In the news: your weekly round-up

Top stories

DfE commits to reducing teachers’ working hours within 3 years. Members of a workload reduction ‘task force’ will look at how to reduce teachers’ working hours by 5 hours per week, and will make initial recommendations next month [Tes Magazine- registration required]. 

Support from GovernorHub Knowledge: Find out how you can promote a healthy staff work-life balance without stepping on the toes of the day-to-day running of your school.

Delayed DBS checks pushing school staff start dates back. Teaching and school staff have had their start dates delayed by months due to DBS checks being held up at the police search stage [Schools Week]. 

Support from GovernorHub Knowledge:  Learn the difference between the key recruitment checks with our cheat sheet, to minimise any chance of delays.

Government’s language hub programme gets underway. Schools have been selected as excellence hubs in a bid to boost languages in all schools [GOV.UK]. 

Support from GovernorHub Knowledge:  Understand how your board can monitor modern foreign languages (MFL) and the whole curriculum. 

This week’s headlines

 Schools Week

• 1 in 3 teachers and school leaders using AI to help with school work
• Ministers on the hunt for safeguarding tsar
• 155k pupils at risk of falling through the BTEC and T-level gap
• Ofsted: geography subject report published

Tes Magazine - registration required

• Women aged 30 to 39 the largest cohort to leave education last year
• 8 in 10 school staff pulled away from usual role to address child poverty concerns

GOV.UK

• Update to list of education settings with RAAC

 Upcoming dates

Monday 25 September - Yom Kippur

Tuesday 26 September - European Day of Languages

Wednesday 27 September - The Prophet Muhammad’s birthday

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