Category Archives: leadership

Hope over expectation: my view of today’s report on white working class children

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How good are the recommendations into today’s report on the education of White working-class children? Based on my analysis of this one recommendation from the report; not universally very good The Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes Here is one specific recommendation:

“Government should encourage and support more deliberate action to ensure that the highest performing primary and secondary schools admit and support a fair share of disadvantaged pupils, particularly in areas with significant white working class populations. Too often, the highest performing schools within local areas serve intakes that are significantly less disadvantaged than the communities around them. This should include clearer guidance and encouragement for schools and trusts to prioritise disadvantaged pupils within existing admissions rules, alongside stronger expectations that high-performing schools demonstrate how they are contributing to inclusion and fair access locally. Local authorities should also play a stronger role in supporting fair access, admissions coordination and inclusive place planning, building on their existing statutory responsibilities in this area.”

‘more deliberate action’ – What does this mean, since it doesn’t spell out any actions? Obviously, it means support for selective schools, as they are the highest performing secondary schools, and nowhere are they mentioned, so is the report endorsing the status quo. A selective school currently seeking a new headteacher has less than 7% of its pupils on free school meals according to the DfE website.

‘admit and support a fair share of disadvantaged pupils’ – What is being recommended for school with entry tests? And what is a fair share? Similar to the balance of the catchment area? But the location of schools is often based on history rather than current place concerns?

And for non-selective schools, how do you override parental preference and faith-based requirements?  Probably, through the school funding mechanism to encourage change in admissions criteria.

I would have liked to see some specific recommendations. A case study of how a successful school has already used the admissions rules would have been insightful.

‘stronger expectations that high-performing schools demonstrate how they are contributing to inclusion and fair access locally.’  Everyone knows what schools do to ‘expectations from government’.

‘Local authorities should also play a stronger role in supporting fair access, admissions coordination’ Ha, Ha, ha. It has taken two years of a Labour government to get local authorities the ability to control in-year admissions for academies and free schools (Clause 52 of 2026 Act). Will government back closure of faith schools if it is the best outcome for place planning: we shall see.

And what of transport in rural areas? At present transport to selective schools is not free in most areas outside London and the other conurbations, as it is seen as a parental choice, something I campaigned about in the 2024 general election in Weald of Kent and raised in Castle Point about schools on Canvey Island during the previous General Election.

I would have liked a much more radical approach to policy recommendations, as in the section on teachers, where a revision of the apprenticeship system is advocated. Trainees should also understand what teaching in schools in working lass areas is like. Of course, if the recommendation above is actioned, some schools will look very different, as some might lose successful pupils to selective schools and be even less educationally comprehensive. Will teachers want to teach in such schools without more incentives?

Sadly, with an Education Act passed in the last session of parliament, even a new Prime Minister may find it difficult to fsecure time for more reforms, so what will happen will probably only be within the current rules and framework.

I wonder what changes we will see by the end of this parliament: I am not holding my breath, at least for the secondary school sector. In the Early Years field, I am much more hopeful because there is an acceptance that closing chidrens’ centres a decade ago was not a wise policy move.  

Still, any report that puts these issues back on the table for a little while and creates discussion cannot be all bad.

Tell me the old, old story: the working class and schools

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With the publication later today of the Star Academy Trust commissioned report into outcomes for ‘white working-class boys’, I thought I would look at what I posted when the inquiry was announced last year. Class matters more than ethnicity | John Howson

“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.”

Way back in 1982, nearly 50 years ago, I used some evidence from a book published in 1926 by Kenneth Lindsay, and entitled ‘Social Progress and Educational Waste’ about the wide variations in the percentages of children obtaining secondary education – not mandatory for all until 19944 – to discuss differences in provision for schooling across England. (Variations in Local Authority Provision of Education Oxford Review of education, Volume 8, Number 2, 1982). Lindsay, in his book, found one school in Lewisham that won as many scholarships to secondary school as the whole inner city area of Bermondsey out together.’ Differences in education by social class were commonplace.

