Only eight new free schools are certain to open their doors at the start of the next academic year in September, it has been revealed. When he launched the programme - which allows parents, companies or charities to set up schools within the state system but free of council control - last year, Education Secretary Michael Gove said he hadRead more

Three more exam paper blunders are being investigated by the regulator, it emerged yesterday. Ofqual said it was now trying to establish how at least six mistakes in total appeared in questions on this year's papers – most of them at AS-level. The latest to emerge concerned a geography paper set by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), taken byRead more

To Oxford University and an emotional appeal by the former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion to ring-fence arts spending during the current spending cuts. Not likely to succeed, but he does use the kind of language that ministers would understand – two million new jobs and £16.6 million in exports generated between 1997 and 2007. On the more human side,Read more

Two newly completed colleges form perfect bookends for the seismic shift in school design policy wrestled into existence by Michael Gove. One of them marks the end of the Learning and Skills Council's grand dream of a production line of wow-factor further education buildings. The other signals the beginning of education environments that have more to do with Ikea flatpack-thinkingRead more

Students are being awarded top grades on weak vocational courses that leave them with little knowledge of business, inspectors warned today. In a damning report, Ofsted condemned vocational business qualifications which fail to develop pupils' understanding and skills in the subject. And the inspectorate raised concerns that business courses which are examined through internally set and marked assignments are seenRead more

The number of British teenagers applying to one of Europe's leading universities has risen dramatically this year. Maastricht University in the Netherlands has seen a tenfold increase with more than 400 applications from UK students compared with just 35 at the same time last year. A key factor in the rise is the cost of studying at Maastricht: only £1,526Read more

Dozens of dirt-poor children in a Philippines mangrove village no longer have to swim to school while straining to hold their books above the water. A blogger who learned how children from Layag-layag village struggled to reach school, raised money through Facebook to provide boats to the community in the southern Philippines. A bright-yellow, donated motorboat carried Layag-layag children toRead more

Authorities have closed schools in two towns in China after industrial waste contaminated the water supply for 200,000 residents, officials and state media said Tuesday. Locals in the towns of Pingyao and Liangzhu in the eastern province of Zhejiang have complained their tap water has a strange taste and smell, an official from the local environmental protection bureau surnamed ShenRead more

The Dubai Executive Council has called for the setting up of a plan for education that matches the UAE's strategy and the federal educational system. The council meeting held Monday in Dubai was chaired by Shaikh Maktoum Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and First Deputy Chairman of the Dubai Executive Council. The council examined theRead more

The task is as hard as weeding out the brightest youngsters for places on Oxford and Cambridge Universities' most popular courses. There are 16 candidates for every vacancy and somehow the 2,000 applicants have to be whittled down to 120 by the time the course starts. We are not talking about law and medicine at Britain's most prestigious universities, though.Read more