Category Archives: education

Milburn and teachers: might be a muddle

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The problem of expanding the age range for NEETs from 16-18 to 16-25 is that the wider age grouping also includes graduates. In principle, I have nothing wrong with this widening of the age grouping for NEETs, but it might create some interesting issues for the government.

Take teaching: If an unemployed graduate who has trained to be a teacher is to be offered a job, will it be in the same area as their teaching course, regardless of whether it was an undergraduate degree or a postgraduate training course?

The Prime Minister has also talked about the importance of place, so will any job be where a graduate is currently living, often the location of their university or where they grew up?

Suppose there are teaching posts available elsewhere in the country to where the graduate either is currently living or grew up, will graduates be required to move to the job or be allowed to stay put and reject the teaching post?

With training provision patchy in certain parts of England, offering a job to an unemployed newly qualified teacher, even if it requires them to relocate, seems like a sensible move.

Even more interesting is whether the job is in this country. My previous post on this blog highlighted the large number of vacancies for teachers of music across some other parts of the world. If any vacancy is being offered by a school that is part of a UK group, regardless of where the school the teacher would be employed is located, would such a vacancy qualify for the government scheme? An interesting question.

What of teaching jobs abroad offered through recruitment agencies, will the government disqualify such vacancies?

Sometime ago, (actually in 2020),  I wrote a blog post suggesting that every newly qualified teacher without a teaching job, and still looking for one by the end of August, be offered a term as a supernumerary teacher in a local school Supernumerary teachers? | John Howson

On the wider front, the government will have to consider, not only for teaching, but for other vocational degrees and even ‘T’ levels and other vocational courses between 16 and 18, whether the Milburn Scheme will ignore the qualifications acquired, and just require a NEET to take a job regardless of what the job was?

Substituting the cost of mentoring with a reduction in the the Employers National Insurance or some other similar cashback for an employer taking on a trained graduate that is a NEET, and making use of their learning, would seem like a sensible approach, and more cost effective than making these graduate endure hours of coaching while their current skills are ignored.

Will unemployed NEETs also be offered the chance to become an entrepreneur, or is the government’s view that a ‘job’ means working for someone else? Lots of questions, and it will be interesting to read those parts of the final report not announced in advance, and how far the thinking around how the schemes will actually work?

Can state schools afford to lose music teachers to jobs overseas?

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Next week the great and the good in music education will meet at the MusicMark Annual Conference in Liverpool. Regular readers of this blog will know of my concerns for the future of music in state schools. Removal of the bursary for trainees not lucky enough to be on a salaried programme; reduction in the training numbers; parts of England with few training places, and the closure of undergraduate music courses potentially affecting the future pipeline for new trainees are all matters for concern.

If ensuring enough trainees to teach music in our state schools wasn’t challenging enough, state schools also face competition for the private school sector. Many secondary schools in that sector seem to have weathered the imposition of VAT by the Labour government, as the preparatory school sector seems to have found falling pupil numbers in the age groups they serve plus VAT too much for some schools.

Even if the challenge to state schools from the private sector in Egland is not growing, there is now the challenge presented by private schools overseas. How concerned should the sector, and state schools in particular, be about demand from that sector for teachers of music.

This year, I have been tracking vacancies posted by state schools for music teachers and subject leaders, either on the DfE vacancy job board or the tes job site. As of today, DataforEducation has logged just over 600 schools advertising a vacancy for a music teacher. This has ignored music services and vacancies  for peripatetic staff. Most are full-time posts, but there are part-time opportunities and, at this time of year, a number of temporary vacancies to cover posts resulting from a teacher taking maternity leave.

Today, I looked at the vacancies for teachers and subject leaders in music posted by schools outside of the United Kingdom on the tes job board – obviously there are no overseas vacancies on the DfE site – and found 64 posts advertised. So, on one day in November, vacancies for teachers of music by international schools equal to more than 10% of the annual total of vacancies posted by state schools in England appeared on just one job site.

The table at the bottom of this post shows where these jobs were located. The three dominant locations are the UAE, and especially Dubai; China and Thailand. There were five jobs in Europe and only one post in the whole of the Americas. Interestingly, there were no vacancies advertised by schools in the Indian sub-continent on the job board today.

