Annual Reports
RFA: The Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) has reported on the impacts of the biofuel supplied in the first year of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO). This confirms the RFA as the first regulator in the world to monitor & report verified information on the carbon and sustainability performance of biofuels. Several fossil fuel suppliers are shown by the report to have failed to demonstrate the sustainability of their biofuels.
Ofsted: The wider schools workforce, including teaching assistants & learning mentors, is making a difference to pupils’ learning, according to a report published by Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. However, the report also shows that these staff must be effectively deployed, well managed & properly trained.
The report - Workforce reform in schools: has it made a difference? - looked at the impact in 30 schools of recruiting a wider range of staff since 2003 to raise standards & tackle teacher workload. It is the fifth report in a series by Ofsted evaluating the effectiveness of wider workforce reform since the 2003 National Workforce Agreement.
This latest report shows some schools are now making much better use of their wider workforce than those visited soon after the reforms were introduced. However the report reveals there is still much to be done to ensure the wider workforce fully benefit pupils’ learning. Few of the schools in the survey tracked the effectiveness of such support, and problems could re-emerge when pupils who had been successfully supported at primary school moved on to secondary school or from Key Stage 3 to Key Stage 4.
Despite the recommendations of the four previous reports by Ofsted, only 3 of the schools knew about the Training and Development Agency’s (TDA) career development framework for the wider workforce. This was seen to have delayed the development of the wider workforce as a fully trained professional body.
