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Category Archives: politics
Is discipline worse in schools?
It was interesting to hear Laura McInerney and Tom Bennett on the ‘Today’ programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning discussing whether or not behaviour was worse in schools these days than in the past. Both are experienced commentators, and Tom led a review in 2017 for the then government, about behaviour in schools. It is also interesting to see the BBC taking an interest in schools. The World at One last Sunday (also BBC Radio 4) devoted the whole of the programme to an analysis of the SEND issue. Interestingly, there was no government spokesperson available on Sunday, so they had to make do with the chair of the Education Select Committee.
The discussion this morning was around whether or not behaviour had worsened in schools, and if so, why? The usual suspects, covid and mobile phones were trotted out in support of discipline being worse in schools, along with families facing multiple challenges, but there were precious few facts.
One way of measuring the state of discipline in schools is by looking at the number of permanent exclusions each year by schools. The largest single reason each year for these exclusions is always ‘persistent disruptive behaviour’. So, this might be seen as a good proxy measure for how schools are faring in relation to discipline in the classrooms. Of course, this measure doesn’t pick up low level disruptive behaviour, but it is reasonable to assume that there is a correlation between the different levels of behaviour in schools.
Looking back over the past 30 years, the level of recorded permanent exclusions was 10,440 in 1998/99. The level fell to 5,040 in 2010/11. In the latest year, 2023/24 there were 10,885 permanent exclusions. On the face of it, discipline is getting worse again, but is only back to levels last seen at the end of the last century.
I would like to suggest to causes not mentioned on the ‘Today’ programme: teacher supply and school funding. Is there a causal relationship between the fact that permanent exclusions were at their lowest when schools were fully staffed, and had experienced a period of several years of significant funding by government. By contract, permanent exclusions seem to rise when there is difficulty staffing schools, and when funding is less than might be expected in a civilised society.
So, is the answer as simple as proper funding and staffing if you want fewer exclusions? The age and experience of the teaching force might also play a part. More experienced teachers, as I can testify from personal experience, are much less likely to face discipline issues then new entrants, especially if they are unqualified.
In the latest statistics on exclusions, 13 of the 25 local authorities with the lowest rates of permanent exclusions were London boroughs. This just adds more evidence to my thesis that if the rest of the country were funded like London, schooling would be in a much better place across the country. Although I was also pleased to see Oxfordshire in 10th place overall for the lowest rate of permanent exclusions.
Less than 400 teachers of physics entered service in 2023/24
As a result of the latest data from the DfE, it is now possible to start to see the consequences arising from the collapse in ITT recruitment to secondary courses in 2023/24.
It is interesting to compare the turnaround from the improvement in recruitment brought about by the covid epidemic with the poor recruitment figures for just three years later.
| Year Achieved QTS | Achieved QTS | Did not achieve QTS | % Did not achieve QTS |
| 2017/18 | 25490 | 1304 | 5 |
| 2018/19 | 26402 | 1348 | 5 |
| 2019/20 | 27542 | 1191 | 4 |
| 2020/21 | 30706 | 1606 | 5 |
| 2021/22 | 29715 | 2241 | 7 |
| 2022/23 | 22437 | 1840 | 8 |
| 2023/24 | 21210 | 1550 | 7 |
The reduction in numbers achieving QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) from 30,706 in 2002/21 to 21,210 in 2023/24, a reduction of some 8,500, or more than a quarter in just three years, goes some way to demonstrate the depth of the problems with recruitment schools faced in September 2024 and even more so in January 2025.
Hopefully, these numbers represent the lowest point for secondary trainee numbers over the next few years, after adjusting for the changes in targets that result from falling rolls in schools.
The data on the percentage achieving QTS might suggest that when it is difficult to recruit trainees, more marginal candidates are offered a place by training providers, and, as a result, the percentage not achieving QTS increases.
Because the DfE only records those with QTS teaching in a State-Funded ‘school’ it does not count those employed in a Sixth Form College or other further education college and, does not count any teachers from the cohort with QTS working in the private school sector. This latter omission might account for why only 49% of those trained to teach Classics were teaching in a State-Funded school.
