Education

The education sector is being hit heavily by slow growth in real-term pay, according to online supply teacher portal The Supply Register. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) this week reported that teachers’ salaries in England were worth 12 per cent less in 2015 than in 2005. The study, published on Tuesday, comes as pressure grows on the government to lift the 1 per cent public sector pay cap that is contributing to a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, according...

Shocking new analysis shows 75% of TA apprentices are paid just £3.50 an hour GMB, the union for teaching assistants, has warned that apprentices are being used as ‘cheap labour’ and are vulnerable to exploitation as education cuts bite. Analysis of 190 teaching assistant apprenticeship vacancies reveals that 75 per cent of roles are advertised on the legal minimum of £3.50 an hour. The average wage offered across all vacancies was just £3.81. Teaching assistants are being paid 43 per...

Film studies, media studies and drama have been ranked among the most "pointless degrees" according to new research. The study found acting was the top waste of time, followed by outdoor adventure and environment and office skills. One in four graduates now regret having gone to university, the research shows. The most common reasons to rue time spent in further education are paying too much for their degree, wasting their time and making bad choices such as not choosing subject...

Anyone who has ever been to university knows the first year is essentially a write-off from an academic point of view. You join clubs, you drink, you watch more Friends episodes than you read books and take an overtly laissez faire attitude to your degree in the knowledge that nothing you do in the first year really counts anyway. Which is why, in response to mounting debt and impossible dreams of ever getting a foot on the property ladder, two year...

  A teacher has been fired after being caught on CCTV slapping a pupil 40 TIMES in the face - because he failed to answer the register. Disturbing footage shows Ritesh Gupta, eight, weeping as teacher Retica V John hands out the brutal punishment in front of his stunned classmates. She struck him up to 40 times in just two minutes before dragging him towards a blackboard and hitting his head against it. The attack at St. John Vianney School...

Parents on an average UK salary would need to hand over 39 per cent of their earnings to pay the average annual day fee of over £13,000, new research has revealed. The total cost of private school education from Reception to Year 13 has risen to an average of £152,906 over the last five years, an increase of over 20 per cent overall. The rapid rise is nine percentage points higher than the increase in the Retail Price Index (12...

Britain's top university came under fire today (fri) when it emerged that less than one in seven of its top paid staff are female. Just 17 out of 123 Cambridge University's staff earning over £140,000 a year are women, according to figures released after a Freedom of Information request. The gender pay gap was branded "shocking" by Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner. It comes in contrast with rivals at Oxford University where a bursar has slammed the "grossly excessive" £410,000 pay...

A school has become one of the first to change its term times - so parents can take advantage of cheaper out-of-season HOLIDAYS. Kids at Severn Vale School are still at their desks this week despite the rest of the country's pupils beginning their summer holidays. Staff have cut short the summer break by a week so they could add an extra seven days holiday to the half-term break in October. Headteacher Richard Johnson said the shift in term dates...

Drinking alcohol improves memory for information learned before the drinking episode began, new research has found. In the University of Exeter study, 88 social drinkers were given a word-learning task. Participants were then split in two groups at random and told either to drink as much as they liked (the average was four units) or not to drink at all. The next day, they all did the same task again – and those who had drunk alcohol remembered more of...