This week's Friday Feature highlights keen skier Jasper, a Year 7 pupil at Bolton School Boys’ Division. Jasper flew out to Austria at Christmas to train with Team Evolution, with some very impressive national and international results! He won first place in four Super-G races at the international Nations Cup, and at the national Ambition Championships he earned first place in Slalom 1, second place in Giant Slalom 2, and seventh place in both Slalom 2 and Giant Slalom 1. This is a wonderful achievement, particularly since Super-G Skiing is a new discipline for him.

Jasper started skiing recreationally at the age of four and then began race training and competing when he was in Year 3. He has gone from strength to strength ever since, competing nationally and internationally in Years 4, 5 and 6. Over the summer, he competed in 13 indoor races and secured podiums in all competitions, including a win in the overall Copper Horse GBR Series, as well as taking the English Indoor Champion and British Indoor Champion titles. He has ambitions of one day racing in the World Cup and then the Olympics, and is currently looking for sponsors to support these long-term goals.

If you have a good news story you would like to share with us, please email [email protected] to be considered for inclusion.

Teachers are to be given training in special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) under a £200 million government programme aimed at strengthening inclusion across the education system. Open to all teaching staff, the training courses will focus on adapting lessons for children with visual impairments, speech and language difficulties and other additional learning needs. The SEND code of practice will also be updated, requiring inclusion training for staff in every nursery, school and college. By Georgia Lambert, The Times. 

Extra SEND funding for schools and councils will also come with the upcoming white paper, the government has said. In response to a written question in the House of Commons, schools minister Georgia Gould confirmed that the paper would "set out additional funding for both schools and local authorities to drive forward much-needed reform of the SEN and disability system". Ms Gould said there was no "exact date" for the white paper’s publication when questioned on its timing at the government’s final SEND roundtable on Wednesday. By Ruth Lucas, Schools Week.

In an article in Tes, Cathie Paine, CEO of multi-academy trust REAch2, explains why SEND training for all is a critical step towards inclusion. "If we truly want to shift the dial on SEND, we must invest in the people who make inclusion happen: teachers, leaders, teaching assistants, early years practitioners and every adult who shapes a child’s experience of school," she writes.

Mental health concerns and dissatisfaction with school and SEND support are driving more pupils into home education, according to Department for Education (DfE) figures. There were 126,000 children in elective home education at the October 2025 census, up almost 13 per cent from 111,700 the previous autumn. Mental health was cited by 16 per cent of families as the main reason, up from 14 per cent in 2024, while general school dissatisfaction rose from seven to eight per cent and SEND dissatisfaction from three to four per cent. By Freddie Whittaker, Schools Week.

The Independent Schools Council (ISC) monitors the national and educational press in order to keep independent schools up-to-date with relevant education news. The DNS is a service primarily for schools in membership of ISC associations, although other interested parties can choose to sign-up. We endeavour to include relevant news and commentary and, wherever possible, notable public letters. Where capacity allows, we may include links to ISC blogs, press statements and information about school or association events. News stories are selected based on their relevance to the independent sector as a whole. Editorial control of the DNS remains solely with the ISC.

Sign-up to the email service is available on our website.

Members can contact the ISC if they know in advance of news, letters or opinions that are likely to feature in the media, or are aware of existing coverage which they would like to see featured in the DNS.

Headlines and first-line summaries are written by the ISC with the link directing to the source material. You should read and comply with the terms and conditions of the websites to which we link.