MPs have questioned "how much of a grip" the Department for Education has on providing school places where they are needed in England. The system is "increasingly incoherent and too often poor value for money," says the Public Accounts Committee. And the government is spending "well over the odds" on free schools while other schools are in poor condition, says the cross-party committee. Ministers say free schools are key to meeting demand for school places. The government has pledged to open 50...

The Department for Education (DfE) has set out plans for measuring the education needs of students from "ordinary working families" - which it says makes up a third of all children. The DfE published a consultation paper earlier this week which aims to find ways to provide "a clearer analysis of educational outcomes for ordinary working families". It comes in the wake of Prime Minister Theresa May's repeated calls for the UK to address social mobility and help those who are "just about man...

The number of poor children going hungry during the school holidays is increasing to “heart-breaking” levels, teachers across the country have warned. As many as four in five staff (80 per cent) reported a rise in “holiday hunger” over the past two years, with parents of children who qualify for free school meals (FSM) during term-time struggling to find the money to fund extra meals during school holidays. In a survey led by the National Union of Teachers (NUT), 78 per cent of the 600 tea...

Children from poorer homes in England are nearly half as likely to attend an outstanding primary school as richer children, research finds. Only 15% of children from the poorest 30% of families currently go to outstanding primary schools, a study by education charity Teach First suggests. This compares to 27% of children from the richest 30% of families who attend a school rated highly by inspectors. The government says it is making more good school places available. The research is publi...

Parents are paying more than £50,000 in order to move to catchment areas with outstanding schools, raising fears that the country’s top state schools are becoming selective according to family wealth. A survey of more than one million homes across England has revealed that parents are paying vast property premiums to move home, with the average house in outstanding school catchment area costing £52,000 more on average than those near schools which require improvement. In London, where comp...

Lower-achieving pupils from rich families earn more than talented poorer children, the Education Secretary has admitted. Justine Greening was speaking at a conference on social mobility, which she described as a “cold, hard, economic imperative” for the country. Ms Greening drew on her experience growing up in Rotherham as she outlined the challenges faced by poorer families. “Children from high-income backgrounds who show signs of low academic ability at age five are 35 per cent more l...

Hundreds of thousands of children growing up in the north of England are falling behind their southern counterparts because of a stark educational divide, according to research by the office of the children’s commissioner for England. The statistics show that where in the country a child goes to school has a marked effect on their attainment. Children in major northern cities do markedly worse than those in London or the south-east: in the Thames Valley Berkshire region, where the prime minis...

Encouragement from teachers is key to keeping pupils engaged with education after the age of 16, suggests a study of more than 4,000 students in England. Middle-ability students and those whose parents lack qualifications benefit most from positive feedback, according to the Cambridge University research. The students were tracked for seven years from the age of 13 onwards. This is the first study of its kind to quantify the effect of encouragement on pupils, says the university. "When people sp...

The government's proposed national funding formula for schools fails to recognise the "double disadvantage" faced by pupils from poor homes in deprived neighbourhoods, according to the Sutton Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation. In a joint submission to a consultation on the government's proposals two bodies have expressed concern that the formula "seems to advantage schools with low prior attainment ahead of schools with high deprivation". The government plans to use "additional ...