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Kent County Council Election 2025: Special Educational Needs and Disabilities – the big debate

Making such provision work will fall to whichever party takes the reins at Kent County Council (KCC) after the elections on May 1.

Banning phones in schools should be a decision for head teachers and not “imposed nationally by the government”, England’s children’s commissioner has said.

The former head of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, has criticised the education secretary and accused her of giving “a great deal of time and attention” to the teaching unions.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Ms Spielman claims “effective reforms are being reversed” – referring to potential changes to academy schools’ powers.

Annual nursery costs for a child under two in England have fallen for the first time in 15 years, according to the children’s charity Coram.

It comes as the government continues to roll out its funded childcare scheme, which will provide all eligible working parents of pre-school children, not only three and four-year-olds as currently, with 30 hours of childcare per week from September.

However, some nurseries and childminders say they may have to drop out of the scheme as government funding struggles to meet rising costs, including National Insurance increases from April.

The poorest children are missing more school and falling further behind classmates, research shared with the BBC suggests.

According to new analysis by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) – which looked at pupil performance after the Covid-19 pandemic – children from the lowest income families are now up to 19 months behind peers by the time they are 16 years old.

The government faces a “now or never moment” to hit its target of recruiting 6,500 new teachers in England by the end of its term, a new report has suggested.

Analysis by the National Foundation of Educational Research (NFER) says unfilled vacancies are at a record high and recruitment into teacher training remains “persistently low.”

All but five secondary subjects missed this year’s recruitment targets for new trainee teachers, which are set by the Department for Education (DfE).

A total of 96% of children were offered places at a secondary school of their choice in Medway

Three schools in Surrey are launching a pilot programme to restrict mobile phone usage in an attempt to improve pupils’ wellbeing.

The secondary schools, which are part of the GLF Schools trust, are to trial an app that blocks social media, messaging and other apps which they believe are “distracting” during school hours.

GLF Schools said the expected benefits were more focus in the classroom, a calmer learning environment and improved student mental health.

The first schools in Kent and Medway to offer free breakfast clubs for pupils as part of a government scheme have been revealed.

Children in Castle Hill Community Primary School in Folkestone have swapped French lessons for British Sign Language (BSL)