We round-up the latest news affecting colleges.
Update on Brazel case
Many colleges were concerned to learn they weren’t giving term-time staff sufficient holiday following the ruling in Brazel v The Harpur Trust.
Last month, we reported that the school had lodged an application asking for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. We now know that the Court of Appeal has rejected that application.
That’s not the end of the story, and the school has made an application to the Supreme Court asking for permission to appeal. We don’t yet know when that application will be considered, but we’ll keep you updated.
Charity warns that teachers are living in sheds and using food banks
The Education Support Partnership has warned that many teaching staff don’t earn enough to meet their basic living expenses.
The charity provides emergency grants to teaching staff and says that demand for cash handouts for housing has surged by 67% over the last two years. It also says that it’s noticed a rise in the number of teachers asking for help to pay for school uniforms for their own children and who use food banks.
The majority of applications are from teachers in the southeast of England where housing costs are particularly high.
Nearly one in five 16-24 year olds say there are unhappy
A report published by the Department of Education State of the nation 2019: children and young people’s wellbeing investigates whether children, and those aged 16 to 24, are happy. It also provides an in-depth analysis of psychological wellbeing in teenage girls.
The report highlights that while the majority of children and young people report being relatively happy with their lives, nearly a fifth of young people aren’t. It indicates that wellbeing declines as children and young people get older.
The report also found that the emotional wellbeing of teenage girls was more likely to be negatively impacted by bullying, compared with teenage boys. It says that spending time with friends and getting enough sleep benefits teenage girls, and that social media doesn’t have a significant effect on their psychological health.
Think tank says career ambitions ‘already limited by age of seven’
An international think tank says that talent is “being wasted” because of ingrained stereotyping about social background, gender and race.
The OECD says that children begin making assumptions about what type of people do certain jobs while they are still in primary school. It says there are only minimal changes in attitudes towards career options between the ages of seven and 17, and that young people generally only consider working in jobs they’re familiar with.
The organisation says that it will increase the number of people who go into schools to talk about their jobs and career paths to help children see what’s possible.
Colleges are struggling to cope with ‘off rolled’ GCSE students
According to research undertaken by the Association of Colleges, colleges are struggling to meet the needs of a growing number of students who have been excluded, off rolled or home schooled during their GCSE years amid ‘insufficient’ funding.
Its report indicates that staff are given inadequate handover information about teenagers who have dropped out of school between the ages of 14 and 16 and arrive with complex needs.
It recommends:
- Additional funding to bring post-16 provision in line with funding rates for pre-16 alternative provision
- Formulating agreed guidance or protocols regarding information sharing between pre and post-16 providers
- A fully funded third year for all students (not just those progressing to T Levels) who need some kind of transition provision at the start of their FE experience
- An Individual Learning Record that identifies students who were out of school during KS4 to help track funding and progress.
The scale of the problem appears to be increasing. Analysis conducted by the Educational Policy Institute think tank earlier this year found that one in 10 secondary school pupils in a year group are removed from the rolls without explanation. More than 61,000 pupils out of the cohort who sat their GCSEs in 2017 experienced an unexplained exit at some point during their secondary school, and two out of five never returned to school again. The report also indicates that large academy trusts (those that run at least 10 schools) have higher than average rates of children disappearing.
Leaving EU’s Erasmus student exchange scheme will hit disadvantaged college students
The Association of Colleges has published research showing that 94% of colleges couldn’t offer their students the same chance to complete a placement abroad without Erasmus+ or a post-Brexit replacement programme.
Since 2017, over 100 UK colleges have benefited from funding under the scheme with 17,000 placements delivered.
The AoC said that unless Britain stays in Erasmus+ or replaces it with another scheme, overseas opportunities will only be available to families who can afford it because college budgets have been stretched by a decade of cuts.
Read more – November 2019
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