Tag Archives: local authorities

A text for Holy Week

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Matthew Chapter 25 verses 31-46

This blog doesn’t make a habit of straying into the realm of theology, but a recent comment about the availability of school places for children taken into care together with the post on this blog about the recent research report published by the DfE on vulnerable children and admissions did set me thinking about school admissions policies.

There is a post from a couple of years ago on this blog entitled Jacob’s Law that discussed some aspects of the issue, but not the question as to how faith schools can behave. The wider issues on admissions are discussed in What is the role of a school in its community? | John Howson (wordpress.com).

I have now discovered that some faith schools do not put all children in care in the top priority group for admission. Instead, they prioritise practicing members of their faith community. Some faith schools go some way to helping admit children in care, but only if the child in question or their carers can be considered ‘of the faith’ using a similar test to other children.

As these are state schools, using taxpayers’ money, I wonder whether it is appropriate for some children in care not to be provided with a top priority position in the admissions criteria? After all, many of these children will have been moved from their family home to live with relatives or foster families and forced to seek a new school through no actions of their own.

However, perhaps the greater argument in asking the Christian churches and other faith schools to reflect upon their admissions policy, and especially the Roman Catholic Church, where the downgrading of children in care seems to be most prevalent in admission criteria, to consider placing all children in care at the top of the list of criteria for admission is the sentiments expressed in Matthew Chapter 25 verses 31-46.

Now I know that the passage does not explicitly mention schooling or education. Indeed, learning, per se doesn’t feature a great deal in the gospels, as opposed to children that do receive mentions, presumably as like health services, they weren’t of much concern about schooling in Roman controlled provinces at that time. However, the sentiment of public service expressed in Matthew’s Gospel must surely be thought to include schooling. After all, it is in line with a gospel of love for one another?

More than a century ago, around the time the 1902 Education Act was being discussed, the Wesleyan Church debated whether their teachers were teachers of Methodists or teachers of children, and decided their purpose was to teach children, not just to teach Methodist children. Hence, there are no state-funded Methodist secondary schools, although there remain a few primary schools around the country under the auspices of the Methodist Church.

I would hope, at least in terms of children taken into care, whose vulnerability and need for support is obvious, that the leaders of faiths whose schools don’t put such children at the top of their admissions policy would reconsider that decision this Easter. Please put children in care as top priority for admissions in every state-funded school in England.

What is the role of a school in its community?

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For everyone interested in either the role of a middle tier in our school system in England or in how pupil place planning and support for vulnerable children is handled in the current shambles around the arrangements for schools in England, this is an important report to read. Local authority provision for school places and support for vulnerable children – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The recent White Paper on Education was the second one to pledge to change in-year Admissions and this Report indicates why Ministers should act swiftly to make the necessary changes to the current system.

At the heart of the debate about the middle tier is the role of local authorities and the role of academies and the Trusts that run them. The following two quotes from the report sum up current situation nicely in relation to these important issues for the management of our schooling system:

‘Nevertheless, our research also suggested that there are two ways in which academisation can affect local education systems. First, because there are different processes for making decisions and resolving disputes about place-planning and placements of vulnerable pupils for academies and maintained schools, where an “isolationist” school is an academy, it can be more difficult, complex, and time-consuming to resolve issues. Second, while not generalising, school, trust and LA leaders and parents/carers reported that, among the minority of schools that took an “isolationist” approach, these were more likely to be schools that were part of larger regional or national academy trusts.’

‘Furthermore, there was broad agreement among school, trust and LA leaders and parents/carers that LAs were uniquely placed to play this role [place planning]. (In relation to place-planning, a minority of trust leaders and national stakeholders argued that the RSC should be wholly or partially responsible for delivering place-planning.) Whichever way roles and responsibilities are configured, there was consensus about the need for clarity, alignment of responsibilities and decision-making authority, for reciprocal expectations of schools, trusts and LAs around participating in local partnership-based approaches to place-planning and support for vulnerable pupils, and a renewed, more collaborative relationship between local and central government.’

