Education
Fact checks about schools, teacher supply, childcare universities and qualifications
School statistics don’t show 140,000 children ‘never came back’ after pandemic disruption
A figure quoted in the Sun by Baroness Karren Brady is the number of pupils who missed at least 50% of sessions last summer, not the number who’ve disappeared completely.
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The numbers behind the PM’s maths claims fact checked
We’ve dug into the figures behind Rishi Sunak’s claims about the negative impact of poor numeracy.
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Think tank figure does not show 100,000 children ‘never went back to school’ due to lockdown
Journalist Isabel Oakeshott twice claimed that 100,000 children left education permanently as a result of the pandemic.
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£95k average headteacher salary refers only to state secondary schools
The Daily Express repeated a claim made by education secretary Gillian Keegan last month about headteacher salaries, which failed to clarify the figure referred only to those in secondary schools
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Claim ‘nine in 10’ teachers voted to strike is misleading
Teaching union NASUWT claimed that nine in 10 of its members voted to strike.
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Rishi Sunak’s New Year speech fact checked
We’ve looked at some of the claims made by the PM in his first speech of 2023.
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Public information film about the dangers of electricity has not been banned
A segment of a 1970s short film warning about the dangers of playing near electrical substations has not been banned.
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Reports that ‘most teachers’ are suffering from depression are based on a self-selecting survey
The data comes from members of the NASUWT teaching union who chose to complete its survey, so it can’t reliably tell us about the wellbeing of teachers as a whole.
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We don’t know how many children aren’t on school rolls
The Children’s Commissioner for England recently claimed that 80,000 to 100,000 children weren’t on any school roll.
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Parents mostly against face masks in classrooms
A recent poll found two thirds of parents of secondary school pupils were against mask wearing in classrooms, but the results may not be representative of parents generally.
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