In the 1960s, The Plowden Report into primary education found that ‘the boroughs in which expenditure [on schooling] was generally low were very much the same in 1960-61 as they were in 1950-51.’ Later that decade another report Half our Future looked at the children leaving school at 15. I celebrated its 50th anniversary with this blog post Half Our Future: A tribute | John Howson both Reports revealed the differences in outcomes for different social classes and how those gaps might be reduced.

Finally, in terms of evidence of the different education outcomes for different groups in society, it is worth reading the Oxfordshire County Council report to Education Scrutiny Committee of 16th October 2014 ESC_OCT1614R05 Educational Attainment of White Working Class Boys.pdf

So, don’t expect anything new, today, but I would like this report to be linked to the speech by Andy Burnham, also to be given today that should speak about the importance of ‘place’ and devolution in our society.  

Both Lindsay and Plowden wrote when schooling was a devolved activity, sometime described, at the time, as ‘a local service nationally administered’. Since then, the administration of schooling has become more site -based with schools operating their own budgets, but more nationally controlled from Westminster. This shift in ‘place’ doesn’t seem to have done much for the educational achievements of white working-class boys.

So, will a shift back to more local or regional decision-making move on the dial for outcomes? Much, I think depends on the interplay of the 4 ‘P’s of Education power

Parents

Premises

People

Purpose

And how they operate together.

The Conservatives, after the 2010 general election had ideas, but they didn’t work for those not wanting to go on to high education. Interestingly, although academies were free from following the National Curriculum, few looked at whether it was appropriate as a curriculum for their communities.

However, what is common to all places is the vital need to engage with effective early learning. If all young people achieve successful early in life, then, with the building blocks firmly in place, more can be achieved later. Fail early, fail often in schooling, and with failure comes disillusion and a lack of engagement.  

So, let’s continue the battle to achieve success in education for all, but it won’t be easy, and will need a view of ‘place’ that incorporates local, regional and national policy-making that supports communities and their schools.

So where does parental choice fit into this model of support? More importantly, where does a selective secondary school system fit into the thinking about the issued raised in today’s report?

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DfE Vacancy website: two irritations

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For years one of the features of the DfE’s vacancy website that has irritated me is the seemingly random repeating of vacancies. The example below, seen this morning, is an extreme example of this tendency, with the two adverts for the same vacancy appearing next to each other on the same page. I never know whether this is either a coding glitch that has existed since the site became active or a deliberate attempt to ensure some vacancies are repeated in case viewers missed them on their first appearance in the listing or search. Either way, putting the two versions next to each other doesn’t seem to me to be sensible.

Headteacher

Bordesley Green Girls’ School & Sixth Form, Birmingham, B9 4TR

Full-time equivalent salary

L33 to L39

School type

Local authority maintained school, ages 11 to 18

Working pattern

Full time

Closing date

30 June 2026 at 9am

Visa sponsorship

Visas cannot be sponsored

Headteacher

Bordesley Green Girls’ School & Sixth Form, Birmingham, B9 4TR

Pay scale

L33 to L39

School type

Local authority maintained school, ages 11 to 18

Working pattern

Full time

Closing date

30 June 2026 at 9am

Visa sponsorship

Visas cannot be sponsored

Another irritation of the DfE vacancy site, as far as I am concerned, is that a search on the term ‘headteacher’ can result in random vacancies for other posts appearing in the search, such as this on today for an ‘assistant principal’. This is not an issue at this time of year when there are few vacancies on the site, but is more of an issue when there are a couple of hundred vacancies to consider.

Assistant Principal – Behaviour and Alternative Provision

More than one location, Archway Learning Trust

Full-time equivalent salary

From £67,898 to £75,049 per annum

School type

1 academy, None, ages 11 to 19

Working pattern

Full time

Closing date

6 July 2026 at 9am

Visa sponsorship

Visas cannot be sponsored

Both the issues mentioned here may cause problems for AI generated searches aimed at counting the number of vacancies for particular post.  The search mechanism would need to be very sophisticated to cope with such anomalies.