The situation is summed up by a quote from a local authority officer:

‘Nobody wants to roll back the clock. But if we have MATs not working for the best interests of young people in the community, we don’t have any direct levers. We would have to go through the RSC, and not sure they have many levers. A lot of accountability sits with the LA, but the responsibility of delivery sits with schools. Doesn’t feel appropriate. We need some accountabilities placed on academy trusts and schools to deliver expectations [for vulnerable children].’ (LA officer page 106)

We need a system that works for the children seeking an education, and not primarily for those that provide that schooling. This is especially true for our most vulnerable young people and I hope that Ministers will spend time over easter reading this report and then acting upon its findings. State schooling is a public service and must be managed as such.

33,000 in three months

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How are we to interpret the record number of teacher vacancies logged during the first three months of 2022 by TeachVac?

Subject20202022Percentage +/- (The nearest whole %)
Design & Technology1089164351%
Leadership2278335347%
Business701101845%
Computing828119144%
Primary5059714041%
RE61583536%
Music49864830%
Total259393358029%
Geography816104628%
Creative Arts33442327%
History58974827%
PE72790625%
Languages1397173724%
Science3427395615%
Art49355212%
English2427268110%
Mathematics311533287%
Source www.teachvac.co.uk

There is little point comparing 2022 with 2021, as the covid pandemic resulted in very little activity in the teacher job market during the first three months of 2021.

So, how to explain this year’s surge in vacancies, and what might be the consequences?

Is the surge down to schools catching up vacancies not advertised last year; is it – at least in the secondary sector – down to increased pupil numbers; might private schools be recruiting more pupils from overseas and, hence need more teachers; could TeachVac be better are recording or even over-recording vacancies than in the past? I asked the team to check on the last point, and since most of them have been entering vacancies for several years, and we haven’t changed their way of working, it seems unlikely as a reason for the large increase in vacancies.  

On the other side of the equation, could the increase in recorded vacancies be down to more teachers quitting schools in England, either to take up tutoring; to teach overseas or to either reduce their hours or even retire completely? Since we don’t have exit interviews, we will have to wait for the DfE to match teacher identify numbers for those moving within the state system and retiring with a pension and then conjecture what has happened to the remainder of leavers?

As to the consequences, regular readers of this blog will know what will come next because various posts since the ITT Census appeared in December have already been discussing the nature of the recruitment round for September 2022 and January 2023.

The table earlier in this post shows English and mathematics with relatively low increases. Perhaps schools feel that with the change in Ministerial team last autumn the focus on the EBacc subjects might have reduced. If so, might the White Paper provisions see an increase in vacancies in these subjects after Easter?

The increase in leadership vacancies needs further investigation in order to see which sector, and which of the leadership posts; head, deputy or assistant head are most affected by the increase or whether it is a general increase.

Design and technology, business, and to some extent computing are subjects that the government has under-played in its various attempts to increase interest in teaching as a career. Schools still want teachers in these subjects, and the government must help them fill the vacancies.

With many subjects not even meeting the DfE’s indicative target for the need for teachers on teacher preparation routes in 2022, the remainder of the recruitment round may well be a real challenge for many schools.

There is one other possibility, and that is the notion of schools bringing forward recruitment this year, so the peak will have been in March rather than in late April, as has been the normal practice in past years. If so, April will be a lean month for those that put off job hunting until then, unless schools have been unable to fill some of the 33,000 vacancies, and there is a string of re-advertisements this month and next.

TeachVac has a number of different reports to allow schools, local authorities, recruitment agencies and anyone else interested in trends in the labour market in real-time to track the behaviour of the market in anything for real-time to monthly. Email the staff using enquiries@oxteachserv.com for details.

White flag or shifting the blame

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There is a saying that one should beware of unexpected guests. For reasons obvious to those that know the saying, it is clear why I prefer to compare it with the other saying of ‘not looking a gift horse in the mouth’ – should that be looking an electric car in the battery these days – but without using the actual expression. No matter, what does matter is whether or not local authorities will be able to form and run Multi Academy Trusts/Committees?

