Search

The article offers information on the eight chapters of the white paper "Educational Excellence Everywhere," that was published on March 17, 2016. Topics discussed include the education excellence base on the capacity to improve and performance in England, the recruitment of talented teachers, and the empowerment of parents, communities and pupils of high performing maintained primary and secondary schools towards the academisation by 2020.

The author comments on the British government's ambition to create an education system that offers all children, whatever their background, with schooling that will aid them attain their potential. He says that the intention that selective schools should sponsor a non-selective school, or that an independent school would give greater benefit to ordinary families by setting up a free school is not probably to expand the number of good school places available to all families.

The article focuses on the recommendations of Education Policy Institute (EPI) on how the government should proceed with testing and examinations for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and A-level exams in England in 2021. Some of the recommendations include providing greater optionality in exam papers so that students would have a better chance of answering questions, allowing some grade inflation and also forming a back-up plan for exams in the case of cancellation.

The article reports that the British government has abandoned plans to help poor children attend selective schools (SS). Topics mentioned include the need for grammar schools (GS) to improve their admission for disadvantaged students, and the ideas proposed in the Department for Education's Green Paper entitled "Schools that Work for Everyone" including links between GS and non-selective schools.