This is the reason why, at present, I still spend a couple of hours a week studying the list of vacancies. I would be delighted if anyone would provide me with a foolproof automated regime to collect vacancies, because forty years of collecting headteacher vacancies has taught me that it is not a straightforward exercise.

Later next month, when I come to write my annual report of the 2025/26 school-year and headteacher vacancies, I will discuss some of those issues in more detail, including ‘what is an Executive headteacher’ and do we need a definition?

Meanwhile, I have collected data on just under 1,400 nursery, primary, secondary and special schools that are state-funded and located in England and have advertised for a head teacher since 1st August 2025.

Since January, I have also been collecting data about vacancies for teachers of music in state-funded secondary schools. Next year, I might expand that to include private schools so that I can understand the completion for teachers across both sectors.

Watch our for the report that will be published either in Late July or August this year.

Is the DfE’s Teacher Supply Model outdated?

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For most of my adult life, the government department responsible for the supply of teachers, whether it was called the DfE, DES, DfEE or by another name, has used a version of the Teacher Supply Model to calculate future teacher needs, and presumably to ensure the government doesn’t waste money training too many teachers.

Training too few teachers, not as a result of the Model, but because of under-recruitment into training, has been a problem for the Teacher Supply Model (TSM) during periods of teacher shortage. Do you either add the under-recruitment to the TSM target in any one year to the next year’s TSM total, thus making it even harder to reach, or do you accept every school starts each new school year in September fully staffed, so there are no vacancies to be filled, even if additional trainees just happened to be recruited. Over the past forty years, both approaches have been tried: neither really works.

I first came across the TSM in the late 1980s when, in response to a Select Committee Report, a technical document explaining the working of the TSM at that time was published. Between the late 1980s, and a seminal announcement, also to a Select committee, by David Laws when he was the Minister of State that the TSM would be part of open government, the TSM remained largely secret, apart from one other document published in the late 1990s in repose to yet another two Select Committee reports.

Why were successive government keen to keep the TSM under wraps? Possibly because the workings allowed for an understanding of future government policy. There are three obvious areas where changes in policy can have consequences for schools and society that might create political debate: reactions to future pupil numbers, whether up or down; changes in education funding that might allow more or less funds for schools; policy changes such as extending the learning leaving age or the introduction of a new subject, such as citizenship or computing. All impact on the TSM

Governments often don’t want to signal policy changes ahead of time, especially if they might be controversial. In the first decade of this century, the secrecy around the TSM almost caught out the ITT sector when falling rolls together with improved ITT recruitment made a reduction in ITT numbers inevitable for secondary subjects, especially as there was no policy around improving staffing levels in the secondary sector, partly because of the decision over the introduction of non-contact time in the primary sector.

Planning is an essential too of any organisation, including governments, whatever extreme free-market thinkers may say. After years of following the consequences of the TSM decisions on the outcomes for the teacher labour market, I have some concerns about what happens when the TSM has been run for any particular year. The elements of the TSM have changed over the years, as explained above in relation to under-recruitment as an example. That’s not an issue for me, although the discussions with the sector may have helped prevent some changes to the TSM in mor recent times.

What is at the core of my concerns about the TSM is the length of time between the collection of the data for input into the TSM and the consequences for the real-time labour market for any September recruitment round, let alone the needs for teachers to fill any January vacancies.

I acknowledge that improved and faster data collection over time thanks to better computing capabilities has helped reduce the time taken between data collection and the effect on the labour market of the TSM output for any recruitment round. Currently, data from the 2025 School Workforce Survey, collected in November 2025, will probably influence the TSM run for the 2027 entry into training, and hence, the 2028 labour market.

At least with most trainees now on a one-year postgraduate training route, there is no longer the issue of a four-year undergraduate course to add into the mix. The November 2025 data collected, if such courses were still a significant part of the ITT scene, would not affect the labour market until 2031. A lot can happen in the intervening years.

Even with the shorter training period, there is still a time lag between data collection and the consequences of that data on the labour market.

My question is, should a further check be added once the TSM has been used to calculate ITT targets, in order to allow the comparison between the TSM target and the current reality of the labour market?