Now some of these posts will be filled by teachers from other countries where  English is the lingue franca and where the school system is similar to the UK or US systems of schooling and their curriculum and examination systems. However, these vacancies are aimed at teachers in Egland that are job hunting.

Should the DfE take the demand from these overseas schools for teachers into account when constructing the Techer Supply Model that underpins the training numbers each year? I don’t know, but I do know that the situation needs monitoring in order to identify the level of possible music ‘brain drain’ from our schools,  and the state schools that are most likely to be affected?

COUNTRYPLACE
CAMBODIA
CAMBODIA
CANADA
CHINABEIJING
CHINABEIJING
CHINAGUANGDONG
CHINAGUANGDONG
CHINAGUANGDONG
CHINAGUANGDONG
CHINAGUANGDONG
CHINAGUANGXI
CHINAHUBEI
CHINALAIONING
CHINASHANGHAI
CHINASHANGHAI
CHINASHANGHAI
CHINASHENZEN
CHINAZHEJIANG
DOHA
GERMANY
GERMANY
HONG KONG
HONG KONG
HONG KONG
KOREA
KOREA
KOREA
LAOS
MACAO
QATAR
QATAR
QATAR
RUMANIA
SAUDIA ARABIA
SINGAPORE
SINGAPORE
SPAIN
SPAIN
THAILAND
THAILAND
THAILAND
THAILAND
THAILAND
THAILAND
THAILAND
UAEABU DHABI
UAEABU DHABI
UAEDUBAI
UAEDUBAI
UAEDUBAI
UAEDUBAI
UAEDUBAI
UAEDUBAI
UAEDUBAI
UAESHARJAH
UAE
UAE
UAE
UAE
UAE
UAE
VIETNAM
VIETNAM
VIETNAM

Growth in EHCPs

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What has the growth in EHCPs been like in one local authority area? I used the DfE site to investigate the period between 2020/21  – the covid year – and 2025/26, the latest data available across one authority.

I considered two EHCP classifications: ‘Autistic spectrum disorder’ and ‘Social, emotional and mental health’ across all mainstream primary and secondary schools, and for pupils with Free School Meals and those without access to Free School Meals (FSM). This meant that pupils in special schools and alternative provision, including home schooling with an EHCP were omitted from the data used.

I was interested to see the growth in EHCPs in mainstream schools.

In both of the classification, the percentage of non-FSM pupils in the overall total fell. For EHCPs on the ‘Autistic spectrum disorder’, the non-FSM percentage fell from 80% in the covid year to 73% of the total in 2025/26. For the Social, emotional and mental health’ classification, the reduction was from 61% in 2020/21 to 51% in 2025/26.

Despite the changes in percentages, there was still a significant difference in the actual numbers between the two classifications. The gap between the number of EHCPs for the ‘Social, emotional and mental health’ classification for FSM and non-FSM pupils reduced from 66 in 2020/21 to just 12 in 2025/26.

However, for the ‘Autistic spectrum disorder’ classification over the same time period the difference between FSM and non-FSM pupils grew from 397 in 2020/21 to 712 in 2025/26. The overall number of EHCPs for the ‘Autistic spectrum disorder’ classification increased from 671 to 1550, more than doubling over the five-year period between 2020/21 and 2025/26.

Overall, more than 2,000 EHCPs were in placed in these two classifications in 2025/26. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the increase was more noticeable in the secondary sector, where  non-FSM EHCPs for ‘Autistic spectrum disorder’ increased from 274 to 679 compared with an increase from 260 to 452 in the primary sector. For EHCPs for ‘Social, emotional and mental health’, the growth was less marked. In the primary sector from 65 to 168 and in the secondary sector from 72 to 251. This meant across the two classifications in 2025/26 there were more than 900 pupils with an EHCP or more than twenty per school and a likely four in each year group in Key Stages 3 and 4.

The increase in EHCPs  in just these two classifications goes some way to explain the significant increase in the spending on SEND that this local authority, along with all others has faced over the past few years.

Significantly, in neither of the two classifications does there seem to be any sign of the rate of increase slowing down. How much further does the diagnosis of these classifications have to go until every child that needs an EHCP has been granted one?

This is the question planners in local authorities will be asking, especially with local government reorganisation underway. How will these 2,000+ EHCPs split between any new and smaller unitary , and will the funding from central government recognise the changes local government reorganisation will bring about?

