ISC Daily News Summary

Schools Week reports the Government is getting closer to announcing more details about next year's exams but will not keep to its pledge to communicate the plans to the sector in November.

According to Schools Week, Gavin Williamson has not provided the correspondence and minutes of meetings between his department and Ofqual in the build-up to the 2020 "exams debacle" despite being told to do so by education select committee chair Robert Halfon. By John Dickens.

Provisional data released by the Department for Education yesterday showed a greater rise in the proportion of A* grades awarded to independent school candidates this summer compared to the increase seen in the state sector. By Amy Gibbons, Tes.

A technical report published by Ofqual has concluded there was “no evidence that either the calculated grades or the final grades awarded this year were systematically biased against candidates with protected characteristics or from disadvantaged backgrounds”. By Freddie Whittaker, Schools Week.

Jane Prescott, headmistress at Portsmouth High School, has written to The Telegraph warning against a proposal to announce which topics will be in exams in advance of them taking place. The letter can be found at the end of the page.

The NEU is urging the UK Statistics Authority to look into why the DfE has not published data on teacher attendance this term. By John Roberts, Tes.

Tes reports on proposals in Scotland to expand the school Christmas holidays as a way to counter the spread of COVID-19.

In Wales, the UCAC teaching union has written a letter to education minister Kirsty Williams saying schools should close on 11 December, with lessons moved online. By Bethan Lewis, BBC News.

David Woodgate, the chief executive officer of the Independent Schools’ Bursars Association (ISBA), has said the TPS and financial threats were prompting more independent schools to start "putting the way they do business under the microscope and challenging a lot of givens". By Jo Golding, IE Today.

The Treasury has said the deadline for the policy to raise teacher starting salaries to £30,000 to come into effect has been pushed back to 2024. By Freddie Whittaker, Schools Week.

Ed Vainker, CEO of Reach Foundation, writes in Tes about the results of a new report by The Royal Foundation - based on Ipsos MORI research - which asked the general public for their views on the early years.

IE Today has published its end of year review of the sector, in which it asks four independent school heads to look back over 2020. By Jo Golding.