The DfE now has excellent data from several years of operating its own vacancy platform, and there are also private operators monitoring the labour market with useful vacancy data in real time. This data can be compared with the TSM output target to allow a discussion about the validity of the TSM target to current labour market needs.

Now, it may well be that the TSM number is the best fit for training needs, but as my previous post that considered the labour market data for teachers of music alongside the ITT target cut that presumably emerged from the TSM output has suggested, the addition of vacancy data does allow for a debate about whether the TSM target under or over estimates demand. Music ITT: has the government made a mistake? | John Howson

Such use of vacancy data also allows for a consideration of policy changes, such as how schools react to a change in a market where QTS still allows any teacher to teach any subject to any child, and ‘permits the use of unqualified staff. where nobody with QTS is either available or considered sufficiently expert at delivering the curriculum.  

The TSM isn’t outdated, just, in my opinion, no longer enough by itself to ensure an orderly labour market for teachers.

Why is this important, it is because the market does play a part in determining how shortages are dealt with. Where are the qualified teachers of physics teaching? How much more do schools with high levels of free school meals have to spend on recruitment than a school with fewer such pupils? Important questions around the staffing of the nation’s schools.

I read the Fed report on education issued yesterday National Education Report 2026 – FED and believe that the supply of teachers and school leaders is still at the heart of any effective system of education.

How any government determines teacher supply is a vital decision affecting the lives of many young people. Ensuring every child has the best possible teachers throughout their whole school-life is equally as important as whether or not they are banned from social media, but much less often discussed.

I think that teacher supply issues should be much higher up the education agenda, but I would, wouldn’t I, having spent a career worrying about teacher supply matters.   

Music ITT: has the government made a mistake?

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New entrants to postgraduate teacher preparation courses in music in 2026 will not receive a bursary. Instead, they will be need to rely upon either student loans or other funding. How has this change affected applications to train as a music teacher?

The news is not good. The June data for applications is the second worst number since the 2013/14 round more than a decade ago. Only the 2023/23 round post covid that was a terrible round across all subjects, has recorded a lower figure for applications than June 2025. In context, the June number of offers, a better measure than applications, is not far short of half the level seen in the covid year of 202/2, and around 25% below what might be expected in a usual round.

Worry, not because the government has decided that falling rolls over the next few years will mean fewer teachers of music need to be trained. Reducing the target from a requirement of 565 teachers of music in 2024/25 to just a requirement of 260 new trainees in 2025/26 suggests either the previous targets were way out of line or a need to justify the removal of the bursary by setting a target that can be met. After all, it would be unfortunate to remove the bursary as unnecessary, but still miss the target.

So, what of demand from state schools for music? Since January, and the start of the recruitment round for September 2026, I have recorded some 530 schools advertising for a teacher or music. Allowing for the fact that perhaps 100 had a TLR attached, so were not ideal for newly qualified teachers, this suggests 400 posts for newly qualified teachers so far. Add in perhaps another 100 autumn term vacancies and overall demand might be in the range of 400-500 posts or 500-600 posts overall.

The DfE expects about half of vacancies to be taken by existing teachers or returners each year. The exact number depends upon where the demand is and how it relates to supply. But, sticking with the 50% figure means a demand for around 250 to 300 new entrants each year.

Now, with falling rolls be might reduce that number by 10% to 225 to 270 as a requirement. On the face of it, the new target of 260 look risky but manageable. However, it must include two assumptions: all those that are offered eventually complete their courses and of ‘completers’, all join the state secondary school sector.

Both, based upon past trends are unrealistic assumptions. Being generous, 90% of those offered places complete the course. This suggests an output of 236 against a target of 260. Rounding up to 240 new entrants, this mean the new target is still not way of demand.

However, not all ‘completer’s join state schools. Some don’t enter teaching at all; some join Sixth Form Colleges or primary schools; some join the independent sector and some may decide to work overseas in the growing international school market. The 2025 data Less than 400 teachers of physics entered service in 2023/24 | John Howson based upon 2023/24 entry patterns showed that 80% of those gaining a QTS on a music ITT course entered teaching in a state-funded school. This includes both primary, secondary and special schools.