Ever since Mr Gove raced the 2010 Academies Act through parliament in the period before the summer break that year, and less than three months after the 2010 General Election, the Conservatives have wanted all schools to become academies. At that time, local authorities were beyond the pale, and a model with no local democratic involvement, similar to that of the NHS, seemed on the cards for education. Peter Downes a former Cambridgeshire Lib Dem councillor and long time secondary head led the Lib Dem charge at their 2010 September Conference, an event where delegates made their support for local democratic involvement in education very clear to Nick Clegg and David Laws.

Over the ensuing decade, most secondary schools have either opted or been forced to become an academy. All new schools are required to become an academy. However, except in a few parts of the country, academisation of the primary sector schools has been slow and patchy. Many primary schools only became academies are a visit from ofsted resulted in compulsory academisation.

The picture that has emerged around the county is of an expensive mess that could make the reputation of a Secretary of State if change is handled properly with a view to the longer-term effectiveness of the school sector.

There are now noises in the press suggesting that the next White Paper from the DfE might allow local authorities to establish and run Multi Academy Trusts or Committees or some new structure such as a Multi Academy Board might be created. Such a suggestion would effectively be a change of direction on the part of central government. Is it either a white flag or preparing the ground to shift the blame for a period of challenge that will face the primary sector where most maintained schools are still to be found?

There is a third possibility. This is that civil servants have been so impressed by how some local authorities have handled the covid crisis that they now recognise their value as part of the middle tier, especially in handling the large number of small primary schools spread across rural England. Certainly, the work by the local authority team in Oxfordshire, where I am a county councillor, has resulted in an email from a headteacher of a private school expressing thanks for the work of local authority staff. Not something you receive every day.

Allowing or even forcing local authorities to take all schools not already academies into a LAB or Local Academy Board would allow the government to tell the public that all schools were now academies. It would allow local authorities to feel that they might be back in the game of education politics and it would allow for more coherent planning for the primary sector less hampered by the legislation on closing rural schools. This may be important should the National Funding Formula create the need to rationalise the school estate.

Pupil Teacher Ratios (PTRs): An update

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The publication last week by the DfE of the school census discussed in the previous post on this blog means that a time series analysis of changes in PTRs can be undertaken using the DfE’s new ‘construct your own table’ tool.

PTRs are useful as a guide because they can provide evidence of changes in the trends of school funding, especially when most of that funding comes from pupil numbers. The measure is not perfect. Older teachers cost more than younger one, so schools where staff stay put after being employed at NQTs cost schools more each year until they reach the top of their scale. This extra cost isn’t recognised in the funding formula.

When schools are gaining pupils, you might expect PTRs to improve, and when rolls start falling then PTRs might worsen, although there is likely to be a time lag to that effect as schools come to terms with lower numbers of pupils going forward. After all, no school likes to make staff redundant.

Incidentally, the fall in the birth rate and the exodus of overseas citizens will mean some tough decisions on ITT numbers may need to be made, possibly as early as this autumn for 2022 entry.

An analysis of changes in PTRs between 2016/17 and 2020/21 for the secondary sector shows only seven authorities, including the Isles of Scilly, where PTRs improved. In 13 local authorities the secondary PTR for schools across the Authority worsened by at least two pupils per teacher, with Slough unitary authority and the City of Nottingham having the largest changes in PTRS for the worse in the secondary sector. Most local authorities witnessed overall secondary PTRS deteriorate by between one and two teachers per pupil during this five year period. Historically that is quite a significant level of change for so many authorities. Now, some of that deterioration might have been due to keeping option groups going in the sixth form as pupil numbers in that age-group continued to fall but some could well be down to funding pressures across the sector.

In the primary sector, the position is more complex. Schools tend to be smaller and areas with new housing may be gaining pupils, even as other areas are being affected by the fall in the birth rate. Changes in PTRS have generally been in the range of plus one to minus one across most authorities, although during the five year period there are some outliers, notably, the City of Derby, where it is possible that the 2016/17 data point in the DfE database is a mistake. Such mistakes do happen from time to time.

