ISC Daily News Summary

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has approved the Moderna COVID vaccine for children aged 12 to 17, weeks after the Pfizer jab was given the green light for the same age group. By Ben Quinn, The Guardian.

According to research by a Canadian public health agency, babies and toddlers are more likely than teenagers to spread COVID to other members of their household. By Charlie Mitchell, The Times.

The Department for Education (DfE) has updated its contingency framework for schools to include new COVID case thresholds that could prompt "extra action", but it will be up to education leaders to decide whether to use them. By Freddie Whittaker, Schools Week.

BBC News reports on some of the summer schools that have been taking place across the country, helping pupils to catch up on lost learning.

The Scottish Government has been accused of being "unwilling to give up control over people's lives", after unveiling plans to extend its ability to impose lockdowns, close schools and require people to wear face coverings. By Simon Johnson, The Telegraph.

According to Tes, Number 10 is discussing replacing alphabetical A-level grades with a numerical system in two years' time as a way of controlling grade inflation. By Catherine Lough.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that colleges and sixth forms in England need an extra £570 million to manage "additional challenges created by fast rises in student numbers and the need to help pupils catch up on lost learning". BBC News.

The National Association of Head Teachers has said that the DfE's focus on addressing disruptive behaviour in schools "while welcome, risks creating the public impression that such disruption represents the majority of settings, and this is both inaccurate and unhelpful". By Charlotte Santry, Tes.

The University of Cambridge has warned it will stop training teachers if the DfE moves forward with "flawed" reforms to initial teacher training. By Will Hazell, iNews.

According to attainment scores featured in The Times, one third of Scottish primary schools saw declining performance among pupils entering high school in the space of three years. By Mark McLaughlin. A separate article in the paper reports a quarter of Scottish pupils enter secondary education with a poor understanding of reading, writing and numbers. By Mark McLaughlin.

Keir Bloomer, convener of the Royal Society of Edinburgh's education committee and a founding architect of Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence, writes in The Times stating: "Teacher time is being wasted in contributing to the compilation of tables that pose as performance information but lack reliability."

Lindsay Paterson, professor of education policy at the University of Edinburgh, writes in The Times arguing: "We should be cautious about inferring from these statistics anything about how many pupils leave primary with adequate attainment, because we can't be sure that the teacher judgments in one school mean the same as another."