Assuming the 80% as a baseline – the next set of data should be out next month – our total of 240 reduced to less than 200. That number is starting to look as if the cut to music ITT places has been too savage.

A cynic might suggest, but I never could, the target was reduced to ensure it would be met and to save face over the removal of the bursary.

Whatever the reason, the DfE has now risked demand continuing to outstrip supply and this to affect the teaching of music in the nation’s secondary schools. With the recent announcement of the programme to ensure ‘Every child to get access to enriching activities to build skills and confidence for life’, the new target looks even less sensible  Every child to get access to enriching activities to build skills and confidence for life – GOV.UK.

I haven’t seen any campaign from the sector asking the government to revisit the target, but perhaps there should be in light of these numbers unless falling rolls are going to affect the demand for teachers of music more than I have calculated.

I would welcome any comments on the data.

Falling rolls: Are school closures inevitable?

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The past month has seen a number of posts on this blog about falling school rolls, and what the impact of pupil-led funding formula might mean for schools.  Now that the DfE has published the data around admissions to schools for September 2026 and the 2026/27 school-year, it is possible to look at the latest trends. Primary and secondary school applications and offers: 2026 – GOV.UK

Thanks for the doctrine of parental choice, pupils may attend a school in a borough other than the one where they actually live, but most primary age pupils will probably attend their nearest school. Exceptions are around faith schools, where the nearest school may be in an adjacent borough. This is more of an issue for the secondary sector than for the primary school sector.

Although Inner London boroughs do feature more amongst the boroughs with the largest decline in applications between 2019/20 and 2026/27 school-years, although four London outer London boroughs are to be found in the top ten boroughs with the largest percentage decline in applications. These four include three boroughs in South London.

Despite the presence of Kingston upon Thames and Richmond upon Thames near the top of the table, boroughs on the outer edge of the capital are more likely to be found towards the foot of the table, with smaller falls in the number of applications over the time period.

It is easy to see from this data why primary schools across London are closing or amalgamating. Indeed, the pressure for further rationalisation of the school estate across the capital is likely to be intense in the next few years. How that pressure is handled will determine the careers of many staff, both teaching and non-teaching, and the fate of pupils.

I wrote a play to demonstrate some of the issue facing staff and parents list year – see (1) Post | Feed | LinkedIn if you are interested.

One of the features of the play is that not all schools are facing the same degree of hardship from falling rolls. To follow up on this point, I looked at two measures for pupil numbers and school capacity primary schools – including separate infant and junior schools – in one outer London borough.

The DfE website information on schools for the borough shows five schools where the roll exceeds the school capacity. However, a more detailed look at capacity and numbers using a different part of the DfE website reveals a more widespread issue in the borough.

I wonder whether the basic information on capacity is actually the capacity based upon the admission number policy and the other on the actual building capacity?

The table for the second indicator reads as below

The data might suggest that some schools are educating children in temporary buildings, assuming the DfE’s data on capacity are up to date. However, if the numbers are correct, then nearly half the schools already have significant spare capacity, and the situation may only become worse.

The key question for both local and national politicians arising from this data, if it is correct, are, ‘Do we let the market solve the problem of falling rolls or do we intervene and manage the capacity in a manner that is best suited to numbers over the next decade?’

Those historians of education that have studied policy decisions will know what happened in the 1970s and early 1980s, a period when there was the last large-scale downturn in pupil numbers. How officers and politicians in Haringey tried to tackle the issue in the late 1970s is an interesting and cautionary tale.

It’s the numbers not the percentages that matter most

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Each year, the DfE publishes details about the workforce in schools. The data about teacher numbers are collected in the School Workforce Survey, conducted every November.

Included in the data are details about teacher retention in state funded schools. Interestingly, although the DfE provided the actual number of NQTs each year, the retention data is shown as a percentage of that base number. Release home – School workforce in England – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK as demonstrated in the following table.

The picture is obvious, despite some late arrivals after qualifying, the percentage falls for each extra year of service, so that of the 2010 cohort, only 59.2% were still in service after 10 years.

