At Tenbury High academy the students play tag and football in free time rather than stare at a screen and on the Isle of Wight another school is planning a similar ban Academy chain with 35,000 pupils to be first in England to go phone-free Vicki Dean, the principal of Tenbury High academy, says visitors to her secondary school in the Worcestershire countryside think its pupils appear less mature than others their age because they are running about and playing rather than sitting huddled over their phones. “When I worked at my previous school, I still remember social time was like this,” Dean said, mimicking holding a phone screen in front of her face. But Tenbury is different, with one of the toughest phone-free policies of any mainstream state secondary school in England, and Dean says that has influenced how her pupils act. Continue reading...

Paul Givan says details of 407 people mistakenly sent out included names, addresses and personal comments The education minister in Northern Ireland has “unreservedly” apologised after the personal details of more than 400 people who had offered to contribute to a review of special education needs were breached. The embarrassing data breach came to light on Thursday after the education department said it had mistakenly sent to 174 people a spreadsheet attachment that contained the names, email address and titles of 407 individuals who had expressed an interest in attending the end-to-end review of special education needs (SEN) events across Northern Ireland. Continue reading...