It may also be a coincidence that both North Yorkshire and York unitary authority have recorded significant improvements during the five year period. A number of London boroughs south of the Thames also appear to have done relatively well during this five year period.

The longer that the National Funding Formula is in existence, it will be interesting to see what, if any effect it has on PTRs across the different authorities. Of course, if boundaries continue to be redrawn it will be impossible to tell. Happily, Outer London boroughs have had the same boundaries for more than half a century now.

Fire Chiefs support school sprinkler system for new schools

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Those readers that have been following this blog for some years will know that one of the few matters that The Daily Mail and I both agree upon is the need to fit sprinkler systems in new schools.

On the 15th April 2019 this blog carried a post headed ‘Install Sprinkler Systems’. This followed a call to ensure all new schools had sprinkler system built into them during construction.

Zurich Insurance, a major insurer for local government risks has now come out in support of this suggestion in a new report. A review of their view can be found in this link to pbctoday https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/health-safety-news/fire-risk-in-schools/81974/

I fully support the recommendation that all schools should be built with sprinkler systems for the reasons cited in my blog post of April 2019.

Zurich found that the average school posed a fire risk 1.7 times greater than non-residential buildings. When compared to 2.9 million non-household properties, school buildings were also three times more likely to fall into the ‘high’ fire risk category (58% vs 20%).

Now the National Fire Chiefs Council has added their voice to those calling for the compulsory fitting of sprinklers in schools.

Over the last five years, 1,100 classrooms have been gutted by fire, with 47 schools destroyed among a total of 2,300 fire incidents – while just 2% of buildings were fitted with sprinklers. The National Fire Chiefs Council is calling for sprinklers to be mandatory in all new schools, in line with Scotland and Wales.

This is a powerful new ally in the campaign to fit sprinklers.

Those concerned about climate change might also add that an unnecessary fire in a school, as in any building, releases gases from the burring materials into the atmosphere that could be prevented by having installed sprinklers.

The removal of the requirement for sprinklers in new schools was a short-sighted measure that ought to have been changed already. Better some water damage than the destruction of a whole school and the disruption to the education of many children.

Schooling also needs a shake up

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The news, in a leaked document, stating that the government is considering the way that the NHS operates, prompts me to remind readers that I have long felt that the arrangements devised under Labour for schools that were enthusiastically espoused by Michael Gove in 2010, in terms of how schooling is arranged, also need urgent review.

Some, including myself, have always maintained the importance of ‘place’ in our education system, and especially the school system. A sense of location is often weakest in relation to higher education and the university sector. However, even there, a place name, such as Oxford, has always worked well, grounding a university in a particular location. For schools, the link to a locality is generally much stronger than for higher education, and parents normally want their children to attend a good local school.

The academy programme dealt a severe blow to the locality based school system that was already under threat as local government fell out of favour at Westminster and institution level decision-making became the favoured approach. The 1988 Education Reform Act, with the move to local financial management and placing power in the hands of head teachers and governors, wrecked any chance of creating a locally managed system across England.

The arrival of multi-academy trusts in 2010, sometimes with headquarters many miles away for the location of the school for which it had responsibility failed to build upon the experience of the diocesan school model, where large diocese, especially in the Roman Catholic Church, often had responsibility for schools in several different local authority areas. Sometimes this worked well, but not always.

Crippling the funding for local authorities wrecked features such as staff development across a local area and the ability to talent spot future leaders, especially middle leaders, where most teachers don’t want to move house for promotion. It may be no coincidence that wastage rates for teachers of five to seven years of experience have increased as local frameworks for teacher support have been eroded.

You only have to read the recent post on this blog about Jacob’s Law, to see the important role local authorities play in the admission and management of pupils across a local area. To allow individual schools to frustrate the ability to find a place for a pupil is poor government, as anyone reading that Serious Case Review can easily understand.

