Category Archives: education

Class matters more than ethnicity

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The end of the summer term is a curious time to announce an inquiry into White working-class kids in schools. The inquiry seems to be funded by private finance, but with government backing. Members revealed for white working-class kids inquiry

Two former Secretaries of State will be on the board, along with a DfE official, as well as many others representing the great and the good in schooling, but not perhaps either the churches or representatives of the under-fives lobby.

As SchoolsWeek pointed out in their news item, this is not the first such inquiry into the achievements or lack of them, of this group in society.  Indeed, the House of Commons Select Committee has had two goes at the issue, in 2014 and 2020. HC No

As well as the Select Committee’s reports, and the evidence submitted to the Committee, The inquiry might also like to read the DfE’s Report on outcomes by ethnicity Outcomes by ethnicity in schools in England – GOV.UK published before the pandemic.

I am sure the inquiry will focus on what works, and no doubt discuss issues about what is being measured and over-reliance on Free School Meals data. They will also need to discuss the issues around definitions, as society has become much both more complex, and more polarised. The measurement of children – I prefer the term to kids – of mixed heritage has added many more sub-categories to the original list.

However, I cannot help thinking that the focus of the inquiry is wrong. All the evidence suggests that of the three factors of race, gender and class, it is the third one that really matters. Yes, they are often inter-related, but looking at socio-economic data it is often schools in deprived areas, regardless of the ethnicity of their pupils that fare less well in school performance table.

Is this due to the funding arrangements. Some areas, notably London, are better funded than other parts of England. Is it down to teacher deployment and the market system. Do the best teacher seek to work in the most challenging schools or those with the best outcomes. How much does support from home matter. Can poor teaching be overcome with support and tutoring from home. All these were issues considered by the Select Committee. Then there are issues such as school attendance and what happens at the Foundation State if pupils miss vital building blocks in language and mathematics. Does the class teacher system help or hinder these children?

In terms of funding, what effect has the Pupil Premium had on outcomes, and is there any evidence that where academies can pool the funds of all schools and move resources between schools whereas local authorities cannot do so that this arrangement can boost outcomes in traditionally under-performing schools?

I guess one measure is the percentage of pupils on Free School Meals across the country that pass the tests for selective schools. Will the inquiry suggest a fully comprehensive secondary school system? If not, how will it address this injustice.

I am disappointed that it has taken this Labour government a year to start the process of addressing this issue. What were they doing in opposition? After all, the Liberal Democrats pushed the Pupil Premium right for the start of the coalition in 2010, as it had been in their manifesto.  How much does this government really care about those children that don’t achieve their full potential for whatever reason.

Schooling and the relentless march of technology

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Teachers will not have been happy to read of employers paying workers the same money for a four day week where they used to earn for working for five days. I assume that productivity or output or company profits remained the same, so the company could afford to be this generous while not upsetting its shareholders.

Unhappy teachers might reflect on two things. As technology improves, so workers can produce the same output in less time: think handwriting letters, then dictating them to someone that then typed them and then word processing them. Of course, rewarding those workers that benefit could come at a cost to productivity and growth for all. Why not continue the five day week and produce more?  

My parent’s generation worked a five and a half day week, with Saturday working being commonplace. Teachers have not benefitted from these changes, partly because their job has largely been unaffected by significant changes in technology that improve productivity. Now this may be because teaching is a public sector good and there is no profit element to spur on change for the benefit of both owners and workers.

As we can see from the imposition of VAT on private schools, the reaction of many was to increase fees, not to improve productivity, even by adding one pupil per class to their already small classes – special schools excepted – and absorb the cost.

However, it is the second implication of technological change and its effect on teachers and society that worries me just as much. Here’s another example. Driverless vehicles will become mainstream. Sure, there will be accidents, as there were when railways and aeroplanes were being developed. And these days society knows more about preventing those sorts of accidents happening to the same degree – think of the space race and the ratio of deaths to achievements. But, what of the many drivers that will join the ranks of porters, stenographers, bank tellers, coal miners and many others whose jobs have disappeared. Will technology create another set of new jobs for those with skills to do the jobs of today?

What are the implications for schools and their role in society? This should be the key question at the Festival of Education? What steps are politicians and the think tanks that provide them with research doing to consider the role of schooling in the second half of this century. After all, those that start school at age five this coming September will likely not retire on a state pension until 2090 or possibly even later.

