A landmark report has indicated that tens of thousands of children are underachieving because of patchy standards in Scottish schools. The report, Improving Scottish Education, reveals concerns about the performance of a third of the council education departments which have direct control over schools, with the watchdog embarking on a programme of monitored improvement. The [...]

Secondary schools in England are to pilot a “twinned” maths GCSE – in which maths could be taken as a double subject, worth two GCSEs. This will allow pupils to study the subject in greater breadth and depth, in both pure and applied maths. The schools testing the idea would begin doing so in September [...]

Lord Drayson himself studied science A-levels and has a PhD A government minister has said he is calling in copies of GCSE and A-level science exam papers to satisfy himself they are not being “dumbed down”. Science Minister Lord Drayson said it was vital that the brightest and best pupils were stretched by education. He [...]

The EMA has been particularly good at getting boys to stay on at school Six out of 10 of England’s poorer students would drop out without their college allowances, a poll for the National Union of Students suggests. A survey of 1,205 education maintenance allowance (EMA) recipients in England’s schools and colleges suggests 61% would [...]

Younger children do the most PE More sport is being played in England’s schools and ministers say this is due to a move away from an anti-competitive sport culture of the 1980s and 1990s. Nine out of 10 children now do at least two hours of PE and sport a week, according to figures being [...]

The motor racing peer would like to see a Brit in an astronaut helmet Britain’s new science minister has made it clear that he thinks the country ought to have an astronaut. Lord Drayson said the UK needed “icons” for science, to encourage the next generation to take up subjects that would boost the knowledge [...]

correspondent, BBC News website, Barcelona The seas are one of the ecosystems threatened by human activities At least 25% of the world’s mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to the first assessment of their status for a decade. The Red List of Threatened Species says populations of more than half of mammalian species [...]

That the Church of England is prepared to honour Darwin, if not quite by apologising to him officially, is due to evolutionists presenting reasoned arguments. Charles Darwin has set the cat among the pigeons yet again. A century and a half after the publication of On the Origin of Species, the Church and the Royal [...]

NEW YORK — Among the people Linda Foley is currently working to help are a three-year-old whose Social Security number is being used by someone for work purposes. And there’s a five-year-old whose identity is linked to driver’s licences, arrest warrants for drunken driving, and a warrant for unpaid child support. These stories may sound [...]

Setting the minimum threshold was a controversial move Ministers have named the first three schools in England to get up to £1m extra as part of partnership deals to improve their pupils’ exam results. These “National Challenge Trusts”, in Essex, North Yorkshire and Hull, target schools where fewer than 30% get five good GCSEs including [...]