ISC Daily News Summary

Times
A comment in the Times on last week’s announcements by the Charity Commission.
Charity: can it begin at school? (Times)

Further coverage and comment on Alan Milburn’s report published earlier this week.
Social Mobility: Universities 'should be more flexible' (Daily Telegraph)
Alan Milburn: Middle classes being 'left behind' (Daily Telegraph)
Teaching the teachers (Independent)
Social Mobility: Academies programme 'should be expanded' (Daily Telegraph)
Class war (Times)
The door is half closed for our bright poor | Carol Midgley (Times)

All national newspapers
Ministerial meddling fuelled last year's SATs fiasco, MPs have found. Micro-management by Schools Secretary Ed Balls and his officials put pressure on the national testing body and led to 'confusion' over responsibilities, according to a crossparty Commons committee.
Balls's micro-management 'fuelled SATs chaos' (Daily Mail)
Interference from Ed Balls contributed to Sats fiasco, MPs report finds (Guardian)
Meddling by Ed Balls’s schools department is blamed for tests fiasco (Times)
Exam system ‘ruined by ministers’ (Daily Telegraph not online)
Balls’ department gets Sats blame (Financial Times now online)

Daily Telegraph
The Telegraph leads today with the news that education spending will be cut next year for the first time in more than two decades, according to Treasury figures. Despite Gordon Brown pledging to safeguard spending on schools and universities, government documents show that the total education budget will fall by £100 million after the next election.
Education spending to be cut by £100m despite Gordon Brown's pledge (Daily Telegraph)

All parents will be forced to sign "contracts" to ensure their children behave at school, the Government has announced. Pupils and their families will be required to agree to the deal - setting out minimum standards of behaviour and attendance - before the start of term. Contracts, known as Home School Agreements, will also establish parents' responsibilities for the first time.
All parents to sign 'behaviour contracts' (Daily Telegraph)

Daily Mail
Half of graduates who attended university after Labour came to power are too poor to pay back their student loans, it emerged today. The numbers failing to earn the £15,000 salary which triggers repayment have risen 160,000 in a year as graduates struggle to find lucrative work or are made redundant. Out of 1.4 million graduates who started university in 1998 or later, 702,000 are earning too little to pay back their loans - 49 per cent.
Half of university graduates too poor to pay back student loans after struggling to find lucrative jobs (Daily Mail)

India plans to open its higher education sector to foreign investment and some of the world's leading universities next year to help meet the growing skills requirements of millions of its young people.
India opens door to foreign universities (Financial Times)

Times
A swine flu co-ordinator may be appointed to advise the Government on how best to keep in touch with pupils in the event of school closures this autumn. Cobra, the emergency committee, is drawing up plans to use technology so that children’s education is not disrupted by shut-downs. Pupils without internet access could lose out because most of the plans rely on them using a broadband connection to reach worksheets and interact with their teachers.
Pupils may have lessons on the internet if swine flu continues (Times)

Daily Telegraph, Times, Independent
Access to the professions (Daily Telegraph)
Charity decisions (Times)
Shocking example of education today (Independent)

Joe Swift, 44, has been a presenter of Gardeners' World for 10 years. He speaks to the Independent Education Supplement about his schooldays.
Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Joe Swift, the garden designer and presenter of the BBC's Gardeners' World and Small Town Gardens - Profiles, People (Independent)

To read other articles in this week's Independent Education Supplement, click here:
Independent Education Supplement