| Subject | Postgraduate | |||
| 2023/24 | ||||
| Number of trainees | ||||
| Total | Achieved QTS | Teaching in a State-Funded School (of those achieved QTS) | Teaching in a State-Funded School (of those achieved QTS) | |
| Classics | 69 | 67 | 33 | 49% |
| Physical Education | 1,485 | 1,438 | 965 | 67% |
| Primary | 9,378 | 8,712 | 6,271 | 72% |
| Business Studies | 227 | 201 | 146 | 73% |
| Art & Design | 401 | 382 | 286 | 75% |
| Computing | 413 | 374 | 282 | 75% |
| Total | 22,760 | 21,210 | 15,921 | 75% |
| Modern Foreign Languages | 1,024 | 970 | 739 | 76% |
| Other | 327 | 310 | 237 | 76% |
| Drama | 246 | 227 | 175 | 77% |
| Physics | 540 | 485 | 373 | 77% |
| Secondary | 13,382 | 12,498 | 9,650 | 77% |
| Geography | 822 | 771 | 601 | 78% |
| Chemistry | 764 | 691 | 544 | 79% |
| Mathematics | 1,900 | 1,762 | 1,385 | 79% |
| Biology | 885 | 818 | 652 | 80% |
| Music | 237 | 223 | 179 | 80% |
| Design & Technology | 576 | 540 | 437 | 81% |
| English | 2,210 | 2,062 | 1,661 | 81% |
| History | 977 | 919 | 744 | 81% |
| Religious Education | 279 | 258 | 212 | 82% |
It is interesting to note that the percentage of those trained to teach physics teaching in a State-Funded school was the same as the overall average, at 77%. However, that meant that there were only 373 new physic teacher entrants into State-Funded secondary schools from this cohort. It would be interesting to know the routes these 373 took before taking up their initial posts? How many of these 373 were from the PG Salaried High Potential ITT route? (Better known as Teach First).
The relatively small percentage of physical education trainees recorded as working in State-Funded schools may well be a result of the numbers recruited into training compared with the target.
Where trainees are required to pay a tuition fee for a course, what responsibility does the government and the course provider have to the trainee to ensure that there are not way too many trainees for the number of vacancies likely to arise? If this means that the student debt is less likely to be recovered, is this a waste of public money?
In a future post I will explore some other aspects of this dataset.
NEETS: Why is London so different to the rest of England?
London seems to be a different world to much of the rest of England when it comes to looking at a range of different indicators about education. The latest one where the statistics raise an interesting question is the percentage of 16- and 17-year-olds that are NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training).
With the raising of the suggested ‘learning leaving age’ to eighteen (the official age is still sixteen) it is expected that almost all students in what is Years 12 and 13 should be in some form of certified education or training. The DfE asks local authorities for data each year bout the percentage participating in education or training and produces scorecards on-line. I wonder how many local authority scrutiny committees ever see this data? Participation in education, training and NEET age 16 to 17 by local authority, Academic year 2024/25 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK
The scorecard for Oxfordshire can be found at Oxfordshire_neet_comparator_scorecard.pdf
Looking through the data for all local authorities for both 2019 and 2025 what struck we was there was a definite London effect. 28 London boroughs had higher participation rates in 2025 than in 2019. For the rest of England there were only 37 other local authorities with higher participation rates in 2025 than in 2019.
One explanation is the inclusion of ‘no data’ in the NEETs percentage. As the DfE noted;
‘NEET/not known rates at the end of 2024/start of 2025 ranged from 0.0% City of London to 21.5% in Dudley. Dudley’s rate includes 2.4% NEET and 19.1% activity not known.’
So, either London boroughs are better at collecting the data – quite possible, given their relatively small size and close geographical cohesion, or there is something else going on.
On the other hand, only seven ‘shire counties’ had higher participation rates in 2025 than in 2019. Might the decimation of rural bus services and the effect of a punitive motor tax on those without a no claims bonus be something to do with this change? Could it be that in large counties there are no longer the staff to badger multi-academy trusts (MATs) to provide accurate data about the destination of Year 11 leavers?
I think the DfE data should make clear both the known percentage of NEETs and the percentage of the age group where these is no data available. Perhaps, there might be a scorecard of MATs to identify those that provide high quality data, and those where hard pressed local authorities have to waste time and money chasing the data.
With the job market looking increasingly challenging over the next few years, and fewer incentives for employers to offer jobs with training to school leavers, the percentage of NEETs is an issue that needs more visibility, especially with the rapid growth in EHCPs. Will the significant increase in young people with mental health issues result in more NEETs, and if so, will London be different?
Schooling and the relentless march of technology
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.
1,500 posts and counting
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.
What Lib Dems want for SEND pupils and their families
I was delighted to see the Liberal Democrats weighing in on the SEND debate by writing to the Prime minister and setting out five key principles behind any reform of the SEND system. This is what their letter to the Prime minister said:
Our five principles and priorities for SEND reform are as follows:
- Putting children and families first Children’s rights to SEND assessment and support must be maintained and the voices of children and young people with SEND and of their families and carers must be at the centre of the reform process.