Primary schooling with the acquisition of vocabulary and the social skills of living together in communities will become even more important than it has been seen by politicians in the past. Secondary education and subject skills might even become less important.  The recently announced government inquiry into White working-class kids might want to think about this issue during their deliberations. Solutions for the problems of the past won’t help the kids facing an uncertain future.

Falling rolls

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The projections for pupil numbers up to 2030 were issued by the DfE this week.

At the same time the Office for National Statistics (ONS) looked at the likely size of + the school population  aged 5-15 National population projections – Office for National Statistics both have implications for the demand for teachers in England. This data can help determine how many teachers will be needed to staff schools and the attractiveness of teaching as a career.

The DfE concluded the following for the remainder of this decade;

State-funded nursery & primary schools

  • The overall pupil population in these school types is projected to be 4,205,000 in 2030. This is 300,000 (6.7%) lower than the actual population in 2025 (4,505,000).
  • The revised projection for 2028 of 4,319,000 pupils represents a 5.4% fall from 2024; this is 38,000 lower than the previous forecast, as last year’s projection showed a 4.5% fall over the same period.
  • The nursery & primary population is therefore still projected to drop and is doing so at a faster rate than previously projected.

State-funded secondary schools

  • The secondary school population is projected to be 3,135,000 in 2030. This is 97,000 lower than the actual school population reported in the 2025 school census of 3,232,000.
  • The revised projection for 2028 of 3,208,000 secondary pupils represents a 0.8% fall from 2024, and is 55,000 (1.7%) lower than last year’s projections which reverses the previously projected 0.9% increase over the same period. 
  • The pattern of change in the secondary school population seems to indicate that it plateaued between 2024 and 2025, will remain at a similar level until 2026, and is then projected to start declining slowly. This suggested plateau is earlier than the peak in 2026 projected last year but will be subject to change if pupil numbers bounce back, fluctuate, or continue to plateau in future years.
  • The actual number of secondary school pupils in 2025 fell slightly as more pupils moved out of the secondary phase than moved in. Changing historical birth rates and trends in net migration are likely driving factors. National pupil projections, Reporting year 2025 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK 

According to the ONS projections, there are expected to be fewer children in the UK by the middle of both 2032 and 2047, compared with the middle of 2022. The ONS have based this on a view that the assumed fertility rates in the 2020s and 2030s will be even lower than those around 2001, when UK fertility reached a record low.

By mid-2032, the number of children (those aged from 0 to 15 years) is projected by the ONS to have decreased by 797,000 (a fall of 6.4%), from 12.4 million to 11.6 million. By mid-2047, the number of children is projected to remain around the mid-2032 levels. Of course, if the birth rate changes, these numbers could be either too high or an underestimate. Either way planners are no expecting the need for more teachers due to changes in the birth rate.

However, these numbers are just assumptions, and don’t take into account other changes in the numbers in the 0-15 age groups resulting from any net balance once both emigration and immigration have been taken into account.

Other factors, such as the departure rate from teaching, due either to the popularity of teaching or the availability of alternative employment opportunities, as well as the age-profile of the profession and the number of teachers retiring can affect the demand for teachers. Policy changes concerning how children are taught can also affect the demand for teachers. How will AI and attitudes to issues such as home schooling are two imponderables that might affect the demand for teachers.

These days, as well as the traditional modelling, the DfE has access to up to the minute data on vacancy rates for teachers, and how posts are filled. This new data, allied to more traditional methods of estimating the demand for teachers, should help to ensure teacher unemployment can be kept to a minimum. After all, there is little point in spending money training teachers only for them to be both burdened with debt and unable to find a teaching post.

Is AI bigger than the internet revolution?

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During my lifetime, I have experienced three major revolutions driven by technology; the microprocessor revolution of the 1970s and 1980s; the internet and social communication revolution of the 1990s and 2000s around the internet and phones and gaming, and now the Artificial Intelligence revolution: or AI as it almost universally known.

Over the past week, I have set three different AI sites three different tasks, all using free versions of the software. The tasks were: draft a script for a play; create a website of this blog and turn a poem into a song and add new verses.

I was amazed at the results for all three tasks, and especially how quickly they were performed so early into the AI revolution.

I asked for a script for a play about a closure of a college, and ‘The last assembly’ gave me 5 key characters, four themes for the play and even some possible dialogue for a final speech and how the other characters reacted to its delivery.