 Over the past few years, the percentage in service after one year has fluctuated from a low of 85.1 for the 2016 cohort to a high of 89.9 for 2023 cohort, with the 2024 cohort still doing well, with a retention rate of 89.7% at year 2. This looks like good news for the government.

However, there is less good news for the cohort that joined during covid in 2020 and 2012. For these two cohorts, retention after four and five years is poor, and back to levels last seen in 2014 for the 2021 cohort.

So, good news, retention is improving. Might the government even meet its target of of 6,500 extra teachers? Now it is time to change the percentages into numbers.

Here the picture is different. I have projected an extra year for the 2024 cohort and two years for the 2023 cohort just to show what might happen. The behaviour of those two cohorts is very important as they represent the lowest intakes of NQTs since 2010. Sadly, the government doesn’t publish the table by sectors. This is important because it is the key secondary subjects that already start with shortages where retention really matters for the performance of the school system, and especially for the outcomes for children in schools with high percentages of pupils on Free School Meals.

The current ten-year loss numbers show a worrying trend.

Hopefully, this loss of experienced teachers will reduce over the next few years, as the cohorts following the 2015 cohort have better retention numbers and percentages. The real concern is the 2020 and 2021 cohorts.

However, with falling rolls, starting to appear in the secondary sector, and already seriously affecting the primary sector in London, the retention rates for teachers may well improve, if schools can continue to afford the same number of teachers.

As my previous posts have made clear, the relationship between the National Funding Formula and pupil numbers will be crucial to future size of the teaching force. Falling Rolls: Is the funding formula making matters worse? | John Howson

AI – a reminder from 2018

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Sometimes it is worth repeating an earlier post. This one about AI and education was from as long ago as 2018. The post dealt with a Report by a House of Lords Committee. The most prescient section was; 

“One witness warned the Committee, “that the idealised world represented on social media “leads to many illnesses including eating disorders … and serious mental illnesses”.   The implication being that schools must put in place strategies to prevent such outcomes among future generations exposed to the perils of the modern world.”

You can read the full post at: AI and education – The view of the House of Lords Committee | John Howson

So, way back before Covid, Westminster was being warned about serious mental illnesses- that might impact schools, my highlighting.

Well, post covid, the SEND demand has not been generated by physical needs. The government seems to have largely ignored the warnings and is now trying to put ‘the stopper back in the bottle’, to use a phrase popular with the BBC this week.

Can we save on defence sending if we use some of the education budget to help the next generation work with the developments created by AI?

As Ukraine and The Gulf have shown, the mental capabilities of the armed forces may be more important than the physical attributes in a defensive war. We won’t be fighting imperial wars again – or I hope not – Iraq should have been the last one, if Afghanistan is seen as punishment campaign not a land grab, but without an endgame strategy that the Americans seem so bad at understanding is an essential part of any military operation or war.

I am not sure that the curriculum Review – remember that damp squib – really took on board the changes AI would bring to society. The Microprocessor revolution that changed the 1980s; the internet revolution of the late 1990s and the Jave Enabled smart phone revolution of the second decade of our century each changed children’s lives. AI has already done so, and will continue to do so in ways someone of my age cannot even imagine.

I have found turning a blog post into a webinar in just minutes awesome. Creating a poster from the same text is improving all the time, and its outcomes can now be regularly seen on LinkedIn and other social media platforms.

We are a tech savvy nation; but not yet a tech savvy education system. Is it time for bodies like The Royal Society to make their voice known, along with those that represent our creative industries, equally affected by AI.

I wrote in another post that ’the market porter of the early 20th century was replaced by the forklift truck driver. They in turn were replaced by the software engineer creating automated warehouses. Now AI will make most software engineers redundant, in the same way as the forklift truck driver has started to disappear as a role in warehousing.

Radical change is necessary in our education system. Do we need a national conversation around what that change should be, and not just a professional curriculum review?

Are there now two classes of NEETS: traditional and Modern?