Teacher Supply: is it helping improve the education of White Working Class children?

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I am grateful to The Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes Publications | Educational Outcomes for creating a list of routes into teaching over the past quarter century along with support programmes for both new and existing teachers.

I have published their list below. I think that there was also a programme called ‘troops to teachers’ and, in addition, some initiatives in relation to foreign nations  -certainly Micheal Gove extended QTS to those qualified in the USA and some commonwealth countries. I think that a later Conservative government added to Michael Gove’s original list.

Here is their list

Key programmes

Programme Dates Summary

National Professional Qualifications (NPQ) 1997 onwards Accredited professional development for teachers and school leaders, refreshed in 2021 with fully funded places in priority schools.

Fast Track Teaching Programme 2001-2009 Accelerated leadership pathway for promising early-career teachers, aiming to boost retention and progression to promoted posts. In 2009, the government cited the changing educational context as reason for the termination of the programme.

Teach First 2003 onwards Charity recruiting high-achieving graduates to teach in disadvantaged schools for a minimum of two years, combining on the-job training with leadership development.

School Direct 2012 onwards School-led route into initial teacher training (ITT), run in partnership with accredited training providers, allowing schools to shape their own recruitment.

Now Teach 2016 onwards Charity supporting mid- and late-career professionals to retrain as teachers, with tailored induction and mentoring.

Early Career Payments 2018 – 2025 Financial incentives for early-career teachers in shortage subjects (e.g. maths, sciences, languages), especially in challenging areas. Replaced in 2025 by new incentives.

Flexible Working Pilots 2019 Trials exploring how schools can embed flexible working arrangements to improve retention.

Early Career Framework (ECF) 2021 onwards Statutory two-year induction with structured professional development, mentoring, and reduced teaching loads for new teachers.

Staff Wellbeing Charter 2021 onwards Voluntary framework committing schools and the DfE to actions that promote staff wellbeing.

Levelling Up Premium 2022 onwards Retention payment scheme for specialist teachers in key subjects in disadvantaged areas (now ‘Targeted Retention Incentive Payments’). wwci-policy-review.pdf

The report commented that ‘While these measures have sometimes focused on schools serving disadvantaged pupils, there has been no explicit targeting of white working-class communities. Impacts have therefore been indirect, shaped by the geographical distribution of incentives and recruitment programmes.’

And that

‘Addressing underperformance among white working-class pupils will require sustained investment in teacher recruitment and retention in the communities where they are concentrated, alongside professional development that equips staff to engage with the specific cultural and socio-economic contexts of their pupils.’

Whether the fracturing of our school system into many myriad academy chains and smaller local authorities beset by reorganisation challenges has helped improve the education of White Working Class pupils is a moot point.

However, I am aware that a marketplace orientated system for the teacher labour market, with only some small intervention at the staff  a person’s career into teaching doesn’t seem to have made much of an indent into the problem outside of London, where Teach First and funding that has allowed for better staffing ratios than elsewhere has helped improve outcomes for all.

There were  couple of failed initiative sin the time David Laws was Minister of State around creating a cadre of teachers to be offered to schools that could perform better, but those programmes never went anywhere. No more free market for teachers | John Howson

How to improve the outcomes for this in rural areas – whether inland or on the cast – and some urban areas outside of London is a key challenge for this government. How it handles that challenge in relation to teacher supply will be interesting to watch.

AI and schools: progress since 2018

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Sometimes a visitor to this blog can uncover one of the 1,750 posts that I have completely forgotten about. One such as a post about Artificial Intelligence (AI) that I wrote eight years ago after a Report from a House of Lords Committee AI and education – The view of the House of Lords Committee | John Howson

The DfE at that time were talking about creating some 8,000 new teachers of computing. Isn’t it  interesting how often politicians offer up the promise of large number of new teachers with no funding to allow schools to employ them, even if they could be recruited (think of the present government’s 6,500 promise).

In November 2018, according to the DfE’s Workforce Census, School workforce in England: November 2018 – GOV.UK there were 3,954 teachers of computing working in state secondary schools. Together they taught some 31,190 hours, mostly at Key Stage 3 (3,954) with only 964 hours at Key Stage 5, but 2,289 at Key Stage 4.