In its way, even more impressive was the website created to market this blog. In under 5 minutes, and after a bit of interplay with the AI agent there was a useable website that those, I have sent it to thought was an attractive website. Sure, there were a few wrinkles to iron out, such as the wrong date being assigned to some posts used as examples, and the first version being just in monochrome. But, 5 minutes, and free, and perfection is expected!

The third task took a poem I had written to celebrate a music festival’s 40th anniversary and created a song for primary school-children based upon a first two verses from the poem that I had created.

Here was the poem’s first three verses.

Sing for the sound of singing

Sing for the joy of singing

Sing for the harmony of singing:

So, sing we all together.

As we sing together here,

Different schools, but single purpose,

Combining in this special place

For forty summers since.

Forty years of many pupils,

staff and parents, come all to

Celebrate in song and sounds

Old, new, would be traditional.

And my attempt at a song, something I have never tried to do before.

[C] Sing, sing, sing

[F] Sing for the joy of singing

[C] Sing, sing, sing,

[G] Sing for the sound of singing

  • So we
  • sing to·[C] gether.

[Am] Let us sing as one

[F] Different schools,

[C] but single purpose,

  • Let us
  • sing to·[C] gether.

Here’s what AI added

[C] Raise, raise, raise

[F] Raise up your voice in chorus

[C] Loud, proud, strong,

[G] Let every heart sing with us

  • So we
  • sing to·[C] gether.

[Am] Every voice belongs

[F] Every note a story

[C] Blending dreams

[G] in shared harmony

  • Let us
  • sing to·[C] gether.

[C] Hope, hope, hope

[F] Hope in the songs we’re sharing

[C] Shine, shine, shine,

[G] Shine with the love we’re bearing

  • As we
  • sing to·[C] gether.

I was also offered platforms where the backing track could be created. Now, the poem was written in an hour after receiving the invite, and isn’t great literature, so the song isn’t a work of art, but AI was asked for something primary school children might sing, and I think that’s what was created.

If I can do these three things with no tutorial support in less than half an hour all told, then we have to take AI, and its implications for our school system seriously now.

These three tasks were relatively value-free, but AI has the power to drive thinking, values and morals.

With the government extending the franchise to those aged 16 or above, what we teach in school is now of vital importance, and it must no longer be just a diet of facts or an attempt to create a purpose for handwriting other than as an art form. Politicians of all parties need to think seriously and quickly about what we need to teach in schools.

This blog was created by a human except for the verses of the song that were created by AI

1,500 posts and counting

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When I wrote my first post on this blog, on the 25th of January 2013, I little though that I would reach 1,500 posts. However, despite stopping posting for 18 months, between the autumn of 2023 and May this year, while I was otherwise occupied as a cabinet member on Oxfordshire County Council the blog has now reached the milestone of 1,500 posts, including 40 so far this year since I started the blog up again this May.

Since one of the features of the blog has been commenting on numbers, here is a bit of self-indulgence. The blog has had 175,983 views since its inception, from 93,875 visitors, and has attracted 1,459 comments. The average length of a post has been between 550-670 words, although there have been a few longer posts in response to consultations and Select Committee inquiries.

How much holiday do teacher have? is the post with the most views – more than 6,500 and rising. Some posts have had no views, but are still an important record of my thoughts. The United Kingdom has been responsible for the most visitors: not a surprise, as most posts are about education in England. However, the USA comes second, with more than 15,000 views. Apart from some former French speaking countries in West Africa, Greenland and Paraguay, almost all other countries have had someone that has viewed the blog at least once.

Later this year, I will be publishing a book of the 2013 posts from the blog, and at that point they will disappear from public view. If you want to register for the book, check on Amazon after August 2025 or email dataforeducation@gmail.com for publication information. Alternatively, ask your favourite bookshop or library to order a copy.

I am sometimes asked about my favourite post. With 1,500 to choose from, that’s difficult, as many haven’t seen the light of day for a decade or so. However, Am I a blob? From 2013, was fun to write, and the posts about Jacob’s Law finally brought about a change in the legislation over admissions in the current bill going through parliament.

Most posts have been written, as this one is, in one session from start to finish, with editing just to tidy up my thoughts. Some are more passionate than others, and many are about teacher supply issues, where I am also researching a book on the subject covering the past 60 years of ‘feast and famine’. Much of the recent history has been well chronicled in this blog.

