The majority of pupils are shunning school dinners in the wake of Jamie Oliver’s campaign to improve the standard of canteen food, it emerged today. A campaign by Jamie Oliver led to singificant improvements in the state of school dinners. 

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

3:57PM BST 07 Jul 2011

More than half of primary pupils and almost two-thirds of those in secondary education continue to reject healthy menus introduced after the TV chef exposed the poor state of school lunches, it was revealed.

Official figures showed an average of 44.1 per cent of children in English primary schools and 37.6 per cent of those in secondaries opted for school meals this year.

But officials insisted attitudes towards healthy meals were improving following an initial backlash against a ban fatty food and salty snacks.

According to data, the take-up has increased over the last 12 months, rising by 2.7 percentage points among under-11s and 1.8 percentage points for older pupils.

The School Food Trust, which published the data, said more than 3m pupils were now eating canteen food – an increase of around 173,000 in 12 months.

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Numbers are up despite a three per cent rise in the cost of meals, it was revealed. The average school dinner now costs £1.93.

Rob Rees, the trust’s chairman, said: “If we’re going to keep school meal numbers rising, we have to keep healthy school meals affordable.

“That means helping schools to grow their market, to get the best deals for their food supplies and services, to protect their kitchens and dining rooms and to operate their catering services efficiently.

“With more children registering for free school meals, we’ve also got to make sure that we continue to encourage more children to take them up.

“At a time when funding is so tight everywhere, good school food is a solid investment in children’s learning and health.”

Schools should be ranked by 19 different indicators amid claims existing league tables create “perverse incentives” for teachers to play the system, according to research. Michael Gove during a recent visit to a Pimlico Academy in Westminster 

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

6:15AM BST 04 Jul 2011

Secondary schools in England should be subjected to a more sophisticated ratings system that assesses performance in a range of areas such as exam results, pupils’ job prospects, parental satisfaction, behaviour, attendance and expulsion rates, it was claimed.

A report by CentreForum, the liberal think-tank, proposed awarding schools an overall score out of 100 to give parents a more rounded understanding of education standards.

Researchers said it “creates a large number of perverse incentives for school leaders and teachers”, including the practice of “teaching to the test” to maximise results at the expense of a more broad understanding of subjects.

The system also promotes an emphasis on easier subjects at the expense of a more broad curriculum and forces schools to focus on “borderline” pupils at the cusp of scoring a C grade GCSE instead of the brightest children or those struggling the most.

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Today, Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, welcomed the conclusions, suggesting the Government was considering the adoption of similar systems as an alternative to current league tables.

Speaking ahead of a conference presenting the findings in central London on Monday, he said: “We live in an era when people expect to have access to much more information about every area of their lives.

“Schools should be no different – but for too long much of the data the Government holds on schools has been hidden away.

“Publishing more data broadens parental choice and understanding, drives up standards across the board, reduces perverse incentives and ensures schools are accountable for their performance.

“It’s exciting that influential progressive organisations such as CentreForum are already coming up with new ideas for presenting data in ways that are accessible to parents.”

Teachers’ leaders have criticised the use of league tables, suggesting that schools should be given more freedom to drive up standards.

But in the latest study, researchers insisted the all-out abolition of national rankings can lead to a drop in results.

They cited a study that showed the abolition of rankings in Wales 10 years ago undermined GCSE grades. The average school saw the number of pupils gaining five good grades drop by 3.4 percentage points compared with secondaries in England, it was revealed.

In the latest report, CentreForum called for “more rounded and sophisticated” accountability system to be introduced to replace existing league tables.

The system should be based on 19 “sub-indicators of school quality”. This includes a basic measure of literacy and numeracy, figures showing the progress pupils make between 11 and 16, average scores in academic GCSE subjects and averages in more technical disciplines.

Exam data should be complimented by other indicators such as Ofsted judgements, pupil and parent satisfaction surveys, the range of subjects offered, staff turnover, attendance, expulsion rates and a measure of pupils’ employment or higher education prospects 12 months, two years and five years after leaving school.

“Together, they provide a more rounded and sophisticated impression of a school’s performance, and, crucially, are far less susceptible to ‘gaming’,” the study said.

Each indicator should be assigned a different weighting a give schools an overall score out of 100, it was claimed.

The report’s authors called for the data to be presented a new website – a “one stop shop” to enable parents to compare schools in their area.

Exam boards face being stripped of their role over blunders that affected GCSEs and A-levels sat by thousands of schoolchildren, it emerged today Ofqual has launched an official inquiry into a series of exam blunders. 

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

12:01AM BST 01 Jul 2011

Ofqual said it had the power to prevent boards offering particular qualifications as punishment for mistakes that dogged this summer’s tests.

The disclosure came as the exams regulator launched an official inquiry into the errors, which included printing mistakes and the use of “impossible” questions.

Sandra Burslem, the watchdog’s deputy chairman, said the blunders were “unacceptable” and insisted it would “not hesitate” to impose penalties.

“Ofqual’s priorities during the exam season were to make sure the awarding organisations did everything possible to prevent further errors and to make sure that, where errors have occurred, the marking of papers neither unfairly advantages or disadvantages the candidates involved,” she said.

“Now that the taking of exams is over we turn our attention to an inquiry. This will hold the awarding organisations to account for their mistakes by finding out the root causes of the errors and what needs to be done to put things right.

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“The regulators will not hesitate to take regulatory action as necessary at any stage to protect the interests of students.”

A total of 10 mistakes – two printing errors, and eight problems with the questions themselves – are being investigated by Ofqual.

The watchdog said that about 100,000 candidates would have been faced with the mistakes.

Errors included a multiple choice question featuring four wrong answers in an Edexcel AS-level biology paper sat by 17,000 students.