The recent problems with the supply of laptops and internet access to those without, would have been better handled locally, with strategic support from government. Managing it from Westminster showed how this central model for operation rather than strategy just didn’t really work.

One question remains, should schooling, like the NHS, be largely run by professionals, with little local democratic involvement or should schooling have a strong local democratic element in the way it operates, in view of both the number of families involved and its role in the local economy. I have made my view known on this blog over the past eight years.

When I started in education, two phrases were in regular use: ‘a local service nationally administered’ or a ‘partnership’. Is it now time to work out what type of school system we want for the rest of the twenty first century?

Time for Jacob’s Law

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The naming of a young person in Serious Case Review Report is rare. But this week the Report into the death of Jacob in Oxfordshire contained his name. The family gave permission, and hope it will ensure the report is more widely read and acted upon. If so, it is a brave decision, and one that I applaud.

You can read the Report at https://www.oscb.org.uk/oscb-publishes-a-child-safeguarding-practice-review-concerning-jacob/ Full report link at bottom of the press notice

Three agencies, the Police, Children’s Social Services and Education have learning points to take from the Review. In this blog, I will concentrate on the education aspects, as they contain a message heard before on this blog.

Jacob was born in Oxfordshire, later moved to Northumbria, where I suspect he was educated in a First School, and then a Middle School, before being moved in Year 6 to an ‘alternative education provision’ – presumably a PRU?

In July 2017, note the date, the family returned to Oxfordshire. The Report concludes that:

5.1 He was not on roll at any education provision and was a child missing education for 22 months

Jacob’s mandatory need for education was not provided by Oxfordshire County Council when he lived at home and when he was in the care of the local authority both in and when out of county for 5 months. Four educational settings were asked to take Jacob on roll, however largely due to his perceived behaviours and risks to other students he remained off roll for almost 2 years. Jacob’s family were offered the right of appeal when places were refused. His situation was considered by education panels such as the In Year Fair Access Panel and Children Missing Education to little effect and his needs were overseen and monitored by various professionals, including the Virtual School and the Independent Reviewing Officer Service whilst in local authority care. There were no formal dispute resolutions raised14 by Children’s Social Care and his situation was not escalated to the Education Skills and Funding Agency (ESFA) as it should have been.

Had this been an isolated case then this would be understandable, but a month before Jacob arrived back in Oxfordshire I had had an exchange in public with the Cabinet Member for Education at the June 2017 Cabinet meeting of the County Council. Not all questions are for political gain, and this was one where I genuinely thought that there was an issue to be addressed. The question asked:

Oxfordshire county council CABINET – 20 JUNE 2017 ITEM 4 – QUESTIONS FROM COUNTY COUNCILLORS

Question from Councillor Howson to Councillors Harrod and Hibbert-Biles “How many children taken into care over the past three school years and placed ‘out county’ have had to wait for more than two weeks to be taken onto the roll of a school in the area where they have been moved to and what is the longest period of time a child has waited for a place at a school in the area where they have been re-located to during this period?” 

As you will see, I asked both the Education Cabinet Member and Cllr Harrod for Children’s Social Services and received this answer:

Answer Over the past three years it has been exceptional for a Looked After Child to be taken onto the roll of an out of county school in under two weeks. Indeed, of the nine cases of primary age pupils we’ve looked at, the quickest a pupil was placed was 12 days (there were two) and the slowest was 77 days. For the 22 secondary age pupils the picture is even worse, with 3 weeks the quickest placement and a couple taking fully 6 months to get some of our most vulnerable young people into a stable school setting.

The main reason for this completely unacceptable state of affairs is that the Council has no power to direct an academy to admit a Looked After Child. The only way we can force an academy’s hand is to get a direction from the Educations & Skills Funding Agency and this, as you can see from the foregoing times, can be a very long winded bureaucratic process.

The fact that it takes so long for academies to admit our Looked After Children shows how doggedly our officers pursue the matter; I suspect that many other local authorities simply give up when they meet an intransigent academy that doesn’t want to take responsibility for educating their vulnerable young people.

