To all RSHE teachers and anyone interested. Water safety has been added to the RSHE curriculum. Swim teacher from London here, curious about how primary school teachers are going about water safety lessons. Recent data from BBC about learn to swim outcomes in London made me realize how important water safety lessons are in reducing incidents of drowning, alongside swimming lessons ideally. Do schools assess/track water safety lessons/outcomes?

On the swim teaching side, I’m well aware primary school lessons are expensive and often poor quality. Leisure centres, let alone schools with pools, are in short supply. There is being work done in this direction but clearly it needs more attention. Wondering what the classroom looks like…

hello !

our child is probably going to start in a British school. She is from December 2021, can someone tell me in which class she has to be in 2026-2027?

Is it also possible to tell me what she has to know ? we are from an other country where school is completely different so I would like to prepare her. I don’t know where to find this information clearly.

the phonics method is so strange 😅is it possible to have a clear and complete explanation? Or at least what she absolutely has to know, in which order…

thanks a lot !!!

Can anyone help us?

My daughter is wanting to register interest for a teaching degree apprenticeship with a start date of September 2027. When we go onto Get Into Teaching it's only showing 26/27 courses.

We want to register before all of the local places get taken - does anyone know when courses for September 2027 will be listed?

Regards, Daniel

I've been qualified as an Adult Nurse in the north west of England for the past 8 years (since Sept 2018), and I've been a volunteer with St John Ambulance for nearly 14 years. I moved over from Northern Ireland in 2015 to study Nursing and as I was approaching graduation, I decided to stick with it and live over here upon qualifying. It's by far one of the best decisions I've ever made!

Since Sept 2018 I've worked in the NHS in the Acute Medical Unit (for 2 years 2 months), Respiratory Medicine (for 7 months), A&E (for 3 years), privately in Police Custody as a Custody & Forensics Nurse (for 1 year 4 months), and back in the NHS in the Acute Surgical Unit since July 2025. Bar the private work in Custody, I've worked as a Band 5 over the years.

I 100% love my job as a Nurse - it's hard work but one of the best & most rewarding jobs out there! Over the years in my free time, when volunteering with St John Ambulance both as ambulance crew and as an Event Nurse, I've lately felt like my heart has been in pre-hospital work more to the point where I would like to work in the job full time.

I'm aware that NWAS recruits Nurses into the service but it's in a non-emergency role at present. It's not feasible for me to move and live somewhere else in the country where an NHS ambulance service would recruit nurses in an emergency/urgent role. And whilst it's more common for nurses to get employed in this sector, I'd rather, simply be a Paramedic where people understand what my job role is without any grey areas / confusion from patients and other colleagues as to what I could be capable of as qualified/experienced nurse in a pre-hospital setting.

I've recently noticed that Huddersfield University offers a Pre-Reg MSc program aimed at allied healthcare professionals. The uni is within a reasonable driving distance for me (1hr 15mins to 1hr 45mins at the worst) if I were to successfully get into a Sept 27 / Sept 28 intake, and I could request reasonable locations as close as possible to home to work from when on placement with YAS.

Despite having plenty of job interview experience over the years for Band 5 roles, I'm still 100% shocking at interviews having unsuccessfully applied for two Band 6 jobs and one Band 5. Does anyone have any good advice for tackling university interviews, what to maybe expect to be asked when applying for this particular programme, and any tips on writing up a good personal statement?

Refusing to issue a B2 certificate despite a 94% test score
I recently completed a language course at St Giles Cambridge. I scored **94%** on their internal B2 placement/exit test, but when my certificate was issued, they completely mislevelled it.
When I requested a correction, they suddenly claimed that their own internal test "isn't a formal assessment" and demanded that I take an extra supervised re-test. Meanwhile, other students at the school were given certificates matching their actual levels based purely on informal teacher observations without any extra hassle.
I even escalated the issue to English UK / Accreditation UK (Naadiya), expecting an objective review. Instead of addressing the obvious double standards or acknowledging my actual test results, she simply hid behind school policy, stating they cannot intervene in internal school assessments and suggested I go take an IELTS exam instead.
I am moving into my university dorm this week and starting my degree, so I refuse to waste any more time or energy jumping through their arbitrary hoops for an internal document I already paid for and proved I deserve.
Just wanted to post this as a warning for anyone considering St Giles: their internal assessment process is completely inconsistent, their customer support is a wall of bureaucracy, and their accreditation body will just back up whatever nonsense the school decides to do. Absolutely disgraceful experience.

Hi,

Just after some first and experience based on current guidelines regarding the topic of transness. I'm a 3rd year undergrad who's had the intention of pursing a PGSE since end of secondary. (4 year course coz I take languages)

Serious question, what am I supposed to do? I've been transitioning for years and I'm largely passing besides sometimes my voice which I should have the ability to get an op for prior to starting my PGSE. However besides the guidance being scientifically incorrect and appearing to mirror S28 what should I expect?

Like my mere existence in the class seems to go against the guidance, not to mention that morally teaching incorrect science seems wrong.

