Interesting Facts

nder plans set out by Schools Minister Nick Gibb, every state school pupil will be expected to sit at least five “hard” GCSEs to increase the number of state-educated students at the best universities and in the top professions, the government has said. (This means that all pupils starting secondary school in autumn 2015 will be expected to take maths, English, a foreign language, history or geography and at least one science subject when they begin their GCSE courses in 2018. If you have just sat your art and design, music and drama, business studies, communication and culture and citizenship exams, you can breathe a sigh of relief.)

Over the last 2 days, the Hanson Academy in Bradford, West Yorkshire, has sent 215 pupils home for not adhering to school uniform rules. (The school wants pupils to dress in a blazer, smart shoes, trousers, and shirt with a correctly-tied tie, they also need to wear an id badge on a lanyard around their necks (I wonder if they have risk assessed that). The infringements included - wearing hoop earrings, the wrong kind of trousers / jackets, no tie, no id, dyed hair... Please feel free to join any of our Virtual World English sessions and dress as you like, as long as you're dressed.)

Tests for grammar school entrance (11 plus), which are taken by thousands of British children every year, are to be overhauled in a bid to stop over-coached children winning places. (Demand for places in grammar schools is off the scale, with some reporting 13 applications for every place. Well off parents invest thousands on tutors to get their kids through the exams, the problem is, rather than having a natural ability  they struggle to keep up with lessons once they are in school and need extra help all the time. The review will consider is whether selection should be based in part on assessment by teachers and head teachers, rather than relying solely on test results. What a radical thought.  Actually talking to the child!)