ISC Daily News Summary

Speaking to Schools Week, Stephen Morgan, shadow education minister, explained that a new Labour government would not delay in bringing in "ambitious" education legislation in an attempt to tackle its concerns over academy accountability. Labour has also vowed to leave well-performing academy trusts alone, suggesting a hybrid model of academies and local authority maintained schools will remain under its leadership. By Freddie Whittaker.

Schools Week also reports that Labour would reform the apprenticeship levy so it can be spent on other forms of training, with plans to turn the policy into a “growth and skills levy” if it wins the next election. By Billy Camden.

The Government has clarified the responsibilities of the new education ministers following Liz Truss's reshuffle. The remit of schools, children and families are to be shared between new ministers Kelly Tolhurst and Jonathan Gullis, while Baroness Barran and Andrea Jenkyns have retained their roles as academies and skills minister respectively. By Freddie Whittaker, Schools Week.

Writing in Tes, Melvyn Roffe, principal of George Watson's College and chair of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC), calls for the Scottish reform programme to balance the aims of the curriculum and what qualifications deliver. Mr Roffe says: "Even before COVID-19, there were disparities in standards across subjects at the same SCQF level, and now those disparities are even more obvious and much worse."

AQA, England’s largest exam board, is planning to introduce more diverse texts from September 2023. Three new texts and a poetry collection will be added to its English literature course as part of its "commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion in our English qualifications", while several texts have been removed. By Matilda Martin, Tes.

The Times reports that overseas students will soon provide a larger proportion of university income in Scotland than that invested by the Scottish Funding Council. The biggest source of overseas undergraduates in Scotland is China, with 17,165 full-time placings in 2020-21. By Marc Horne.

Simon Lock, the digital editor at Tes, explores the benefits of international school alumni networks. He writes that keeping in contact with past pupils "can help make them more likely to recommend the school to others".

Kate Parker talks to experts about the impact of low-level classroom disruption. An article in Tes cites six approaches to tackling misbehaviour from the Education Endowment Foundation's (EEF) report, 'Improving Behaviour in Schools'.