ISC Daily News Summary

School leaders have written to the education secretary urging him to keep COVID tests freely available to parents, pupils and teachers to minimise the disruption to this year's GCSE and A-level exams. By John Roberts, Tes.

Robert Halfon, chairman of the Education Select Committee, has warned that the impact of England's school closures during the pandemic is leading to greater inequality, adding: "This is incredibly serious, children have lost months of learning, disadvantaged children are between five to eight months behind in maths." By Branwen Jeffreys, BBC News.

iNews outlines the most recent guidance on what to do if a child catches COVID. By Jaymi McCann.

Eton College is partnering with Star Academies to open three selective sixth form free schools in Middlesbrough, Oldham and Dudley, which were all classified as education “cold spots” in the Government's Levelling Up paper. Star Academies chief executive Sir Hamid Patel said: "We are confident that our colleges will produce extraordinary, transformative outcomes, not only for their students but for the wider communities, too." By Catherine Lough, The Independent.

The Guardian reports that schools and teachers are “buckling under the strain” of supporting the growing number of schoolchildren developing mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. By Denis Campbell.

The Government will launch a teacher training course aimed at engineers to encourage them to retrain as physics teachers. By Nicola Woolcock, The Times.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), senior teachers and school leaders England's state schools will continue to endure a decade-long pay freeze if the Government’s plans for teacher salaries are adopted. By Richard Adams, The Guardian.

Ministers have been challenged over plans to award the £121 million flagship Institute of Teaching contract to a coalition of four leading academy trusts - the Harris Federation, Outwood Grange Academies Trust (OGAT), Star Academies and Oasis Community Learning. By John Dickens, Schools Week.

According to Schools Week, "very worrying" new research has shown that almost one in 10 Year 11 pupils nationally are still absent from school with just two months to go until the start of GCSE exams. By Freddie Whittaker.