According to The Times, ministers hope that half term next week will bring down the number of COVID outbreaks in schools and help avoid the need to reinstate tighter anti-COVID measures. By Chris Smyth.

The Government has announced that nearly half a million more laptops and tablets will be made available to schoolchildren stuck at home due to COVID disruption as part of a new £126 million funding package. The Department for Education (DfE) has said that the additional devices will boost access to lessons for disadvantaged students and will keep them "connected to their classmates and teachers". By Amy Gibbons, Tes.

New government data on school absences during the spring term of 2021 has revealed that 57.5 per cent of physical school sessions were missed because of partial school closures caused by COVID between the start of term and the beginning of the Easter holidays. By Freddie Whittaker, Schools Week.

The DfE has written to schools requesting them to submit performance data on how they are spending school-led catch-up tutoring grants from the first week back after half term. Schools will now also be asked to report the data on catch-up tutoring on a monthly basis to help the DfE "understand the roll-out of the programme". By Catherine Lough, Tes.

Bath and North East Somerset Council has issued guidance to local schools urging them to instruct pupils to start wearing masks again and to cancel assemblies in response to a surge in infections. By Will Hazell, iNews.

According to official statistics from the Department for Education, in 2019-20 about 40 per cent of 19-year-olds in England left school with no level three qualifications, which include advanced apprenticeships, BTECs and A-levels. By Will Hazell, iNews.

Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, has raised concerns about the teaching of white privilege in schools, telling MPs that the Government is against “the teaching of contested political ideas as if they are accepted fact”. By Vincent Wood, The Independent.

The Welsh Government has published plans to offer cash incentives to recruit more black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) teachers in Wales. The education and Welsh language minister, Jeremy Miles, said the current number of ethnic minority teachers was "simply not good enough". BBC News.

An investigation by Schools Week has found that support for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in seven of eight areas visited by Ofsted this year had “significant areas of weakness”. By John Dickens.

Tes takes a closer look at changes to school funding over the last decade, including data from the Institute of Fiscal Studies that found that between 2009-10 and 2018-19, spending per pupil fell by 8 per cent in real terms in England. By Catherine Lough.

An analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that Scotland has the highest spending per pupil in the UK. BBC News.

The Government has been urged to pause education funding reforms after a report from the Commons Public Accounts Committee found that the changes would result in a 1.2 per cent drop in real terms per pupil funding in the most deprived fifth of schools. By Sally Weale, The Guardian.

According to Tes, the report also calls on the DfE to set out a timetable for "meeting its commitment to a £30,000 starting salary for teachers, along with details of how this will be funded". By Catherine Lough.

Following concerns about pupil privacy, at least two schools in England are reversing plans to install facial recognition systems in canteens. By James Carr, Schools Week.

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