A Level Results Barnsley College

I was at Barnsley College this week as hundreds of students collected their A Level, T Level and BTec results...

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Teachers' Strike

I covered the teachers' strike last week - we reported from the demo in Sheffield.

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School Trip

A community in Leeds has rallied round to raise thousands of pounds to enable more than fifty children in their area to go on a residential school trip to Whitby. Meadowfield Primary School in Halton Moor was forced to scrap their annual 3 day trip because they simply couldn't afford it any more. But when the owner of the local corner shop found out, he stepped in to fundraise three grand.

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Exams Resume

GCSE and A Level exams got underway in full this week for the first time in three years. Unlike last year, students have not been given advance information about the topics they're likely to be tested on. The regulator Ofqual says the disruption caused by Covid will still be taken into account in the grades that are awarded - but some students are worried that they've been unfairly affected by the virus and, more recently, strike action.

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Twins Schooling

I covered the troubling story of four year old autistic twins in York where only one of the boys has been given a place at a special school...

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School disrepair

A mother from Sheffield who was hit by a fascia board which fell from a school building is calling for more funding to be given to schools. Carla Ashman was waiting to pick up her two boys from Dore Primary School when it happened. She was left with cuts and grazes, a black eye and tinnitus.

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School Talk

I had a very enjoyable morning speaking to schoolchildren at Ecclesall Primary about my job. The Foundation children, who are aged 4 and 5, are learning about different professions and have had visits from people who do different jobs. I talked about being a BBC News and Sport reporter and showed them the camera and tripod I use to film stories. They listened really well and asked me some good questions. I also showed them the short video below which has clips from some of the stories I've covered for BBC Look North in recent years...

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School Uniforms

I've been filming at a Yorkshire charity which collects and redistributes school uniforms. Uniform Exchange says demand has never been so high. They gave out 3,500 school uniforms to children in Kirklees last year - stopping the clothes going to landfill and helping families at the same time.

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Free School Meals

The families of school children in Rotherham who are entitled to free school meals will get supermarket vouchers to buy food during summer holidays. They'll be worth fifteen pounds per week per child. The number of children in Rotherham who qualify for means-tested free school meals has risen more than a third to nearly twelve thousand children since the start of the pandemic. It was an eye-opening experience to speak to teachers and parents at Badsley Primary School in Rotherham to see how the cost of living crisis is impacting on families.

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Adult Education

I covered a story about a training provider which runs adult education courses in South Yorkshire which is urging the City Region Mayor Dan Jarvis to intervene and reverse a decision not to continue funding them. Last year almost two and a half thousand people in South Yorkshire attended courses run by the charity W.E.A but now its funding of £1.7 million has being cut.

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Creative Schoolchildren

We had a brilliant day filming at Byron Wood Academy in Sheffield where schoolchildren are being encouraged to be creative and use their imagination with literacy charity Grimm and Co...

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GCSE Results Day

I went to Firth Park Academy in Sheffield to witness the excitement of GCSE results day, something I still remember very well despite it being half my lifetime ago!

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A Levels U-Turn

I went to report at a Yorkshire school which saw a dramatic change in its results following the government's u-turn on A-Level grading.

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Virtual Clearing

I went to the University of Sheffield to see how they were managing clearing this year. More than a hundred University of Sheffield students & staff were answering thousands of calls from A Level students wanting to study there. It was almost all done from home because of social distancing.

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School Refusal

I've been working on a story for a few weeks to do with school refusal or phobia as it's sometimes known. It's is a problem that results in a child refusing to go to school on a regular basis. The mental health charity Mind is calling on the government to carry out an urgent review into the issue and to stop treating children with mental health issues as truants. We filmed with Kai and his Mum Debbie in Chesterfield. The story was featured across the BBC - on Radio 4 Today programme, BBC News website, News Channel and on BBC Breakfast...



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Trampolinist Bounces Back

I've been to Sheffield High School for Girls where one of their students is trampolinist who's back competing two years after breaking her neck in a training accident. Lucy Horan was told by doctors she'd never be able to trampoline again but she's proved them wrong, winning bronze at the English Championships last month. I thoroughly enjoyed working on the story and had to have a go on the trampoline myself!



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Latin

I've been to the only state school in Sheffield that offers the study of Latin where they've started a crowdfunding campaign to save the subject. Spending cuts and changes to the national curriculum mean that Classical Civilisation and Latin are under threat at High Storrs School. They need to raise a hundred thousand pounds to be able to keep teaching the subjects.

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Westways Primary Strike

Parents have been demonstrating in support of teachers who are due to go on strike at a primary school in Sheffield. Teachers at Westways Primary in Crookes are due to start four days of strike action next Wednesday over changes brought in by the new executive headteacher. Their union says there's a loss of morale and increasing stress caused by growing workloads and management style at the school - but the head says the children are making better progress.


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Abbey School Saved

This is a story I've covered right from the start, when teachers went on strike last year over a restructure of Abbey Special School in Rotherham for children with learning difficulties. It was then announced that the school was going to close after OFSTED rated it inadequate. But the local authority has now done a U-turn, much to the delight of students and parents...



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Ed Balls

I interviewed the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families at a school in Malton for my colleague who was working on a story about libraries being compulsory in prisons but not in schools. I tried quite a few times to push him on this but, typical politician, he knows how to answer difficult questions.

His press officer was very keen dictate where we shot the interview (living up to the government press officer stereotype of being controlling!). There was a 'The Thick Of It' moment, when the press officer and my cameraman had a blazing row about where it would be filmed - eventually we agreed to do it in a meeting room with a rack of books behind him.