- Boosting specialist capacity and improving mainstream provision Capacity in state special provision must be increased, alongside improvements to inclusive mainstream provision, with investment in both new school buildings and staff training.
- Supporting local government Local authorities must be supported better to fund SEND services, including through:
- The extension of the profit cap in children’s social care to private SEND provision, where many of the same private equity backed companies are active, and
- National government funding to support any child whose assessed needs exceed a specific cost.
- Early identification and shorter waiting lists Early identification and intervention must be improved, with waiting times for diagnosis, support and therapies cut.
- Fair funding The SEND funding system must properly incentivise schools both to accept SEND pupils and to train their staff in best practice for integrated teaching and pastoral care. Our five principles for SEND reform – Liberal Democrats
These principles come from a motion debated at last year’s Party conference and represent a check list against which specific policies can be measured, such as increasing the supply of educational psychologists to deal with both the annual reviews and initial assessments of EHCPs.
If there is anything missing from the list, it is the role of the NHS, and specifically around mental health and education. This is the area of need where the system has really broken down. Many of the other issues are cost related due to inflation and more young people living longer as well as increased demands from an age range of support than can now reach up to the age of 25. The issue of mental health has swamped the system and the NHS must play a part in helping define what is needed.
With the main opposition at Westminster disinterested in the issues of education that are facing most families, the Lib Dems should be leading from the front. This letter should have been sent at least a week ago.
As my earlier posts of today have shown, the Lib Dems next education campaign can be around securing enough teachers for schools in our more deprived areas. Such a campaign can take on both labour councils and Reform voters to show there is a radical alternative in the Liberal democrats.
Education may not feature very high in polling about issue in elections, but on a day-to-day basis it isn’t far away from the conversations in many households. From mobile phone to AI, funding for school meals to citizenship, Liberal Democrats should be calling the government to account.
6,500 extra teachers; myth or realistic aim?
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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.
Reform of Home to School Transport needed
This week the Local Government Association published an important report into home to school transport The future of Home to School Transport: Report | Local Government Association This is an area of responsibility that always concerned me when I was a county councillor, as the rules of the governing eligibility were set in the 1944 Education Act, in a very different era to that of today.
As the LGA report noted:
“Effective home to school transport plays a vital role in our education system. Fundamentally, it is the safety-net that ensures no child or young person misses out on their entitlement to education because they cannot otherwise get to school. However, current home to transport duties were designed for a different age, societally, educationally and economically. For local government, continuing to fulfil the current statutory responsibilities for home to school transport is becoming increasingly financially unsustainable, posing a real threat of bankruptcy for some, and necessitating cuts to other vital aspects of children’s services provision in many more.”
Much of the report deals with SEND transport, as that costs local authorities the most money, the issue of whether the NHS should bear part of the cost. Sensibly the report concluded that this was a national issue:
“We would recommend that, in the context of budgetary pressures across public services and with health being under no less pressure than local government, this is not an issue that can be left to local negotiation to resolve. The Department for Education and the Department for Health and Social Care should clarify an equitable split of responsibilities, including financial responsibilities, for transport for children with the most common health needs that require substantial and additional support, and set that out in statutory guidance both for local authorities and ICBs.”
With the review of the NHS currently underway, this seems like a timely recommendation.
Surprisingly, the report seems in places to assume that parents must send their child to a state school, rather that state schools being the default position if a parent doesn’t make any other arrangement for their child’s education. Fortunately, this assumption doesn’t affect their arguments.
I think their conclusions are sensible in both being clearer, with less change of challenge than at present, but the authors appear to have missed the opportunity to discuss how to deal with the issue of selective schools and distance. Making such schools ineligible for home to school transport as they are regarded as a parental choice is as discriminatory as any other criteria. It is a pity this wasn’t addressed more fully.
Nevertheless, I think I can agree with their conclusions for a system that:
“In summary, we are advocating that in future children and young people should be eligible for assistance with home to school travel from the start of reception to the end of year 13, based on a simple binary distance criterion: if they live more than 3 miles away (by the most direct road route) from their nearest suitable school then they would be eligible for transport assistance; if they live less than three miles away then they would not be eligible for transport assistance. This formulation of eligibility would get rid of the current link between eligibility and the ability to walk to school for both children and young people with SEND and those accessing mainstream home to school transport.”
John Howson 