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By Richard Garner, Education Editor Independent
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
The cost of bringing up a child has risen to more than £200,000 for the first time, according to a survey released today.Figures show the average parent is likely to have forked out more than £201,000 per child by the time their offspring has reached the age of 21. The cost has increased 4 per cent over the past year and 43 per cent in the seven years since the survey was first launched. The biggest cost is childcare at £54,696 …

By Laura Clark, Daily Mail
Children’s Secretary Ed Balls is likely to face criticism for the new proposals Ed Balls stands accused of encouraging teenage pregnancy with plans to give 14-year-olds compulsory parenting lessons. Pupils will learn how to raise youngsters under the Children’s Secretary’s proposals from 2011 onwards.But experts warned that this could lead to teenage pregnancy being seen as increasingly acceptable, youngsters giving up education to have a baby - and teachers taking on the role of social workers.The row coincided with figures showing how schoolgirls in England’s …

Children should be allowed to play in the dirt because being too clean can impair the skin’s ability to heal itself, new research suggests.
By Murray Wardrop Telegraph
Scientists have discovered that bacteria on the surface of the skin play an important role in combating inflammation when we get hurt. The bugs dampen down overactive immune responses, which can lead to rashes or cause cuts and bruises to become swollen and painful. The findings support previous research which suggests that exposure to germs during early childhood can prime the immune …

By Nigel Morris and Richard Garner
Monday, 16 November 2009

Education officials have run up a £10m bill for the taxpayer from first-class rail travel over the last three years. Civil servants bought an estimated 60,000 first-class tickets between 2006 and 2009. The scale of the spending – equivalent to just over 300 teachers’ salaries or four new primary schools – provoked anger among opposition MPs and parents’ leaders.The bill was accumulated by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), headed by Ed Balls, and by its predecessor, the Department for …

On the 5th Nov 2009, Margaret Morrissey from ParentsOutloud was on the PM show with Ed Balls (Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families) and Eddie Mair on BBC Radio 4.
Please click on the video below to here this part of the show.

Posted By: Sue Gerrard. I’d like to draw your attention to proposals for changes in legislation

Tim Ross London Evening Standard
Children must never be allowed to go paddling on school trips unless teachers have conducted a thorough risk assessment first, the Government said today. Ministers published new guidelines to encourage more schools to take pupils out for walks, activities and fieldwork. But the document urged teachers to resist when children ask to dip their toes in the sea on a hot day. Schools minister Diana Johnson published the 58-page guidance amid concern that health and safety fears were stopping teachers taking trips. Unions have …

Cambridge Primary Review : http://www.primaryreview.org.uk
Having work for over 25 years with children, for children following their time in education and suffering with them their parents and teachers the work of politicians in their name this morning I am going to revert to childhood and say to politicians “I told you so”. The review presented by Robin Alexander, and his team of researchers, will no doubt gladden the heart of thousands of parents as it does mine. Sadly Government have and will choose to ignore all the work they …

Posted By Mr Newman
I know that schools must show that tools must show that they are removing and excluding less children from their classrooms. Has anyone in government realised what this means? It means that students who are abusive, disruptive, and making a huge negative impact on the learning of the rest of the class are being sent back to class for the sake of a statistic. So the other children who wish to learn can’t - their teacher is busy. They don’t learn, they don’t grow, and they are …