Best Schools - The poster boy for a scheme that is convincing councils to use boarding schools as an alternative to

One boarding school charging up to £35,000 a year is accepting pupils from troubled families in a move that could ease the pressure on Britain’s care system.

Kingham Hill School, set in 100 acres of Cotswold countryside near the home of David Cameron, has admitted its first pupil part-funded by local social services. Oxfordshire county council is contributing £14,388 a year to the boarding fees of a girl whose fostering arrangements fell through. The same sum will be contributed jointly by the school and Buttle UK, a children’s charity.

Kingham’s headmaster, Nick Seward, said the girl, who started school last month, is “our first placement — we hope she will be the first of many”.

Julien Andre, 17, head boy at Kingham Hill, is a poster child for the scheme, having been sponsored by Buttle UK since the age of 10 when he was living in a broken home. His mother, who had mental health and drink problems, was struggling to look after him. When he was a toddler, the pair lived on the streets in London for a year, and the family went on to share a home with a drug dealer.

Today he plays rugby for the school’s 1st XV and has applied to Brasenose College, Oxford, to study philosophy and Spanish.

Teacher trainee demand drops first time since 2016-17

The number of aspiring teachers needed to begin training has dropped for the first time in at least five years, new figures show.

Today the Department for Education published its initial teacher training (ITT) allocations and teacher supply model (TSM) for 2020-21.

The model estimates how many new teachers are needed to enter the teaching profession in 2021-22 – and by extension estimates how many postgraduate trainees are needed to start ITT courses in 2020-21.

This tear's TSM shows 30,952 would-be teachers are needed to start training next year, compared to 33,090 in 2019-20 – a decrease of 6.5 per cent.

It is the first time in at least five years that the number of trainees required to start ITT courses has fallen.