
Ministers insist plans to absorb council Send debts won’t hit school budgets
Ministers say the Office for Budget Responsibility’s projections do not take into account upcoming reforms.
FRIDAY, 26 DECEMBER 2025, 15:24

Ministers say the Office for Budget Responsibility’s projections do not take into account upcoming reforms.

The Buddy Bear School in Dungannon, County Tyrone, opened in 1993 and is the only school of its kind in Northern Ireland.

‘Once-in-a-generation transformation’ of Grade-I building will bring teaching spaces under same roof as gallery
The Courtauld has unveiled an £82m campus redevelopment it is calling a “once-in-a-generation transformation” of its Grade-I listed building at Somerset House in London.
The Stirling prize-winning architects Witherford Watson Mann will take charge of the project at the teaching and...

Councils welcome move but OBR says it is a significant fiscal risk and could lead to 4.9% real fall in spending per pupil
The government will take over full responsibility for special educational needs spending from local councils, it was revealed at the budget, prompting warnings that the Department for Education could be facing a £20bn timebomb in two years.
The Office for Budget...

It can feel wrong to encourage young people to shoot for the stars – yet if no one did, our world would be empty of the artists, actors, athletes and visionaries who give it so much pleasure and meaning
Who wants to crush a kid’s dreams? Not me. But what to say when asked by a teenager about a career in the media? With tens of thousands of media, journalism and other graduates crowding into...

What does it mean to lose a language? And what does it take to save it? Those were the big questions being asked in Barcelona recently
There’s an Irish saying, tír gan teanga, tír gan anam: a country without a language is a country without a soul. Representatives of some of Europe’s estimated 60 minority languages – or minoritised, as they define them – met in Barcelona recently to...

Regulator says 24 are at more immediate risk and may have to stop degree courses within next 12 months
Fifty higher education providers in England are at risk of exiting the market within the next two to three years, MPs on the House of Commons education committee have been told as part of their inquiry into university funding and the threat of insolvency.
The evidence follows last week’s...

A new documentary from the makers of Jesus Camp follows the students enrolled at one of Norway’s 85 ‘folk high schools’. Can sledding and survival skills cure their social media-induced anxiety?
Nineteen-year-old Hege is stricken by all the common anxieties of her generation. She spends too much time scrolling through socials on her phone, and as a result she is obsessed with how other people...

Show at Cauldeen primary school in Inverness had included a scene explaining hardship faced by Syrian refugees
A primary school in Scotland has cancelled its Christmas show after receiving “racist and abusive” messages because it featured sympathy towards Syrian refugees.
The decision by Cauldeen primary school in Inverness follows rising tensions at other schools in Scotland over adult English...

The prime minister performed a version of the viral dance with primary school children, before being told it was not allowed.

State department proposes excluding 38 institutions from Diplomacy Lab partnership including Harvard and Yale
More than three dozen universities including Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Duke have their participation in a federal research partnership on the chopping block after the state department proposed to suspend them over their diversity, equity and inclusion hiring practices.
Last week, the...

The University of Nottingham has suspended entry for new students on modern language courses.

Tens of thousands of children in the region are set to be eligible for the scheme, the government says.

Bishop’s Cleeve Primary Academy says it is applying for funding to replace its heating system.

Attendance rates remain significantly lower than in 2019, but one school is bucking the trend.

West Midlands police’s assistant chief constable says threat of violence by Maccabi fans was more important consideration
Badenoch says the government should be cutting regulation.
And she claims she can do this because, when she was business secretary, she was able to cut regulation. As an example, she says she ruled about mandatory ethnicity pay reporting.
Fewer and fewer people are working...

A local authority is expanding a programme to help SEND children to be taught in state schools.

University leaders says planned levy on international student fees will leave many institutions even worse off
University students in England get just two-thirds of the funding they would have received a decade ago, after inflation and government cuts have reduced the resources available for teaching, according to vice-chancellors.
University leaders said the situation was likely to get worse...

Exclusive: Jason Clare says new powers will ensure information is ‘accurate, comprehensive and representative’ to help government deliver ‘evidence-based reforms’
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Labor is quietly advancing plans for universal childcare in Australia, with new laws to require private operators to hand over sensitive commercial data needed to design a...

The bespoke agreements are full of peril for the universities, allowing the federal government to quietly exert control
In October, President Trump proposed a compact for higher education, a federal takeover of state and private institutions thinly disguised as an offer of preferential funding consideration. Most of the initially targeted universities rightfully have rejected Trump’s unlawful...

Held back by Covid and then phased out by AI, Britain’s so-called Neets are desperately seeking a secure future. Who will offer them hope?
Another week, another set of sobering economic numbers. Last Thursday, the Office for National Statistics published its latest quarterly estimate of the number of 16- to 24-year-olds who are so-called Neets – people not in education, employment or...