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Most of the comments about yesterday’s report on NEETs (not in Education, Employment or Training) Young people and work: interim report – GOV.UK by Alan Milburn,  focused on the outcomes, especially the rising percentage of NEETs in the population. Fewer commentators delved deeper into the report to look at some of root causes that are likely to increase the chances off someone becoming a NEET.

I think there are now two groups of NEETs. The long-standing group, discussed below, and a newer second group of university graduates, unemployed or underemployed by age 25. This second group requires different approaches to the first group, but could be disproportionally affected by the increasing importance of AI in the labour market, and especially the loss of entry level jobs that is akin to the loss of manual labour jobs over the past half century. I will reflect upon this issue in another post.

For the first group, the following extracts from yesterday’s Report once again tell us everything we need to know: fail early, fail often.

4.2 Early years: where the trajectory begins

302. The system knows, from the moment a child arrives at school, who is most likely to fail. It has the data, and the unambiguous evidence. A study of over 8,000 young people in Bradford found that children who were not school-ready at ages 4 to 5 were nearly three times as likely to be NEET at ages 16 to 17 years old. 11% of those who did not reach a Good Level of Development at reception were later NEET, compared with just 4% of those who did.[footnote 273] Research tracking children from school entry through to their late teens shows that most of this effect operates through academic attainment.[footnote 274] A child who falls behind at 5 years old is on average still behind at 16 years old. Missing early building blocks propagates forward through every key stage. Around 65% of the relationship between school readiness and later NEET status runs through this academic pathway.[footnote 275]

4.3 Schooling

The attainment gradient

309. Taken on its own terms, much of the schools system looks relatively strong. In England, those aged 15 perform above the OECD average in reading, maths and science.[footnote 287] Level 2 attainment in English and maths by age 19 reached 76.1% in 2023 to 2024, the second highest on record,[footnote 288] although it has fallen back slightly to 73.2% in 2024 to 2025.[footnote 289] Those aged 16 to 19 score above the OECD average in literacy and adaptive problem solving, with significant improvements in literacy and numeracy since 2012.[footnote 290] Only around 5% of non-disadvantaged young people fail to enter a sustained destination after Key Stage 4.[footnote 291]

310. And yet the relationship between social background and educational attainment in England is unbroken. It has survived every reform of the past three decades. Disadvantaged children still perform substantially worse at every stage of education. The gap does not close as children move through the system. It widens.

311. At age 7, the most disadvantaged pupils are 16 percentiles behind their most advantaged peers. By age 18 or 19, the same young people are 29 percentiles behind.[footnote 292] 12 years of schooling, and the gap has nearly doubled.

312. The damage begins early and locks in at primary school. At Key Stage 2, just 47% of disadvantaged pupils reached the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, compared with 69% of their peers, a 22 percentage point gap.[footnote 293]

313. Primary schools do not receive the same level of attention in the public debate on education as secondary schools.  Perhaps that is why the ambitions that have been set for primary school children are surprisingly low.  On the face of it, it is astonishing for example that successive governments have set targets for primary schools to only have 75% of their pupils leaving with the age-appropriate level of numeracy and literacy skills.  In other words, the State assumes that one in four will never achieve that standard.

As I wrote about an earlier Social Mobility Commission Report, Education counts, but so does the family | John Howson

[This report] “raises a number of interesting questions. Most are not new, but they are none the worse for restating.

Life changes, at least as far as incomes are concerned, seem to be a combination of education, local labour markets, soft skills and parental ability to offer support for life chances.” John Howson Blog 15th September 2020

We have also known for a long time the importance of ‘soft skills. Here is an extract from my blog written after an earlier Social Mobility Commission Report

In 2009, I concluded that ‘the activities relating to having fun and socialising are the key activities of out-of-school activities.’ The Social Mobility Commission chairman has concluded that

“It is shocking that so many children from poorer backgrounds never get the chance to join a football team, learn to dance or play music. The activity either costs too much, isn’t available or children just feel they won’t fit in. As a result, they miss out on important benefits – a sense of belonging, increased confidence and social skills which are invaluable to employers. It is high time to level the playing field.”  Blog July 19th 2019 The importance of soft skills and those that miss out | John Howson