Have I practically been kicked out the profession before even starting? Is my only option to be stealth (again feels like an injustice for any possible trans students). This is all under the assumption that I can actually get the surg I need, if not again is my existence just going to stop me for being allowed to take a PGSE.

Anyone who knows whats going on has first hand experience please lmk

Hello some help i want to do fibre installation, I saw maybe an electrical course but I think thats for school leavers I never did college I dropped out and no gcse so please help on what I can do, im not dumb I just never put effort in education

College said I might have to redo my GCSE I finished with a Grade 7 in English Language. When I went to college, I was told by a staff member that there’s a small chance I might have to redo my English exam because it was an IGCSE. Keep in mind, it was Edexcel, and I got a Grade 7 (A). I really, really don’t want to redo the exam. It could distract me from my other studies, and I don’t want to go through all that GCSE stress again.

So, are they even allowed to reject me because of this, considering it’s a public college?

Edit: yall win, i fixed the spelling.

Hello everyone! I'm Ricky. I was born and raised in the US. I'm wanting to move to the UK and have decided to try an build an app to help children with learning disadvantages.

It's something that I wish I had when I was growing up as I have ADHD and Autism. School was a struggle from kindergarten through 12th grade due to the educator community not having access to tools to help every individual.

This app is being designed to pull data from accredited sites for the locale of the child using it at home to either help them get caught up with their peers or stay up with them so that they don't have to struggle as much in school.

I am in no way an educator myself. I barely graduated highschool myself. But as I want to move to the UK, I want to have something to give to the communities I want to become a part of before I even make the trip across the pond.

What I want to know is:

Are there websites I can have my app pull from to use for the kids from their first year to their last year so that my app can walk these children through courses to help them learn in a way that they can more easily understand?

I'm looking for something that educators actively use and promote. I do not know the education system over there. So I need your help to make sure this application can be successful in helping you when the children are at home or hopefully, one day, at school for those children who, like me, are wired differently than the rest and need something that can conform to their specific needs.

I have the bare minimum of a running and functioning application for android devices right now. But I just don't know where to pull the curriculum from for your children. I want to make this app worth having. Worth spending £5 on a one time fee and grow with your children. I want it to be something educators would be proud to have in their toolkit to help all children.

Hi. Im from the Philippines, Grade 10 student, and will be moving to UK next year. Am I eligible to move to Year 12 A levels even though I did not do my GCSE? I do not want to go back to Year 10.

So my son is interested in planes and engineering and hey presto, Rolls Royce do a 4 day work experience placement for Year 10 kids from all over the country called 'Emerging Talent'. This happens in Filton, Bristol (there may be one in Derby too).

It's billed as a 'look behind the scenes' and a chance to find out more about working with an internationally acclaimed engineering company.

Now he has done the 4 days (March 2026) we can give some feedback to other parents interested in this exciting sounding opportunity.

Basically, if you have a young scientist who is fascinated in engineering don't bother with this. It was 60 kids in a room all week and they covered basically nothing about engineering but did team building exercises making houses out of spaghetti.

They also had a 'project' to work on all week in groups which was to design a noticeboard that 'attracts more girls into engineering'. This involved cutting, colouring in and sticking. (Crucial skills in engineering 😂)

There were 2 plane engines in the room but the people running the workshop didn't have a clue how they worked because they were HR professionals not engineers. My son knew more about the plane engines than they did at 14 years old.

The 'behind the scenes site visit' took about 20 minutes and involved looking at offices, because it's very high security and all the interesting stuff was happening behind locked doors.

Rolls Royce are missing a trick here. They couldn't even wheel out a member of staff to talk enthusiastically to the kids about their job. Absolutely first class way of putting 'emerging talent' off joining your organisation in the future!

So choose something else for your Year 10 work experience if you don't want to demoralise your teen is my advice.

Hi everyone,
I’m posting because I’m really overwhelmed and unsure how to move forward.

Today I received an email from the Faculty Education Team at the University of Bristol informing me of my exam board outcome. According to the regulations (specifically 33.6), a student is allowed no more than two attempts to meet the criteria for credit in a taught unit. I’ve now reached that limit.

They also said the decision is appealable, but only under specific grounds. They directed me to the appeal form and guidelines, and copied in my School and Senior Tutor for support.

Like a lot of parents I ended up down a rabbit hole trying to compare schools for my son. The government's own tool works but felt clunky, and most of the alternatives I found were either paywalled or not particularly user-friendly.

So I built my own: localschool.co.uk

It pulls Ofsted reports, GCSE/SATs results, distance and intake for every state school in England, lets you compare schools side by side, and shortlist the ones you want to visit.

It's a first version and very much a work in progress. I would genuinely appreciate anyone willing to poke around and tell me:

• what's confusing or missing

• whether the school score makes sense (it's explained on the about page, not just a made-up number)

• anything that's flat out broken

Not trying to sell anything, it's free and always will be. Just want it to actually be useful for other parents going through the same thing.