Thanks for reading, and for the comments. Who would have thought that someone that failed ‘O’ level English six times would end up writing a blog!  Funny old world.

Where should Teach First recruit its trainees?

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There have been some interesting discussions recently on the LinkedIn platform about Teach First, and its possible extension beyond its original scope of recruiting from the Russell Group of universities after SchoolsWeek revealed this condition might be altered when the contract is re-tendered for the scheme. Teach First: Labour plans recruitment scheme revamp

Two points are worth making about the discussion. Firstly, the universities within the Russell Group have not remined the same since Teach First was established more than twenty years ago. Secondly, when faced with challenges in filling its target for recruiting teachers, Teach First does seem to have already extended its reach beyond the Russell group. In it 2024 annual report to the Charity Commission it said that:

‘Increasing the proportion of trainees from Russell Group universities compared to the previous year and sustaining the proportion of trainees with a first-class degree despite a decline in the number of firsts awarded.’ (Page 10, 2024 accounts with Charity Commission)

However, it didn’t provide any details of the number of non-Russell Group trainees recruited, and in which subjects. This is an important issue because of the schools where Teach First place their trainees. Historically, schools within the M25 with high percentages of disadvantaged pupils were the main focus of the programme, although in recent years it has spread more widely across the country while keeping its core mission.  

An analysis of, for instance, the percentage of new physics teachers recruited through Teach First and the schools they were placed in, and subsequently went on to work in, would be interesting, especially if compared with the distribution of new teachers of physics across all schools with similar levels of deprivation in the parts of the country not covered by Teach First.

Another interesting issue with regard to Teach First is the cost of recruiting their teachers. I saw a comment that surprised me about ‘needing to interview applicants because of AI generated applications’. I thought that all qualified applicants would have been interviewed as a matter of course.

This caused me to look at the cost of recruitment to the Teach First programme. Their accounts with the Charity Commission suggest that in 2023 the charity spent just over £7 million on recruitment and then £6,587,000 in 2024. Now, in 2023, it recruited 1,417 trainees, including to the pilot SCITT programme. In 2024, with the development of the SCITT programme, some 1,419 trainees were recruited. If the financial data is correct, then that would mean more than £4,000 to recruit a trainee in 2023, falling to £3,800 in 2024.  I wonder whether other ITT courses spend anything like this amount on recruitment?

Of course, some of the expenditure is offset by donations to the charity, and during a period when recruiting new entrants to teaching is a challenge, recruitment costs would be expected to be high. Although when recruitment to teaching is buoyant, as it may well be over the next few years, the overall cost may be higher because there are more applicants to process, especially if Teach First is opened up to a wider range of graduates seeking to become a teacher and interviews more applicants. How much should we spend on recruiting trainees teachers and how good are we at obtaining value for money on recruitment overall, including the national TV advertising campaigns?

Do better funded schools exclude fewer pupils?

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The DfE published the annual data for exclusions and suspensions from schools during the 2023/24 school-year this week. Suspensions and permanent exclusions in England: 2023 to 2024 – GOV.UK Sadly, there are more pupils being excluded than in recent years, and my post from July 2018 Bad news on exclusions | John Howson reflects much , at least at the national level, of what is contained in the latest report on 2023/24. Boys on free school meals, and with SEND, and from a minority group are at highest risk of being excluded, especially when they are in Year 9, and, as ever, the reasons is most likely to have been ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’.

With the worsening recruitment crisis in schools, allied to a challenging financial environment, an increase in exclusions and suspensions was to be expected. What the data doesn’t tell us is whether schools with high exclusion rates are linked to specific academy trusts, and also to high levels of teacher turnover.

I wrote a blog about policies for reducing exclusions in May Reducing exclusions from schools | John Howson and I would hope that if the staffing situation does settle down, so might the number of pupils being banished from school.

As ever, I am struck by the funding issue. London, the best funded part of England has some of the lowest rates for exclusion and suspensions. There are 17 London boroughs in the list of the 25 local authorities with the lowest rate of suspensions in 2023/24, and 19 in the similar list for secondary exclusions. In the list of ten local authorities with the highest rates of exclusion are five authorities in the North East. I think that there may be something in this data that needs further exploration, especially as I would expect teacher recruitment to be easier in the North East than in London.

