Carly Mitchell, principal designate at Oasis Academy South Bank, which is due to open in Waterloo this September, described the school vision last night at an event hosted last night by alumni networks provider Future First and law firm Osborne Clarke, and attended by Recruiter.

In addition to expanded hours, pupils will undertake between two and four hours of teaching or activities, including visits from outside speakers and project-based learning with employers, specifically aimed at developing what she calls employability skills. More casual careers engagement would include employers coming into school to have lunch with pupils.

She said the idea was that pupils would be “seeing it on their timetable as being as important as maths and English and science”. Mitchell added that educators must see careers and work-readiness not as a “separate or bolt-on or add-on thing” but “absolutely interlinked, completely married to the curriculum”.

Academy schools “must teach a broad and balanced curriculum, but do not have to follow the National Curriculum”, according to the Department for Education.

Another panellist Kevin Garrett, director of community projects at Waitrose, suggested the company would welcome students with soft skills better suited to the workplace. “Waitrose recruits for attitude and trains for skills, and that’s probably true of a good number of employers,” he said.

And smaller employers would also benefit, although SMEs are more likely to need hard skills as well, added panellist Carl Dawson, managing director of the National Graduate Apprenticeship Programme. He said: “Big companies, it’s all about the attitude; with small companies it’s [also] about the attitude – but they haven’t got the time to train them up.”

Panellists agreed that it was problematic if careers events at schools were just confined to occasional ‘drop-down days’. However, they agreed that such one-off events did have a part to play. “It doesn’t have to be a long-term commitment,” Mitchell says.

• As reported by recruiter.co.uk earlier this month, another issue raised by Academies is that these new schools “will turn into group buyers” of recruitment services.

Stanley Hornibrook, 45, pictured right, was driving along the A505 near Royston on July 7, 2011, when he nodded off.

His lorry drifted across the road and caused a devastating four-vehicle crash which claimed the life of Bassingbourn man Steven Stamford.

Cambridge Crown Court heard last week that Hornibrook, of Dagenham, Essex, was “directly responsible” for the death of Mr Stamford, 37, who was driving a Smart car.

Angela Rafferty, prosecuting, said Hornibrook admitted falling asleep at the wheel when police interviewed him at the roadside, following the crash at about 7.25am.

She said: “There was very little that anyone on that road that day could have done and, as one knows, Mr Stamford was killed at the scene.

“Witnesses commented that his (Hornibrook’s) driving was not erratic, but that he was seen drifting across the road as he approached a gentle bend.”

Mr Stamford was on his way to work at the Sanger Institute in Hinxton, where he was head of a computer department.

The court heard that his sister was killed on the same stretch of road on Good Friday, 1983.

At an earlier hearing, Hornibrook pleaded guilty to causing the death of Mr Stamford by dangerous driving.

Last Friday he sobbed as Judge Anthony Bate told him he had left a “trail of carnage”.

Judge Bate said: “You are a 45-year-old Dagenham man of previous exemplary character and driving record.

“But time and time again we see lorry drivers in this court for one reason or another failing to keep attention on the roads.

“The potential consequences of this are far graver than if a car driver had done the same thing.”

Franco Tizzano, mitigating, said: “There’s not a day that goes by when he doesn’t think about what happened.

“He says that if he could turn the clocks back he would.

“It was clear that he was directly responsible and he is deeply sorry for what he did.”

Hornibrook was also banned from driving for two years.

Lorries were calculated to be contributing more than a quarter of all NOx concentrations at a receptor site and prompted the local council to consider measures targeting them (MT 19 March 2012).

However, Suffolk Coastal District Council said action taken by the port to reduce pollution emitted by its own handling equipment has reduced emissions to regulation levels.

It also said it would not consider introducing a ‘polluter pays’ policy unless other UK ports did so, because it would threaten Felixstowe’s competitiveness.

A council spokesman said: “One successful initiative has been the requirement to get lorries to book in so they have a one hour slot in which to visit the port. This has had a very beneficial impact on queuing which is far less of a problem than it used to be and has also obviously had an impact on air quality.”

JDM Haulage director, Gordon Clouting, said he welcomed the decision and added that economic pressures had not reduced all Felixstowe freight operations: “We are in a niche market, we are not so much on the road haulage side of things; we move containers to and from the port from rail heads and container yards. From our side of things it’s very busy.”