Even earlier, after a Social Mobility Commission of 2017, I commented that

“Of most concern in the report is the fact that there is still general acceptance that educational opportunity is still shaped by background, with those from poor backgrounds having least opportunities and that the level of opportunity deteriorates between school and university.” June 15th 2017  Class rules: not OK | John Howson

Go even further back to 2014, and an early post on this blog commented about social mobility that

“The Commission also discuss parental involvement and the poor quality of career advice that is often linked to low expectations. More must be done to encourage parents that the education system failed not to let the same thing happen with the next generation. Breaking the cycle of hopelessness is a vital component to raising standards as the Commission acknowledges. How to disseminate best practice rather than ritual nods to devolving training to schools and Teach First might have allowed for discussion about the content of both initial training and professional development of teachers.

Where I do agree with the Commission is in the vital role played by primary schools and the need to focus more attention on success in the early years. Regular attendance and strategies to help pupils that miss school are important moves in helping all pupils achieve success as last week’s publication of the EYFS profiles showed.

For anyone interested in the issue of social mobility this is an important but at times challenging and even depressing Report to read. It can be found at” https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364979/State_of_the_Nation_Final.pdf

 Blog post 21st October 2014.

So, way back in 2014, much the same comments were being made as in Section 4.2 of the current report, quoted at the start of this post.

We have a lost generation after what happened to those in early years after 2014, including and the slaughter of the Children’s Centres, the banishment of vocational skills from the curriculum, and a decade of teacher shortages leaving many disadvantaged pupils floundering at school in a system that was more interested in tacking organisation issues than creating a school system for all.

Sir John Newsom must be turning in his grave. Half Our Future: A tribute | John Howson

Higher Education: markets v planning for the sector

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I don’t often write about higher education, as, although I spent more than a decade running a large department in a university, and also writing about activity-based costings in higher education, I don’t consider myself well enough briefed to comment regularly.

There are exceptions to my self-imposed rule, and this post is one of those. What persuaded me to write this post was a link to this article Universities on the brink: Decoding the UK higher education funding crisis and the path forward | The Educationist

Now, for most of this century, and indeed the last decade of the previous century, higher education providers have been free to operate in a market, with limited government intervention, except in areas such as teacher education, and providing courses for both doctors and the professions allied to medicine.

As I discovered when running courses for new heads of departments in universities about how higher education funding worked, most academics had limited knowledge and often less interest in the subject when asked to take on running department: at that time; even Deans were often more interested in course quality than the financial health of the departments they headed.

Regardless of the reasons behind the current financial malaise, should the market be left to bring the sector back to financial equilibrium? Of course, the government could just throw money at the problem, but I guess it hasn’t the funds, and anyway, the DfE might put NEETs and SEND above bailing out universities in any priority list.

However, I don’t think the government should leave everything to the market. After all, it is the largest consumer of graduates: 30,000 teachers per year to be trained; NHS staff; the defence forces; the civil service and local government. These are all consumers of graduates in large numbers.

Allowing the market to solve the financial problems might have unintended consequences. A major concern for me is around the mobility of new graduates. Many years ago, I studied where trainee teachers went to study, and there was a correlation between where a first degree or higher-level courses was studied, and where individuals entered teacher preparation courses. Universities without schools of education provided fewer recruits to teaching.

Well, Teach First helped solve that problem, at least in London, but I am concerned that market driven course closures could leave parts of the country without degree courses in some subject areas vital for the public sector.

For this reason alone, I think the government should ensure some form of course planning for the higher education sector, so that there are not areas without say, music courses or philosophy. Both are degree courses important as part of the pipeline for future teachers of music and religious education. As these are also both subjects that already fail to recruit enough graduates into teaching, reducing the number studying them on degree courses even further would endanger that pipeline even more.

The intervention of the government in place planning, even at a broad level, also makes economic sense to me, as moving students from loans to welfare is also not a good use of public money. How to manage the balance between leaving the future for higher education to the market, and an orderly return to fiscal rectitude might at least be worth a discussion amongst politicians and those that advise them.