Fast forward to the 2025 Workforce Census, and the number of those teaching computing had increased to 7,784. Together they delivered some 64,923 hours of learning. An impressive increase, even against the increase in the number of pupils over the same period.

However, using the DfE’s methodology of counting teachers and subjects, the overall hours taught has changed little between 2018 and 2025, from 3,550,691 in 2018 to 3,553,755 in 2025. Overall teacher numbers teaching across all subjects also remained remarkably statics at 219,269 in 2018 and 219,296 in 2025.

Against these numbers, the increase in teachers of computing, or computer science as it is now termed, is noteworthy, at an increase 3,730, doubling the number of teachers teaching the subject. However, it is still 50% below the 2018 number of 8,000 additional teachers put forward by the DfE.

In my original 2018 post, I also wondered about the moral and ethical issues surrounding AI. I wrote the following:

‘The Committee recognised that the 2014 change to the curriculum on IT in schools across England needed time to take effect. However, the removal of any consideration of moral and ethical issues to do with social media and digital technology from the curriculum was regretted by some witnesses; no doubt more so over recent weeks as the various concerns over social media and the handling of personal data have emerged. Personally, I think the downgrading of Religious Education at examination level, where there was a real opportunity to discuss issues of ethic, morality and philosophy, by excluding the subject from the EBacc was a mistake.’

The hours taught for religious education have increased since then; rising from 117,408 in 2018 to 117,772 in 2025.  The percentage of teachers with a relevant post ‘A’ qualification has also increased from 64% to 81.5% for computer science – as it is now termed – and from 54.1% to 72% for religious education.

However, it is worth noting that at Key Stage 3, where pupils are introduced to subjects, the percentage of qualified teachers in 2025 was still only 76.1% for computer science and even lower at 65.9% for religious education.

It seems the foundations of both subjects in secondary schools are still being taught by those least likely to have a qualification in the subject. Whether or not they are also trained teachers isn’t possible to determine form the simple Teacher Workforce publications.

One wonders what the DfE’s policy for both subjects is in the Curriculum Review. Both are key subjects for our modern age, and I would like to thank the reader that reminded me of my 2018 post, and thus, prompted this one.

Salaries in vacancy adverts: not an issue for most schools

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The government has been reminding employers that they will need to included salary details in job adverts. On the face of it, this isn’t an issue for most Vacancies published by schools, at least not for teachers and school leaders. Most of those vacancies come with the salary level attached.

However, there are a few multi academy trusts that still insist on advertising headteacher vacancies with the wording ‘a competitive salary’.  I have pointed  out in a previous post that such a phrase can be off-putting, as potential candidates don’t know what it means in reality and whether or not it is worth going to the trouble of applying. They will now have to fall into line and add a cash salary to their vacancy advert.

There remains a grey area over both salary points and TLRs (Teaching & Learning Responsibility Points). The former is easier to understand than the latter. Salary scales can change with pay rises, but the new salary levels need the agreement of the Secretary of State before they can be implemented. As a result, at certain times of year, the current salary might not reflect the future amount to be paid. Using the salary scales allows applicants to  see both current and future pay levels, and thus seem justified in an advert to me.

The issue of TLRs is both more complicated and less justified to me. What is the amount of TLR 2.1 or 2a or 2i or any other non-cash descriptor? Some universal agreement on how these salary additions are represented in non-cash terms, so  they can be fully understood by candidate’s from outside the school, would be useful. Of course, candidates can ring up and enquire, but the sense of the government’s position is that they shouldn’t need to do so.

What of other benefits that sometimes appear in adverts, from health care to salary uplifts and car allowances, should these be included in the job advert and, if so, should a real or notional cash sum be attributed to them if the spirit of the government’s announcement is to be adhered to, and not just the letter of the law?

Fortunately, the government hasn’t mentioned holidays, as schools, with their employer-driven form of flexitime would be hard put to be honest about how much holiday a teacher might really expect, contrary to the ‘naysayers’ that still complain about ‘long holidays for teachers’. My analysis of the real position on teachers’ holidays has been  one of the most viewed posts on this blog. Holiday advice – no use for teachers | John Howson

For senior leaders, publishing the starting salary allows for comparison with the salary on offer by other schools of similar sizes by potential candidates either currently or in the recent past. Using that information from vacancies advertised for headteachers since August 2025, I have suggested that headteachers of small primary schools are under-paid. Are Primary Headteachers underpaid? | John Howson

Fundraising Officer: MAT offers a new role

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This post may annoy some of the people I know and admire. If so, my apologies. However, the advert below raises some interesting questions in my mind.