Interestingly, in view of the debate about mobile phones in schools, the number of suspensions for ‘inappropriate use of social media or online technology’ only increased from 11,419 to 11,614, an insignificant change between 2022/23 and 2023/24 especially compared with the increase in exclusions for ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’ from 446,676 to 569,921 over the same period. Of course, much comes down t how a decision on which box to tick when the exclusion is being reported and the latter category may hide suspensions that actually belong in one of the other categories. This is the risk when there are too many choices for a school to make.

The increase of around 25,000 in assaults leading to suspensions must be very worrying, although I wonder whether most are ‘common assault’ rather than ‘assault leading to actually bodily harm’ or ’GBH’ to use the criminal code levels of violence against another.

Some numbers are so small it is a wonder that they are still collected. Were only 69 pupils – up from 50 the previous year- permanently excluded for theft. Perhaps schools have nothing worth nicking these days.

I hope that next year, we might read of at least a levelling out of the rates of exclusions and suspensions and perhaps a return to a downward trend, especially if there is a relationship between funding and how schools can cope with disruptive pupils.  

Will the 6,500 new teachers be heading for schools in disadvantaged areas?

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Increasing teacher numbers in disadvantaged areas and core subjects. I was very happy when I read this heading in today’s Public Account’s Committee report on ‘Increasing Teacher Numbers’. Increasing teacher numbers: Secondary and further education (HC 825)

However, when I turned to paragraphs 25-29, this section just seemed like an afterthought. How depressing was it to read that

‘Schools and further education colleges are responsible for deciding the staff they need and recruiting their own workforces. Local authorities employ teachers in maintained schools.’ Para 25

There is nothing factually incorrect in the statement, but although local authorities are the de jure employers of teachers in maintained schools, ever since the devolution of budgets in the 1990s, local authorities have had little to do with the hiring policies for teachers in these schools, and nothing to do with the academy sector.

The Committee did acknowledge that

‘Those schools with higher proportions of disadvantaged pupils tend to have higher turnover rates and less experienced teachers. This impacts the government’s mission of breaking down the barriers to opportunity and means disadvantaged children are at risk of being locked out from particular careers.’

Teachers in schools with higher proportions of disadvantaged pupils are also less experienced

‘In 2023–24, 34% of teachers in the most disadvantaged schools had up to five years’ experience (20% in the least disadvantaged schools).’

They cited the examples of computer science and physics

‘In the most disadvantaged areas, 31% of schools do not offer Computer Science A-level, compared to 11% of schools in the least disadvantaged areas, due to a lack of trained teachers. For Physics A-level, this is 9% compared to 1%.’

This will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog. Here is the link to a post from the 21st July 2023, almost two years ago.

Free School Meals and teacher vacancies | John Howson

Thos who know my background will know that I started teaching in a school in a disadvantaged part of Tottenham in 1971, and this issue has been one that has concerned me throughout my career in education. I was, therefore, disappointed to read that

‘We asked the Department when we could expect there to be less variation between schools in the most and least disadvantaged areas, but it did not commit to a timeframe. Instead, it noted that its retention initiatives providing financial incentives were targeting schools and colleges with the highest proportion of disadvantaged students.’

This seems to me to be as close to a non-answer as one can expect. Indeed, looking in detail at the oral evidence session, this is an area where answers from the senior civil servants in my opinion suggested little hope, and not as much concern for the values implied in the questions that I would have liked to have heard. In reality, past experience tells me that it is falling rolls and fewer job opportunities that will propel teachers towards schools where they would otherwise not take a teaching post. Iti s the economy, not the DfE that will improve the life chances of children in those schools with a high proportion of disadvantaged children. This is at the same time as the lives of their parents may be worsened by unemployment and welfare cuts. It’s a funny old world.

6,500 extra teachers; myth or realistic aim?

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Hurrah for the Public Accounts Committee at Westminster (PAC). Today the Committee published a report into the government’s plans – or lack of them – to meet their target of 6,500 extra teachers – and lecturers. Increasing teacher numbers: Secondary and further education (HC 825)

The Committee is as sceptical as this bog has been about how the government intends to meet this target that was to be paid for by the addition of VAT on private school fees from January 2025.

One recommendation that the PAC doesn’t make is the creation of a Chief Professional Adviser on Teacher Supply. I held such a post between 1996 and 1997, but was never relaced when I left the then Teacher Training Agency. Such a designated post would draw together the work of civil servants who may change roles almost as frequently as ministers- What odds would one give on the present Secretary of State surviving a cabinet reshuffle before the party conference season? A central role with professional oversight might help the government achieve its aim.

