conducts a survey every year involving 16,000 final-year students — one in five of the total — at the top 30 universities.
Jobs shortage 'will see 80,000 new graduates unemployed' (Times)

Times, Guardian, BBC News Online
Jewish schools may have to change admissions rules after the Appeal Court held that ethnic tests of Jewishness amount to racial discrimination. A London school, the Jews' Free School (JFS), rejected a boy whose mother's conversion to Judaism it did not recognise. Faith schools may discriminate on religious grounds but the Court of Appeal held that this involved a test of ethnicity - which is unlawful.
Jewish school admissions unlawful (BBC News Online)
Jewish school broke race laws by refusing boy whose mother converted (Times)
Faith school's admissions policy discriminatory, says appeal court (Guardian)

Daily Telegraph
Schools in swine flu "hot spots" will no longer close, ministers have announced, as they warned that Britain could face tens of thousands of cases a week by the autumn. The change in policy comes as the Government admitted that pockets across England have so many cases of swine flu that they can no longer contain the infection. In flu "hot spots" schools will no longer be closed and doctors will no longer try to contact all those who have come into contact with the virus.
Schools with swine flu will not close (Daily Telegraph)

Letters
Letters - Exclusions are not easy but are necessary (Times)

BBC News Online
It's exam season. In a spirit of solidarity with frazzled school children, the BBC is inviting readers to see how they would fare in a series of curriculum tests. Questions are of a GCSE standard and supplied by BBC Bitesize. This week it's English Literature. Turn over your papers now.
7 questions on GCSE English literature (BBC News Online)