Blog

Clare Othman, Operations Director, Supply Desk, specialists in matching school staffing needs with the best available teachers and teaching assistants - permanent, long-term and supply - gives her reasoning on why many schools choose supply agencies, such as Supply Desk, to fill teaching vacancies.

Education recruitment agencies, including supply agencies, have become an integral part of most UK school recruitment strategies.

Planning a prizegiving, graduation or welcoming a new student? If so, mark these all-important milestones with beautifully illustrated personalised Alphabet books from Itsyourstory. Not only a fantastic teaching aid which brings numbers and the alphabet to life by making them the star – but also a perfect keepsake which includes a personal message from you to the child at the front.

Called ‘From A to Z” and ‘From 1 to 10’ are this ideal gifts for young children. Every letter is accompanied by a picture and a simple, fun sentence which emphasises the sound – for example, ‘Freddy’s Dinosaur is Daring and Dangerous’, ‘Oliver Octopus has Orange Socks’. The child features in the illustrations and text on every page making it a fun, engaging and relevant read.

According to a new study commissioned by Ricoh Europe, 88% say that new skills learnt through the use of technologies such as digital fabrication and 3D printing are vital to educational success and preparing students for the graduate job market.

David Mills, CEO of Ricoh Europe, says:

“Digital fabrication and 3D printing provide the ability to illustrate complex concepts across a variety of subjects. As the way people and machines work together continues to evolve, integrating technical abilities into the learning process helps ensure the skills required of the future workforce become second nature for today’s students.”

Wynstones School has taken their children on trips for many years, with key trips throughout the different age groups.

Although they are not set in stone, there is a framework that creates stability and expectation, as well as a bank of knowledge within the staff on how to organise particular trips and what has worked and what can be improved the following year.

The youngest classes do local walks to the woods and fields; by age nine they have regular work mornings on a local farm, and then at the end of the year possibly have a night’s camping on the farm. As they get older, the trips get a bit longer and further from home. They are all related to the Steiner curriculum and age appropriate.

YOUNG Boccia champions have celebrated their win by helping to officially open their school’s new Creative Play playground.

The Kent County winning youngsters from Greenfields Community Primary School in Maidstone were picked to join the school’s Chair of Governors, Pam Payne, to officially open the new outdoor equipment, designed, manufactured and installed by outdoor play experts Creative Play.

Boccia, which is a precision ball sport related to bowls, is primarily a disability sport and schools, such as Greenfields, also have teams for children who have learning difficulties.

Greenfields has found that being part of a Boccia team has given those pupils a real confidence boost and created friendships that have made them feel more inclusive.

Recently, a Year 6 pupil in a Manchester based Primary School used tootoot to get in touch with a member of staff to seek support as she had been having suicidal thoughts. At a time when at least half of suicides amongst young people relate to bullying, and half of the people bullied in the past year have never told anyone due to fear, embarrassment or lack of faith in existing support systems (Ditch the Label’s annual survey 2017), it is more important than ever that we address the problem of bullying and cyberbullying in our schools, colleges and universities.

Safeguarding in schools is fundamental to protecting students’ wellbeing and attainment. When bullying or mental health issues go unresolved, students are increasingly turning to self-harm. 

More than 11,500 reports were gathered from 650 schools over a two-year period from users of Tootoot’s award-winning anti-bullying and reporting app. Pupils were given the opportunity to use the app to anonymously report issues that were troubling or concerning them. Similarly, teachers used the platform to log pupil incidents and concerns they had observed.

Launching on Wednesday 20 to Friday 22 June, KidZania - the indoor city run by kids - will be hosting an action-packed STEM Fair, promoting Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths skills and careers through curriculum-based activities to bring the school syllabus to life.

Collaborating with STEM organisations and businesses including; the Aviation Skills Partnership, Usbourne Books and national charity Remap, KidZania will be enhancing the activities in the city to support the learning criteria of pupils in Key Stage 1–3.

Geoff Leask, chief executive at Young Enterprise Scotland, reckons that to prepare for the workplace in 2030, the education system should put just as much focus on developing core skills in creativity, problem solving, teamworking and communication within young people, as it should on honing skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).  

Even if you’re at the forefront of the science and technology industry, and firmly have your finger on the pulse of plans for future development, there’s no way of predicting exactly how the world of work is going to change over the next 10 years.

With that in mind, it’s going to be even more difficult to pre-empt the skills young people will need to develop to help them be successful in life and work in 2030.