Students sitting an AS-level business studies paper set by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance were presented with a question that did not include the information needed to come up with an answer.

A maths AS-level paper, set by the OCR exam board and taken by 6,790 pupils, also contained an unanswerable question. The question, which was worth 11 per cent of the paper, was impossible to solve as it was incomplete.

The inquiry will investigate the cause of each error, how effectively exam boards communicated problems to schools and how screening processes failed to flag them up.

Ofqual’s powers include directing exam boards to take particular action and ultimately withdrawing recognition for them to offer regulated qualifications.

Jim Sinclair, director of the Joint Council for Qualifications, which represents exam boards, said: “The examination system is huge and the questions and papers that contained errors, although unacceptable, represent a tiny proportion of the total number.

“Each year awarding bodies set more than 60,000 questions.

“Awarding bodies deeply regret the errors that occurred and apologise to students who took the papers. Awarding bodies have put procedures in place to ensure no student is disadvantaged as a result of these errors and that they get the right result.”

NYC Private Schools Blog has managed to add reviews of private schools located in each of New York Citys five boroughs. Among those are 61 private schools in the Bronx. The following list are those 61 schools with links to the respective review. We hope you enjoy learning about these independent, religious, and private schools and what they have to offer your family.

1. Academy of Mt. St. Ursula
2. All Hallows High School
3. Aquinas High School
4. Beth Jacob-Beth Miriam School
5. Blessed Sacrament School
6. Bronx-Manhattan SDA School
7. Cardinal Hayes High School
8. Cardinal Spellman High School
9. Ethical Culture Fieldston School
10. Fordham Preparatory School
11. Holy Cross Elementary School
12. Holy Spirit Elementary School
13. Horace Mann School
14. Immaculate Conception School
15. Kinneret Day School
16. Lavelle School For The Blind
17. Little Stars School
18. Mount St. Michael Academy
19. Monsignor Scanlan High School
20. New York Institute For Special Education
21. Our Lady Of Angels
22. Our Lady Of Grace School
23. Our Lady Of Mercy School
24. Our Saviour Lutheran School
25. Preston High School
26. R T Hudson
27. Riverdale Country School
28. Sacred Heart School
29. Santa Maria School
30. SAR Academy
31. Saints Philip James School
32. St. Angela Merici School
33. St. Anselm Parochial School
34. St. Anthony School
35. St. Athanasius School
36. St. Augustine School
37. St. Barnabas Elementary School
38. St. Benedict School
39. St. Catherine Academy
40. St. Dominic School
41. St. Francis of Assisi School
42. St. Gabriel Elementary School
43. St. Helena Elementary School
44. St. Ignatius Academy
45. St. Jerome School
46. St. John Chrysostom School
47. St. John Vianney School
48. St. Josephs School For The Deaf
49. St. Lucys School
50. St. Luke School
51. St. Margaret Of Cortona School
52. St. Martin Of Tours School
53. St. Philip Neri School
54. St. Pius V School
55. St. Raymond Academy For Girls
56. St. Raymond Elementary School
57. St. Raymond High School For Boys
58. St. Simon Stock School
59. St. Theresa School
60. Villa Maria Academy
61. Visitation School

All primary school children should be given daily maths lessons and weekly tests to stop pupils falling behind those from the Far East, Michael Gove suggested today. Primary school children should be given regular maths tests to check their progress, said Michael Gove. 

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

1:03PM BST 29 Jun 2011

Lessons for under-11s should be toughened-up with a greater emphasis on fractions and basic algebra, the Education Secretary said.

He insisted that fundamental reform of maths education was needed to ensure the youngest pupils have a firm grasp of the subject by the time they start secondary school.

Mr Gove also signalled an overhaul of classes for those in secondary education, with calculus and statistics playing a more fundamental role.

In a further development, he suggested all sixth-formers should continue studying the subject in some form up to the age of 18 within the decade amid concerns that half the adult population currently lack “basic maths skills”.

The comments come amid fears that standards in English schools have “stagnated” while those in countries such as China, Singapore, Japan and Korea pull ahead.

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It follows the publication of a major international league table showing that British teenagers are now ranked lower than peers most other developed nations for maths. At the age of 15, pupils in China are around two whole academic years ahead of British counterparts.

In a speech to the Royal Society on Wednesday, Mr Gove said: “If we are to keep pace with out competitors, we need fundamental, radical reform in the curriculum, in teaching, and in the way we use technology in the classroom. Unless we dramatically improve our performance, the grim arithmetic of globalisation will leave us all poorer.”

Currently, maths is a compulsory subject between five and 16 but it is claimed that the demands put on children of all ages falls well below those elsewhere in the world.

Mr Gove said a review of the National Curriculum in England – currently being carried out by an expert panel – would lead to a renewed focus on the basic knowledge pupils should master at each key stage of their education.

Schools in East Asia place a “much greater focus on fundamental number concepts, fractions and the building blocks of algebra”, Mr Gove said.

“It may be, therefore, that we will adopt the same approach and have much more emphasis on pre-algebra in primary and remove data handling and some other subjects from the primary curriculum,” he said.

Mr Gove said schools should also “bear in mind” a system used in Shanghai where pupils have daily maths lessons and regular tests to “make sure that all children are learning the basics”.

A Whitehall source said there was an aspiration to repeat the same system in England, although it would not be compulsory. Labour introduced the “numeracy hour” – daily maths lessons for primary pupils – but this was scrapped two years ago, with claims it has since led to a decline in the subject in some schools.

Mr Gove also suggested that lessons in secondary schools had to be toughened-up and pupils should study the subject for longer to boost skill levels among the adult population. Currently, just 13 per cent of pupils study maths at A-level.

“That is why I think we should set a new goal for the education system so that within a decade the vast majority of pupils are studying maths right through to the age of 18,” he said.