Jasminder Singh Dhesi, who will be sentenced next month, was arrested in March last year after a coach carrying fruit-pickers was struck by a lorry on the M5 near Birmingham.

Lorry driver William Mapstone, from Wells in Somerset, died in hospital after the collision, while a passenger on the Volvo coach, Liaquat Ali, also suffered fatal injuries.

Dhesi, 50, was driving along the inside lane of the southbound M5, near Frankley Services, in thick fog when he started having problems with the single-decker bus he was driving.

A court heard he continued on with his journey regardless – despite the vehicle only being able to reach a top speed of 26mph.

The coach then broke down for a third time 10 minutes later and Dhesi parked it in the slow lane of the southbound carriageway between junctions 3 and 4.

Moments later a lorry ploughed into the back of the stranded vehicle killing the truck driver and a coach passenger.

The Central Motorway Police Group was alerted to the crash at 6.24am and emergency crews treated more than 39 passengers.

Seven ambulances attended the scene following the crash and the southbound M5 was closed for around eight hours.

The driver of the Volvo HGV, William Mapstone, 65, from Wells in Somerset, was rushed to hospital but died shortly after 9pm.

At the Lib Dem Party Conference, Cable reportedly said: “I am working with the chancellor to develop a state-backed institution that will combine up to a billion pounds of new government capital with a larger private sector contribution.
“This will then apply further leverage through guarantees to support up to £10bn of finance to SMEs – a significant portion of all the lending available.” He will promise to fight short-termism and “get behind” good firms.
The bank will operate via existing lenders, and is due to open within 18 months. Government support will take the form of both guarantees and equity, and will go on to the balance sheet of the new institution and not be reclaimed by the Treasury

Many lane restrictions are now being applied on the A12, A13 and A40.

It was bad news for motorists using all three roads as they experienced up to two hour delays on the first morning the Olympic lanes were enforced.

Transport for London had warned journeys on the roads may take “considerably longer than usual”.

One motorist commented from the A13 said his normal hour-long drive from Swanley to Redbridge was taking two and a half hours.

There was also heavy traffic in central London, with delays in Whitehall, Shaftesbury Avenue and Trafalgar Square.

The Mall is also closed due to Olympic preparations and motorists told of delays in Greenwich.

Changes to 120 key junctions have been made, with more than 1,000 sets of traffic lights rephased due to the Games.

Any drivers breaking the new regulations will incur a fine of £130 examples may be driving in the Games lanes or stopping along the route..

In a briefing a spokesman for Transport for London, said: “Several major routes into London will be exceptionally busy on Monday morning as the capital continues its transformation into a huge sporting and cultural venue.

“The unprecedented scale of changes to London’s roads, the arrival for the Games of 11,500 athletes, media and officials and the Torch Relay mean that there will be a significant impact on traffic in the capital.

“This impact will last for the duration of the Olympic Games.”

The changes are part of the establishment of the Olympic Route Network, which is intended to make sure athletes and officials can move around the city smoothly.

The unemployment rate fell to 8.1% in the period down from 8.3% in the previous quarter, according to the ONS (Office for National Statistics), which says there is “some limited evidence” of an Olympics effect in the figures, since 50,000 of the 65,000 drop in unemployment occurred in London.

The number of full-time workers increased by 133,000 to reach 21.4m and the number of part-time workers increased by 48,000 to reach 7.99m.

Commenting on the figures, minister for employment Chris Grayling says: “This is an encouraging set of figures in what is still an incredibly difficult economic climate. Not only is unemployment falling but in overall terms there are now almost 100,000 less people on benefits since the 2010 election. We still have a long way to go but this is a step in the right direction.”

Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) director of policy and professional services Tom Hadley says: “Today’s figures are good news and are further evidence that it is possible for the private sector to compensate for public sector job losses. However, we still need to be cautious. Tens of thousands of university, school and college leavers will be entering the job market over the summer and our latest data from recruiters shows hiring activity is slowing.”

Neil Carberry, CBI director for employment and skills, says: “Despite the challenging economic times, the British labour market is showing some resilience, with jobs being created and fewer people unemployed.