ISC Daily News Summary

UK pupils have again ranked highly in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) science, reading and maths tests, which are sat every three years by hundreds of thousands of teenagers across the globe. The UK's performance remained steady, ranking below the highest-performing countries, including Singapore, Estonia and parts of China, but above the US, Australia and other major European nations. Schools minister Georgia Gould said ministers wanted to "build on" the positive results and "go further so all young people leave school with strong literacy and numeracy". By Branwen Jeffreys, BBC News.

A detailed report on the Pisa rankings is also published in The Times, by Oliver Wright, Georgia Lambert and Oisín Cahalane. In its summary of the assessment's key findings, Schools Week reports that a gender gap has opened up in science, with boys outperforming girls. By Jack Dyson.

In a written question in the House of Commons, Conservative MP Sir James Cleverly asked the chancellor, further to the answer on an earlier question relating to fees and charges at independent schools, whether any assessment has been carried out since the changes to (a) business rates and (b) VAT on fees were introduced. Responding, James Murray, Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster General, referred to the government's Tax Impact and Information Note (TIIN), and repeated ministers' claims that the VAT and business rates reforms aim to raise some £1.8 billion a year by 2029/30 before adding that their 2025 re-costing increased this estimate by around £40 million a year. Hansard.

Writing in The Telegraph, journalist Kate Freud explains her difficult decision to send one child to independent school and another to state school amid rising fees. Her article explores the financial and emotional impact of giving siblings different educational experiences, and whether fairness means treating children equally or choosing what works best for each child. "Perhaps the real lesson isn't that one system is better than the other. It's that childhood isn't measured by the name on a school gate, but by whether children feel valued, supported and confident enough to make the most of the opportunities they're given," she concludes.

Headteachers are having to manage the inappropriate use of pupil images in schools, with 49 per cent of the 500 heads who responded to a survey by safeguarding platform Aidos saying they had dealt with a child's image being misused, manipulated or used in a blackmail attempt. From the start of the academic year, new guidance on keeping young people safe in education says schools must treat incidents involving artificial intelligence (AI)-generated sexual images of children as a safeguarding issue. Welcoming more support for schools, Pepe Di'Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "This is an area in which new vulnerabilities can quickly emerge." By Ruth Lucas, Schools Week. 

Prince George starts his first day at Eton College today, following in the footsteps of his father, the Prince of Wales, and his uncle, the Duke of Sussex. Before enrolling at the school, George, 13, was educated at Lambrook, a prep school in Berkshire. By Toby Jones, The Independent.