Teachers say behaviour getting worse as survey also shows parents getting less supportive of school policies

Only two in five children in England say they always feel safe at school, according to a government survey, and teachers from across Britain have told the Guardian they have seen pupils’ behaviour deteriorate over the last two years.

Teachers said violence and abuse aimed at school staff and other students had increased alongside displays of homophobia, racism and sexism, with women in particular bearing the brunt of aggressive sexual remarks.

People want good lives for themselves, but the UK has taken so much from the Caribbean. Better to help the islands thrive

• Gus John is an academic and an equality and human rights campaigner

Does it matter if we in England are recruiting teachers so heavily in Jamaica that classrooms there don’t have enough of them? Ask those who run school systems in the Caribbean that desperately need their brightest and best. People will always want to be mobile. The issues are in what numbers, and why and how.

When I became director of education in Hackney in 1989, the first Black person to hold such a post, there was a massive shortage of primary school teachers and secondary maths and science teachers across the country. I recruited 55 teachers in Trinidad to come to work in Hackney; 50 in primary schools and five in secondary schools. They had all been made redundant by their government on the order of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of a structural adjustment programme. I insisted on three things. One, that they would come to England as family units unless they were single. Two, that Hackney would be responsible for finding them accommodation and school and college places for their children and would help to find employment for their spouses who were not teachers; and three, that they would all be supported to gain qualified teacher status and graduate and postgraduate qualifications.

Prof Gus John is an academic and an equality and human rights campaigner

Gillian Keegan will also squeeze funding for programmes to widen access to higher education

Ministers will cut funding for performing and creative arts courses at English universities next year, which sector leaders say will further damage the country’s cultural industries.

The cuts, outlined by the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, in guidance to the universities regulator , will also reduce funding for Uni-Connect, which runs programmes aimed at widening access to higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to £20m, a third of its 2020-21 budget.

Exclusive: Schools following NHS and social care in recruiting from overseas as work visas for secondary school teachers double

Schools are following the NHS and social care providers by increasing their recruitment of teachers from overseas to fill vacancies, leaving classrooms empty in countries such as Jamaica.

Immigration figures show a jump in the number of skilled worker visas issued to teachers from abroad, while the government in England is using bonuses to boost the number of teacher trainees from overseas – at a time when Rishi Sunak said legal migration to the UK was “too high” and vowed to reduce it.

DfE allocates £450m to 826 building projects at 733 schools, a fall of almost 60% – in terms of total projects – compared with 2020-21

A record number of schools have had bids for building repairs turned down by the government, with experts warning that buckets on desks, freezing classrooms and power cuts are all becoming commonplace.

The Department for Education (DfE) announced on Tuesday that it had allocated £450m to 826 building repair projects at 733 schools through its annual condition improvement fund (CIF), which is designed to help academies and small academy trusts keep buildings “safe and in good working order”. But this is a fall of nearly 60% – in terms of total projects – compared with 2020-21, when the government awarded £563m to 2,104 repair projects.

Number of severely absent children was 150% higher last year than pre-Covid, with one in 50 children missing at least half of lessons

Record numbers of pupils in England were absent for long periods last year, with one in 50 missing at least half of their lessons, according to official data showing absences remain far higher than pre-Covid levels.

The updated Department for Education figures show 150,000 children at state schools were classed as severely absent in 2022-23 – 30,000 more than the year before and 150% higher than the 60,000 who were severely absent in 2018-19, before the pandemic.

Schools risk being overwhelmed by hungry, exhausted children from freezing homes, headteachers and campaigners warn

• ‘If a child is hungry, it doesn’t matter if you’re a bloody good teacher’

Schools are finding beds, providing showers for pupils and washing uniforms as child poverty spirals out of control, headteachers from across England have told the Observer .

School leaders said that as well as hunger they were now trying to mitigate exhaustion, with increasing numbers of children living in homes without enough beds or unable to sleep because they were cold. They warned that “desperate” poverty was driving problems with behaviour, persistent absence and mental health.

Teachers and school leaders in England call government proposals vague, leaving them vulnerable to losing court cases

Teaching unions and school leaders in England are calling for an overhaul of ministers’ proposed guidance on the treatment of transgender pupils, saying the current version is incomplete and vulnerable to legal challenges.

The unions and other organisations, including the campaigning group Sex Matters, are also critical of the guidance proposals for how schools should respond to children wanting to socially transition to a different gender by changing their names or uniform.

Campaign to add financial topics to national curriculum in 2014 ‘counterproductive’ says founder of Money Saving Expert

Martin Lewis, the financial advice expert, accused the government of undermining his efforts to ensure children in England are taught about mortgages and credit cards, saying schools are suffering from a “poverty” of financial education.

Addressing the education select committee, Lewis said the successful campaign he led in 2014 to add financial topics to the national curriculum has had little to show for it in the decade since.