Fundraising Officer – About this role

This is a hands-on role where you will have the opportunity to build your fundraising experience and make a real contribution to the MAT’s ability to increase funding for key educational priorities and initiatives. You will also be helping to build the culture of philanthropy across the MAT’s community, managing resources, administration, and communications across the network.

You will be pivotal in researching and applying for funding from grant-making bodies, and also supporting the freelance fundraising consultant to build meaningful relationships with potential donors, local businesses, and other stakeholder groups.

You will also be responsible for managing the day-to-day running and support of the Trust-wide CRM fundraising database, ensuring best practice, alongside developing, and supporting the user base across the school network.

Working  with our freelance fundraising consultant, and reporting into the Trust’s CFO, the medium- to long- term goal is to ensure that the Trust continues to build a strong and dynamic fundraising community, alongside increasing the amount of philanthropic income used to support important areas of educational need.

Firstly, what would happen if a local authority advertised such a role to support maintained schools? Might some other political parties, question the use of public money to help raise cash for  education projects? However, at least it would be used locally.

Secondly, how far should the remit of Multi Academy Trusts run? Should they be funding projects that aim to improve the lives of the children that either attend or will attend their schools rather than focus on the actual schooling? What of MATs with schools spread across a wide area. Should funds raised in one area by available to use anywhere, as with  other charities?

Thirdly, what happens if a number of the MATs in the same area all decide to employ such a person? The unregulated landscape of MATs, where ‘many flowers already bloom’ raises questions about overheads and the cost-effective nature of the funds already being used to support so many different small-scale education enterprises, all with limited local democratic oversight.

Of course, I am an unreconstructed supporter  of local government taking the lead in education for a locality. There are already many posts on this blog reflecting my views about democracy and education at the local level.

However, in terms of this post I do have to declare an interest. More than 30 years ago, in the 1990s, when Local Management of Schools meant devolved budgets, and the control of assets passed to schools, I created a Module in the post-graduate programme for teachers studying at Oxford Polytechnic, as it still was then, called ‘Marketing & Public Relations in Education’.  At least one deputy head that took the module then created a new role at the school where he worked just to increase income by marketing the school facilities during the holidays and at weekends. At the same time a school near Heathrow developed a clubhouse for users of its sports facilities when not being used by the school.  Income from the use of school facilities has become an accepted route to increase school funds. This new role takes the concept further into ‘funding for key educational priorities and initiatives’ more widely, and not just for one school’s benefit.

As MATs are exempt charities, presumably funds raised can benefit from charity law regarding contributions. I am sure that local authorities would look at establishing a charity for similar projects, if they don’t already have such a charity, if this source of fund-raising by MATs were to spread beyond one innovative MAT.

The DfE is going to be hard-pressed to secure funding for schools in the next spending review. It would be a real tragedy if HM Treasury decided that this type of fund raising by MATs should not only support new initiatives but also core projects such as SEND, where funding is desperately needed.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Oxford Teacher Services Ltd: new owners

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Way back in 2013, I set up Oxford Teacher Services Ltd to show how the simple collection of teacher vacancies then being published by schools on their web sites could significantly reduce the cost of advertising teacher vacancies. Eventually, the DfE created a vacancy website that although not perfect did help change the dynamics of teacher recruitment advertising.

Post covid, and my appointment as cabinet member for children’s services in Oxfordshire between 2023 and 2025, I wound down the work of Oxford Teacher Services, although I did manage to help the UAE with their concerns about a teacher supply model, and continued monitoring both ITT and teacher labour market statistics.

Yesterday, Oxford Teacher Services Ltd was sold to OXIE Holdings Ltd. This company is in the forefront of dealing with aspects of AI in schooling, and also the development of ‘drone football’.

