Following recent analysis by the Information Commissioner’s Office, which found that one in four schools experienced a cybersecurity incident in the last year, managing director of IRIS Education Simon Freeman outlines the risks posed by email and advises schools on how best to navigate them. "The criminals targeting school finances are organised, patient and persistent. School leaders need to be too," he writes. Schools Week.

Teachers should be given a seven per cent pay rise over the next three years in a bid to avoid staff shortages, the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) has said. The suggested pay rise is higher than ministers' proposed 6.5 per cent, but the think tank says it is needed in order to improve teacher recruitment and retention. Jack Worth, education workforce lead at the NFER, said the government "must continue to make the profession attractive", which "includes increases to teachers' pay that match or exceed wider earnings growth and further progress on reducing teacher workloads". By Jabed Ahmed, Tes. 

Playing along with dolls can help boys and girls develop more sophisticated imaginations and better social skills, compared with children who play on electronic devices, according to research by psychologists at Cardiff University and King's College London. They found that those who were given dolls gained a richer appreciation of others' beliefs and feelings, as opposed to the children given a tablet full of video games. The researchers speculated that the improvements could be down to the greater levels of social interaction and using "internal state language" to describe the dolls' possible thoughts or emotions. By Richard Adams, The Guardian.

Strict phone bans at school are not a "silver bullet", and more is needed to address the harmful effects of young people's screen time, new research from academics at the University of Birmingham has found. The study, which involved in-depth interviews with pupils, parents, and teachers across seven secondary schools, comes after ministers said mobile phones "have no place in classrooms". Professor Victoria Goodyear, the study's chief investigator, told BBC News the study does not say "don't ban phones in schools", but that "school phone policies alone are not enough to tackle the harms associated with phones and social media use". The broadcaster spoke to staff and pupils from Brownhills Ormiston Academy about the phone ban the school introduced last October, following more than a decade of the school having a "not seen, not heard" policy. By Hope Rhodes.

London is the hardest place in England to find nursery places for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), according to Coram Family and Childcare's annual survey. The charity found only nine per cent of electoral wards in Inner London have sufficient provision for children with SEND in the early years, while the next hardest-hit region is the North East, where 33 per cent of wards have enough places, followed by the East Midlands with 38 per cent. Commenting on the findings, Lydia Hodges, head of Coram, said the government's upcoming SEND reforms must have early years "at their heart" to ensure children with SEND "do not miss out". The article is accompanied by a map of England showing where SEND provision is hardest to find. By Connie Dimsdale, iNews. 

Shadow education minister Saqib Bhatti submitted two written questions to the education secretary in the House of Commons. In the first, he asked how many pupils left independent schools in 2024 compared with 2025, and how this compares with the estimated figure of 3,000 pupils. Mr Bhatti subsequently asked how many independent schools closed in the same period.

Responding to both questions, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Olivia Bailey said: "There were 129 private school closures between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2025. In 2024, there were 58 closures and in 2025 there were 71 closures. The government does not collect pupil-level data from private schools." Hansard.

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