Displaying items by tag: Education

National Education Union leader Kevin Courtney said official statistics showed 4,050 special needs pupils did not have a suitable school place in 2017 in England, up from 1,710 in 2016. Lack of designated funding means growing numbers of our most vulnerable children are left without appropriate support in a suitable school environment. The Government said money for schools and special needs was protected, and councils are allocated funds for special needs in both mainstream and special schools through their ‘high needs’ budgets. However, shortfalls in these budgets leave them ‘cash flat’ (the total does not account for inflation), while the number of pupils needing special programmes has been growing. Pupils with autism, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, ADHD, and other learning or physical disabilities need extra equipment and trained support staff to enable them to reach their full potential.

Ireland’s constitution protects the right to a religious education and for parents to ‘provide, according to their means, for the religious and moral, intellectual, physical and social education of their children’. A new proposal preventing Catholic schools from prioritising Catholic students is being called discriminatory, as it does not apply to schools of other faiths. The Church runs 90% of state schools. When a school is full, it prioritises Catholic students when deciding how high they are on the waiting list. The education minister wants to end giving preference to Catholic children who live some distance away over non-Catholic children living close to the school. The changes would not apply to non-Catholic faith schools. Faith in Our Schools is fighting the proposal, saying the policy ‘openly discriminates against the conscience and educational rights of Catholic parents and the autonomy, and associational rights of Catholic faith schools.’

In a recent speech, Ofsted claimed that extremists are using religion to pervert education and indoctrinate young people. Singling out the Christian Institute, which was wrongly labelled Anglican, it condemned ideological indoctrination by Christian extremists, and said that schools have a responsibility to ‘tackle those who actively undermine fundamental British values or equalities law’. However, under the Equality Act 2010, religion is listed as a protected characteristic, alongside such things as sex, gender reassignment, pregnancy, age, and race. Ofsted’s apparent prioritisation of LGBT rights over other protected characteristics not only denies this but, by extension, seeks to alter or oppose the law. An Ofsted spokesperson said, ‘We must tackle those who actively undermine fundamental British values or equalities law.’ Ofsted appears to believe that expressing religious belief is not endorsing British values. Pray for parents to continue to have their children educated in line with their own religious and / or philosophical beliefs.

The Just Finance Foundation published a report on the impact of its LifeSavers programme in 30 primary schools across England. It said, ‘Primary school pupils should receive compulsory lessons on how to manage money in response to growing levels of financial insecurity and problem debt in the UK. Learning where money comes from, when to spend, and how to save is vital to children’s ability to navigate adult life and should be a mandatory part of personal, social, health, and economic education in primary schools.’ Currently 40% of UK adults have less than £100 in savings. Difficulties managing money are becoming a mainstream issue. LifeSavers equips children to manage money wisely now and in the future, providing training, support and resources which aid teachers to deliver financial education to all year-groups. It helps set up and manage school savings clubs, and encourages parental and wider community engagement. It says today’s children face the most challenging and complex financial landscape of a generation.

In February the BBC reported that some schools are persuading parents to home-school troubled children so that their exam results do not count against the school. They are worried about poor Ofsted inspections, league table positions, and even losing their jobs because of academy takeovers. On 4 March the Times reported that religious extremists are exploiting lax home education laws to expose children to hate-filled material at scores of unregistered schools. Extremist texts seized from the schools allege that boys and girls can marry once they reach puberty, and one blames rapes on the way women dress. At least 350 unregistered schools have been set up across Britain, according to Ofsted, and over 50,000 children in the UK are currently being home-schooled.

With a chronic shortage of qualified RE teachers in schools, greater incentives are needed to attract new recruits. Without such teachers, pupils in later life will fail to filter out the stereotypes that contribute to religious discrimination. The Religious Education Council (REC) believes that high-quality specialist teaching about all faiths, beliefs, and worldviews is essential for all school children, and is leading a consortium to relaunch the Beyond the Ordinary campaign, designed to attract career-changers and graduates to train as RE teachers. For entry into initial teacher training in 2017, 405 places were filled, well below the Government target of 643. To reach that figure requires 1 in 20 graduates with a relevant degree to elect to train as RE teachers. Currently 55% of staff teaching RE in schools have no post-A level qualification in the subject. The REC is pressing the Department for Education for higher bursaries for RE teachers.

Following a meeting with the Prime Minister, the former education secretary, Justine Greening, left the Government, to be succeeded by Damian Hinds. The women and equalities portfolio will be held by Amber Rudd. These changes will give the Government the opportunity to review many of Ms Greening’s more extreme proposals before they begin to impact upon families: for example, using compulsory relationships education to teach children as young as five about same-sex marriage, and allowing anybody, whatever age, to choose their gender. It is not too late to halt either of these policies, nor is it too late for the Government to note the views of the 59% of party members who oppose same-sex marriage (according to a new YouGov poll).

Lamentations 2:19 says, ‘Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches of the night begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children.’ A report into social media use among 8- to 12-year-olds has stated, ‘Schools should play a bigger role in preparing children for social media's emotional demands as they move from primary to secondary school; and parents should prepare children emotionally for the significant risks of social media as they move schools and meet new classmates.’ Meanwhile, an IJM report said, ‘Cybersex trafficking is the live-streamed sexual abuse of children viewed over the internet. It’s brutal, growing at an alarming rate, and fuelled by the behaviour of Westerners, including people from the UK.’ See

In November you prayed for Joshua Sutcliffe, the Christian maths teacher facing discipline for 'misgendering' a school student. See: He is now taking his employer to court after being dismissed for gross misconduct. The child had self-declared as ‘male’, but Sutcliffe had been given no formal instruction on how he was to refer to the pupil. When the pupil became irate Sutcliffe apologised. However, an investigation began. Sutcliffe’s claim of discrimination also stems from his school Bible club being shut down 18 months after it began. Sutcliffe said he was more than willing to answer all the unjustified allegations against him, and detail his grievances about 'equality' policies and practices, but would do so before an independent tribunal not school governors. The Christian Legal Centre said cases like these have become common as children are making decisions against their natural born biological sex.

EU officials supervise and fund the Palestinian Authority (PA) education system. A series of Helsinki talks examined the new PA curriculum and agreed that the new textbooks stir up further radicalisation and hatred. They concluded that radicalisation is persistent throughout the curriculum, grooming children for martyrdom and jihad war, with a fundamentalist worldview. ‘This curriculum is not only a catastrophe for Palestinian youth but also for the reputation of the Finnish education system, as the curriculum was reviewed under the supervision of Finnish experts and officials,’ said the spokesperson for the EU consultations. An elementary mathematics book asks, ‘If the number of martyrs from the first intifada is X and the number of martyrs from the second intifada is Y, what is the total number of martyrs?’ In basic physics, Newton’s law of gravity is explained by a picture of a young Palestinian aiming a slingshot at an Israeli officer. See