You can find out more about OXIE at Oxford Innovative Education – Empowering critical minds and future voices and

‘drone football’ at Drone Football – Oxford Innovative Education

And you can contact them at: bbone@oxie.org.uk

I believe that ‘drone football’ has a great future. Why not book a trial event for a day, for your school, company or youth group. ‘Drone football’ can also be booked for birthday parties. ‘Drone football’ will also be showcased at a number of science fairs over the next year.

I will still continue to monitor labour market data through dataforeducation, and will publish a report early in January on headteacher turnover in England during the 2025-26 school year. If you would like more information about that work, please contact me either through the comment section or by email.

I would like to thank everyone that has helped make the work of Oxford Teacher Services Ltd possible during the past 13 years, and I wish it well for the future as a part of OXIE holdings.

Teacher Preparation Courses: coping well with the latest reforms

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Initial teacher preparation courses have been through a long period of regular government reforms, the most recent period starting with the Carter Review of 2015. The most recent changes are well documented in a new interim evaluation, commissioned  by the DfE Evaluation of reforms to initial teacher training in England: wave 1 interim report

However, since the mid-1980s, firstly with CATE (The Council for Teacher Education) then the TTA (Teacher Training Agency, and its successors) national government has increasingly intervened in the process of teacher preparation, going beyond its traditional role of funding places and general oversight of the curriculum, to the present-day highly regulated regime that supports three main routes into teaching: undergraduate (declining in importance) postgraduate (still the main routes into teaching) and what the report describes as School Direct (postgraduate salaried schemes, most notably Teach First).

The overall conclusion of this interim report was that

‘ the majority of respondents (71%) mentioned being satisfied or very satisfied with the ITT. Levels of satisfaction ranged by 7 percentage points across regions; the South East reported the highest satisfaction (75% satisfied or very satisfied), while the East of England reported the lowest (68% satisfied or very satisfied). Satisfaction levels by phase of ITT ranged by 4 percentage points, with 74% of respondents in the primary phase and 70% in the secondary phase reporting that they were satisfied or very satisfied.’ Page 28

Generally, trainees felt ready to teach

‘Additionally, 81% of trainees reported feeling, or expecting to feel, ready or very ready to teach, either at the time of the survey (if already qualified) or by the end of their ITT programme (for those currently in training),…. In contrast, 8% reported feeling unready or very unready. These figures varied by 10 percentage points across regions. London reported the highest proportion of trainees feeling ready or very ready to teach (85%), while the East of England reported the lowest (75%). The highest proportions of trainees reporting feeling unready or very unready were in the East of England and the North East (both 11%), while London reported the lowest proportion (4%). Differences by ITT phase were small. Among secondary trainees, 82% reported feeling ready or very ready to teach, compared with 79% of primary trainees.’

It would be interesting to unpack these outcomes  by the different age-groups entering training: new graduate, younger career changers and older career movers. Responses were dominated by the HEI sector, accounting for nearly two-thirds of responses, with trainees in SCITTs also well represented : ‘59% of respondents reported that their ITT was delivered or is being delivered by a HEI, while 36% reported that it was delivered by a SCITT provider. The remaining 5% of respondents selected other delivery options, each accounting for 1% or less.’

If it is accepted that there should be a national coherent approach to teacher preparation, and that quality should be of the highest possible standard, then some of the regional differences might be worth exploring further.

Both the North East, the smallest region in terms of ITT, and the North West fared less well than London and the more southern regions in some outcomes. Understanding why, and whether this is just the result of small numbers and not just issues with provision, might be a useful step forward. Policy-makers look at headlines and one trainee in a particular school and training in a particular subject might skew some of the percentages. This would be of concern were this data be for subjects where recruitment was especially challenging during the survey period.

As ever, there is a lot more of interest behind the headlines.

Schools and the Spending Review

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The budget yesterday revealed that the DfE’s budget for education won’t be able to escape the government’s need for savings Budget 2026: everything schools need to know | Tes The current projections are for an average 2% fall from 2028-29 according to the tes article. As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, capital spending will also not be immune from cuts. This is despite the dire state of many school buildings.

What follows are my own views on future spending, not those of any political Party, and certainly not those of the Liberal Democrats, of which Party I remain a member. I offer then up for debate, at a time of crisis in the national finances.

