Introduction Arguably three themes stood out from this year’s busy Apprenticeship Week: continuing concern about youth unemployment; the economic ‘case’ for apprenticeships; and further evidence of the skills system shifting on its axis towards greater employer ownership Continuing concern about youth unemployment The launch of two important Reports on the subject (covered in accompanying Pocket... Read on

Introduction In its Report on Youth Unemployment published this week, the ACEVO (the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Orgainisations) Commission on Youth Unemployment call for ‘a bazooka big enough to tackle the task.’ It’s one of a number of signs that the ‘big guns’ (the Commission for example is chaired by David Miliband) are... Read on

Introduction The issue of so-called coasting schools has been much in the news recently with David Cameron, Michael Gove and the new Chief Inspector all expressing some strong views. Sir Michael Wilshaw’s speech to the ‘Good to Great’ Conference this week brought much of the thinking together, launched a consultation on the key changes and... Read on

Main talking points January is generally the month of reckoning after the Christmas period and January 2012 has been no different with a string of statistics being published on the economy, unemployment and school and college performance through annual ‘league’ tables. The stats on the economy and unemployment cover the last quarter of 2011 but... Read on

2011, the TES promised us, would be ‘the year of ploob, of dar veng spunch and grint yurk pronk’. Sure enough, phonics dominated the Primary landscape last year. And with a second phonics catalogue due out later in the year, the first nationwide phonics screening check due to take place in June, and a refocusing... Read on

Introduction The latest school and college performance or ‘league’ tables which cover the 2010/11 academic year and were published today reveal the full force of the data revolution that’s driving the new style tables. Moving from a rather mechanistic, points based system to one which offers a much more sophisticated yet rounded picture of institutional... Read on

Introduction One of the papers that seemed to have influenced Michael Gove in making his announcements about ICT last week was the Royal Society’s two year inquiry into computing education in the UK. It was formally published last Friday and offers a detailed critique of the state of computing and ICT provision in schools at... Read on

Introduction This week the latest set of labour market stats were published. They cover the period Sept-Nov 2011 and show that over that period, the UK unemployment total rose by 118,000 to 2.68m. The figure for young people, that’s 16-24 year olds, rose by 52,000 to 1.04m although that figure drops to 729,000 once the... Read on

Introduction At the start of a new year, Policy Watch identifies six key policy issues that may come to dominate the UK education and training agenda in 2012 and offers a synopsis of each. The six include: The question of standards The school curriculum Youth unemployment and disengagement Apprenticeships The (adult) skills system HE In... Read on

Introduction This week Michael Gove used his BETT speech to make some important announcements about education technology in general and school ICT in particular. It followed a speech in December hinting at change and a number of important reports over the year. ICT is currently under review as part of the National Curriculum Review but... Read on