The past two years have been "really tough" for UK independent schools, Anne Cotton, chair of HMC (The Heads' Conference), and head of King's College School, Wimbledon, has said. Addressing delegates at the association's annual conference in Manchester yesterday, Dr Cotton outlined the pressures facing the sector, including demographic change, geopolitical instability, technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and increasing financial costs. "I am conscious that for some schools, for some regions, the pressures are profound", she said, before urging colleagues to look outwards beyond their schools and the independent sector "to the changing world" that young people were going into. Speaking as the second anniversary of Labour's VAT on fees policy approaches in January, Dr Cotton also paid tribute to HMC CEO Dr Simon Hyde, who has announced he is stepping down from the role next year after more than six years. She said Dr Hyde had "worked tirelessly" to modernise and strengthen the HMC and better serve its 400 members in the UK and overseas. School Management Plus. 

Lecturers at the University of Edinburgh have begun five-week industrial action as part of a long-running dispute over cuts to budgets and compulsory redundancies. The dispute stems from £140 million of cuts announced by the university last year, with members of the University and Colleges union (UCU), including university staff and technicians, set to remain on strike until 30 October. The union said the cuts could result in 1,800 job losses, and hundreds of staff had already lost work when contracts were not renewed. English literature student Alice Suggett, 18, told BBC News she felt "completely torn with the strikes" (which come a week after lecturers at the University of Dundee began five weeks of action over compulsory redundancies) but she does empathise with the lecturers. By Cameron Buttle. 

Staff at the University of Nottingham have announced they are to go on strike on 30 September and 1 October and plan to carry out "sustained strike action" from 5 October to 11 December over Future Nottingham restructuring plans. Speaking to BBC News, Zoe Monroe, who studies English literature with creative writing, said the industrial action was not what students had signed up for, and the strikes would be "highly disruptive". Nick Clare, University and College Union UCU branch president, said that while staff do not want to strike, they "will not stand by while colleagues lose their jobs and whole areas of teaching and research are dismantled unnecessarily". By Will Jefford.

Screen time could damage children more than being born into poverty, analysis led by academics at the University of Calgary in Canada has found. The study of more than 2.8 million children revealed that heavier screen use was linked to poorer school performance, weaker language skills and more emotional and behavioural problems. Researchers, who examined screen use such as gaming, social media and streaming in 64 countries, concluded that longer periods of digital and social media exposure were associated with difficulties in some areas of development and mental health, but not others. "Taken together, the findings suggest that screen use may represent one potentially modifiable factor associated with children's wellbeing across multiple domains", they concluded. By Laura Donnelly, The Telegraph. 

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.