Firstly, the school estate. One obvious way to improve the quality of the school estate is to use the reality of falling rolls to remove some of the worst schools from the estate. In the past, when there was a coherent system for forward planning for schooling, based around local authorities responsible for their ‘place’, such system could quickly have identified how to rationalise a system where capacity exceeded need.

This process wasn’t always easy, as the recent article about falling rolls in Haringey that I posted on researchgate showed. (PDF) Policy Process and Pressure Groups: Falling School Rolls in Haringey

‘Save of Schools’, is still a popular slogan for local politicians. I though this issue through in my one attempt at drama based around a primary school facing falling rolls ‘Heading Off’. Not great drama, but allows the issues around falling rolls to be discussed. Post | Feed | LinkedIn

In the present system of maintained schools, academies, foundation schools and the remaining voluntary aided and controlled schools, where is the forward planning taking place? Should the DfE appoint a commission charged with a review of the estate, and how it might be rationalised?

Such a commission might need to look beyond just the condition of the estate to also address the thorny question of the size of post-16 provision and any relationship between size, the range of curriculum on offer and the level of outcomes. It is easy to duck this challenge in a divided system where the ‘buck’ can be past to another group, whether politicians, MAT boards or regional directors at the DfE.  It is a measure of good government that it is prepared to make hard choices. I wrote  a blog about this issue earlier in the year. Are small sixth forms a good idea? | John Howson

Pupil teacher ratios have been under pressure for some time. On a per pupil funding model, retaining the present funding model could save the government considerable amount of cash as school rolls fall. However, at the school level, fewer pupils make it hard to fund salary increases, where funding is calculated on an ‘average’ overall salary bill.

As I have pointed out before, schools with an above average salary bill, and falling rolls face reals funding issues. MATs can ‘vire’ between their schools, usually through increasing the overhead charge on each school and rebating to help schools with deficits: but is this the right approach?

Rationalising the use of funds for schooling will inevitably collide with the principle of parental choice if closing a popular school is the most sensible way forward. So be it. After all, the original concept of ‘parental choice’ in Section 6 of the 1980 Education Act did contain the get out clause of ‘prejudicial to the efficient use of resources’. Parental choice was never an absolute right.

In a recent post, I asked whether breakfast clubs were meeting their stated aims or whether they were providing free childcare to working families? Might a small charge for those pupils not on free school meals raise some income to help defray the cost to the Exchequer? Not a popular move, but perhaps employers might be willing to help with a tax break. Are Breakfast clubs just a new form of extended school day? | John Howson

Will falling rolls also save money  on SEND? My recent post about the London boroughs and the trends in requests for EHCPs does suggest that the number of requests should reduce with falling rolls even without any assessment of current approaches to funding. This might be a considerable saving, especially if some of the burden  from the former High Needs block  placed on schools. EHCP requests and falling rolls | John Howson

However, against all these savings there are areas where expenditure should, in my view, be increased. I have campaigned for 16-18 travel to education to be free across the country, and not just in urban areas. This is now one for mayors and their counterparts in strategic authorities to take on board. Extend education free travel to 16-18 year olds | John Howson

Then there are the grants not uprated for inflation since 2014. The grant for music is the one best known to me at present, bit there are no doubt still other grants that need a review and updating.

I was also disappointed to see no mention of youth services in the budget. Despite falling rolls, this is an area where more spending is needed.

Finally, I would restore the training grant to all trainee teachers. It is both wrong to pay some trainees and not others and to retain the historical fiction behind tuition fees to place trainee teachers in a different category to trainee army officers and trainee civil servants. Why aren’t all trainee teachers paid? | John Howson

I will also end by reminding readers that the millions the DfE has spent on a teacher vacancy service could have been saved with a bit of commonsense. The present service isn’t free to schools with the administrative costs not being large but being unnecessary. I closed down TeachVac when I took on the role of Cabinet member in Oxfordshire in 2023, but a service that costs nothing to the DfE should still be possible.

The Geddes Axe remained long in the memory of public sector workers, but  I hope that better targeted and rational cuts rather than an across-the-board swipe at a sector will be the order of the day over the remainder of this parliament.

Cut in spending on schools seem likely both to save the wider economy, and to support defence spending for the next war. If Russia wanted to send a message to Europe as a whole, attacking an offshore island that has strongly supported Ukraine is sadly no longer an unthinkable thought.