What does the January 2017 school census tell us about North East schools?

Today saw the release of annual data from the school census. This one was conducted in January 2017 and gives a snapshot of the nation's schools. The data shows that, whilst the number of schools in the North East is decreasing, the number of pupils is increasing. It also shows that the region has the …

Greening: No school to lose out under National Funding Formula

Education Secretary Justine Greening has told parliament that the government is committed to ensuring that no school loses money under the National Funding Formula. Greening confirmed that the government intended to stick to her party's manifesto pledge that "no school has its budget cut as a result of the new formula". Promises of fairer funding …

Schools given additional grounds for appeal at GCSE and A-level

Ofqual has announced that schools in England will "have a second chance to challenge GCSE, AS, A level and project results if they have concerns about marking errors". The announcement on Wednesday (28 June) adds to schools' existing right to appeal results on the grounds that an exam board hasn't followed its own procedures. The …

Mental Health First Aid training for every secondary school by 2020

The government has pledged that every secondary school in the country will receive the training by 2020 and that this will be extended to primary schools by 2022. The programme is delivered by Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England, a social enterprise organisation, and is backed by £200,000 in government funding. Initially the Government had …

School Business Managers set MASSIVE Goals at SBM Conference

School business management professionals from across the North East and beyond gathered at St James' Park in Newcastle yesterday for the fifth annual SCHOOLS NorthEast School Business Management Conference. The theme of the conference, the largest of its kind in the country,  was MASSIVE goals, so in welcoming delegates SCHOOLS NorthEast's Director of Operations and …

Top honours for North East school leaders

Congratulations to the school leaders from our region who were recognised in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2017 for services to education! Lesley Powell, Executive Principal of The Academy at Shotton Hall and CEO of the North East Learning Trust was awarded a CBE. Lesley has been teaching for 29 years, starting as an NQT at …

Grammar school proposals missing from Queen’s Speech

With the Conservatives losing their majority at the general election on 8 June, key education proposals were absent from the Queen's Speech earlier this week. In a toned down ceremony, the Queen's speech - written by the government - made no mention of the expansion of selective education that the Conservative Party proposed prior to …

Queen’s Speech 2017: SCHOOLS NorthEast response

SCHOOLS NorthEast, the representative body for all 1,250 schools in the region, welcomes the Government’s commitment to fairer funding for schools, reform of technical education and a greater emphasis on mental health outlined in today’s Queen’s Speech, but the quality of implementation will be key to their success.   School funding From the very beginning, …

School leaders urge Government to do more on mental health

At SCHOOLS NorthEast's inaugural Healthy MindED Conference last week, delegates told us what the government needs to do to improve mental health and wellbeing in schools. Here are 5 things that schools would like to see the government do: 1. Funding Schools have identified many different ways in which increased funding could help them deal …

North East has the most pupils offered first preference school

A higher proportion of pupils received offers from their first preference school in the North East than any other region. This week the Government released statistics on primary and secondary school applications and offers for places starting in September 2017. The figures show that pupils in the North East were the most likely to receive …