Anyway, the PAC Recommendations included

  1. The Department should set out how it plans to deliver the pledge for 6,500 additional teachers to provide assurance that this will f ill the most critical teacher gaps. This should set out: • how the pledge will be split across schools and colleges; • the baseline and milestones so Parliament can track progress; and • how it will stay focused on teacher retention alongside recruitment.
  2. The Department should develop a whole-system strategy to help frame how it will recruit and retain school and college teachers. This should be based on a fuller evidence base, establish the preferred balance between recruitment and retention initiatives; set appropriate targets for those joining teaching through different routes; and include value for money analysis of different initiatives.
  3. The Department should work with schools and colleges to understand the reasons behind variations [in recruitment and retention], particularly within deprived areas and core subjects, setting this out in published information to help identify and share good practice and ideas on what works best.
  4. The Department should work to better understand why teachers leave and then better support schools and colleges in addressing these factors. This includes looking at changes to contractual and working conditions, such as flexible working, and at how teacher workload can be reduced. It should also collect data on the effectiveness of the newly-announced behaviour hubs, rolling them out further if they prove to be successful.
  5. The Department should assess the effectiveness and relative value-for-money of pay against other recruitment and retention initiatives, to make an explicit decision on whether it needs to do more to ensure teachers are paid the right amount.

The final recommendation will not be welcomed in HM Treasury if it means finding more cash for teachers’ pay, especially coming the day after resident hospital doctors threatened strike action over pay benchmarking. In paragraph 22 the Committee stated that

‘However, teacher pay has lagged behind others – in 2024, those working in the education sector were paid around 10% less in real terms than in 2010, with the wider public sector being paid on average 2.6% less than in 2010.’

Will a return to the 2010 benchmark now be the goal of the teacher professional associations?

In the next blog, I will discuss the committee’s idea for dealing with the thorny issue of providing teachers for deprived areas.

SEND parents need support now

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I have written three posts about SEND since I restarted this blog in May, on the override; EOTAs and more generally. As a result, I was going to sit out the present debate about what might happen in the autumn without making any further comments. However, I thought this paragraph by John Crace in the Guardian was the best summary I had seen about where we are one year into this government. Labour picks on kids as Farage reaches for his human punchbag

‘Now, Send is not perfect. The bill is getting bigger by the year, thanks both to better diagnosis and to some parents gaming the system. But it is essential for many children who benefit from education, health and care plans, and parents are worried sick they might lose out. In the absence of any clear direction from the Department for Education, many disability campaigners are fearing the worst. That children will be treated as cost centres to be downsized. That children diagnosed in the future won’t be entitled to the same benefits as children with the same level of disability are now. This one will now run and run well into the autumn.’

It is going to be a worrying summer for many parents, and that isn’t fair on them. I am all for looking at how the system is being gamed – see my blog about EOTAS – in some ways by a few parents, but most parents are genuinely worried. SEND is the only issue I ever saw a parent cry in a cabinet meeting when trying to prevent a reduction in the spending on transport. These parents have a heavy burden of love to bear, and the State should remember that.

However, the elephant in the room, and one John Crace doesn’t mention is the NHS. Afterall EHCPs replaced Statements of SEN Need. One big difference was the addition of the letter ‘H’ for health. So far, all the attention has been on local authorities, and the NHS rarely receives a mention.

Now I think that as soon as it is obvious that a child will need an EHCP, the NHS, whether maternity unit or GP surgery, should always start the process. It should not be left to a primary school headteacher to so often have to begin the process of applying for the EHCP.

At the same time, the NHS might want to look at early screening for conditions affecting early learning, and put in place a much stronger programme than at present.  

SEND is also an area of life where we need to be clear about what we want from the Early Years Sector. The sector has a part to play in early identification of issues in learning, and surely staff need better training to both observe and report these early learning issues. Much has been taken about the transfer from primary to secondary school, but hardly anything about the knowledge transfer into the school system from early years. Of course, where the school has a nursery class, transfer should be straightforward. But what of other children, and especially those that spend most of their early years in the care of relatives or live in isolated in rural areas?

The government seems to like leaks, so how about some positive leaks around SEND? The government must not go on holiday leaving these parents to suffer over the summer.