700,000 'spare' places in schools
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With politicians promising more school places - official figures show many spare places already exist.
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By Tiffany Erickson Deseret Morning News  Davis School District leaders want students to get the most out of the district's computers and taxpayers' money by refurbishing older computers and giving them to students.
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A London secondary school is having to reduce its timetable because it cannot recruit enough teachers.
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(InfoWorld) - French authorities will give out 175,000 USB memory sticks loaded with open-source software to Parisian high-school students at the start of the next school year. The sticks will give the students, aged 15 and 16, the freedom to access their e-mail, browser bookmarks and other documents on computers at school, home, a friend's house or in an Internet cafÃ© -- but at a much lower cost than providing notebook computers for all, a spokesman for the Greater Paris Regional Council said Friday. It's a way to reduce the digital divide, said spokesman Jean-Baptiste Roger. The sticks will probably contain the Firefox 2 Web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, an office productivity suite such as OpenOffice.org 2, an audio and video player, and software for instant messaging, he said. The exact mix of software will be defined by the company that wins the contract to supply the sticks, but will be open source, he said. At the European arm of the foundation behind the Firefox browser, Mozilla Europe president Tristan Nitot hailed the news as "an excellent surprise." It could even be a way to fight software piracy, he said, since the open-source software that the sticks will contain may be freely and legally copied. "It's better to copy that than Microsoft Office: it's cheaper, and it's legal," he said. School heads will distribute the USB (Universal Serial Bus) sticks to 130,000 students at the start of the next academic year, as they arrive for their first of three years at high school. There are 476,000 students in the 468 public high schools operated by the council and the 213 privately run schools it funds. Apprentices at the 173 professional training centers funded by the council will receive the other 45,000 sticks. If the project goes well, there's no reason why funding shouldn't be renewed next year, said Roger. The council plans to spend â¬2.6 million (US$3.4 million) on the USB sticks this year, a small fraction of its overall educational budget. School funding in France comes from many sources. Teachers are paid by the national government, while the provision of teaching facilities including the construction and maintenance of schools is paid for by local governments: city authorities, in the case of primary and middle schools, and regional councils in the case of high schools. In 2006, the Greater Paris Regional Council's budget for maintaining high school facilities, including buildings, libraries and its 120,000 computers, totalled â¬728 million. It also spent â¬195 million on facilities for apprentices in professional training centers.
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There is a warning that independent schools are stretching their lead among A-level students.
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A local council will use a lottery to allocate secondary school places for 11-year-olds as it tries to stop middle-class families dominating the best schools, it said Wednesday.
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MORE than 700 children from 14 primary and junior schools across Solihull are uniting to find out how they can make a difference to their environment.
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Millions of children have poured into schools as country after country has made primary education free.
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Communities and schools are forging ahead with projects to create and improve green spaces throughout the North-East.   The Big Lottery Fund has handed out grants worth a total of pounds 181,010 to grassroots organisations to transform local spaces for the benefit of people and wildlife.
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Annual tables showing the test results of thousands of England's primary schools have been published.
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As hundreds of thousands of baby boomers retire and the No Child Left Behind law raises standards for new teachers, school systems across the country are facing a growing scarcity of qualified recruits.
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Two thirds of England's schools and three quarters of colleges want to offer the first 10 Diplomas subjects.
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Another lot of lottery money for school sport goes out - but most of the Â£750m total has not been spent.
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The number of children in schools of more than 2,000 pupils has more than trebled since 1997, the Tories say.
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By OLYMPIA MEOLA  St. Catherine's School rising seventh-graders can add laptops to their fall school-supply list.  The Richmond private school has plugged into a growing list of schools adding computer programs that put a laptop in the hands of every student.  The St.
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Most schools don't have the funds to follow the lead of well-endowed universities.
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Heads say England's school funding means pupils in disadvantaged areas are missing out.