The minutes of the meeting note my supplementary question and the response as:

Supplementary: In response to an invitation from Councillor Howson for the Cabinet Member to work with Councillor Howson and the labour opposition to see what could be done Councillor Hibbert-Biles recognised that it was a national situation, and she would be asking for a meeting with local MPs and relevant minister.

How distressing to read the national recommendation in the Serious Case Review that:

Recommendation 2: This Review asks the Department for Education to acknowledge the education key learning and findings from Jacob’s Review and provide feedback as to the effectiveness of the Education and Skills Funding Agency process in resolving issues in a timely manner. The Review asks the Department of Education to provide statute and guidance to local areas and their communities on how to manage the Governance arrangements with academy run schools and local education departments who currently cannot be mandated to accept children on roll.

And in the local recommendations that:

Action Plan 2: The Education System

The key learning set out below is fully addressed in this action plan for children in the education system in Oxfordshire, overseen by the Chair of the OSCB Safeguarding in Education Sub-Group Key Learning:

An education system that ensures:

1. The paramount importance of the role of schools in keeping children safe

2. An education package is put in place in a timely manner for those children who may show challenging behaviours

3. Those children missing education are known and action is swift

This Action Plan should pay particular attention to ensuring: – Restorative work to resolve the fragmented arrangements between academy schools, alternative provisions and the local authority to ensure collective ownership – Policy and procedures to track when children are not on roll – The function of Education Panels in Oxfordshire (In Year Fair Access and Children Missing Education) – The local application of the Education Skills Funding Agency intervention – Education packages for children who may be at risk of exploitation and also present a risk to others.

For those that read the whole Report, there is further evidence on page 31 and footnote 56 of other issues about school admissions around the same time.

Here’s what I wrote on this blog on the 23rd June 2017:

In my post on 11th June, after the outcome of the general election was known, I suggested some issues that could still be addressed by a government without an overall majority. First among these was the issue of school places for young people taken into care and placed outside of the local authority. They have no guarantee of access to a new school within any given time frame at present. It seemed to me daft that a parent could be fined for taking a child out of school for two weeks to go on holiday but a local authority could wait six months for a school place to be provided for a young person taken into care.

The Cabinet Question reproduced above then appears followed by:

I found the answer deeply depressing. However, the good news is that MPs from the three political parties representing Oxfordshire constituencies have agreed to work together to take the matter forward. Thank you to MPs, Victoria Prentice, Layla Moran and Anneliese Dodds, for agreeing to seek action to remedy this state of affairs.

If readers have data about the issue elsewhere in England, I would be delighted to hear from you, so pressure can be put on officials nationally to ensure a rapid change in the rules.

I had forgotten that unique letter signed by every Oxfordshire MP after I had made my suggestion.

Nothing happened. Jacob died. We cannot wait any longer.

The DfE must act now to ensure all children have a school place within a specified time frame, whether they move to a new area or are excluded by a school. There must be a register of unplaced children of school age that is regularly reviewed by a senior officer and a politician in each local authority, and Ofsted should update the Secretary of State each year about the national picture.

It is time for a Jacob’s Law. His death will not then have been for nothing.

Read more on this BBC Report into the case https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-55841644

Enough potential school leaders?

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When I wrote a blog recently about the significant level of head teacher vacancies recorded by both TeachVac and the DfE vacancy site during August, I promised to look into the possible size of the pool of school leaders able to step up to fill headships in the primary sector. (Feeling the Strain 31st August 2020)

The new arrangement for viewing the DfE Statistics of the School Workforce in November 2019 made this more of a challenge than in the past. Indeed, I have still not fathomed whether it is possible to add in age groupings as a variable in the composite table searchers are allowed to create from the data? This is an important variable in answering the question about leadership pool of talent since deputy and assistant heads in some age groups may be expected to be lacking in experience in post sufficient to consider promotion to a headship.

Even better would be details about age and length of service in post, something provided way back in the 1990s, but not seemingly available now without a specific data request. Perhaps the teacher associations might like to consider this issue in their next evidence to the Pay Review Body the STRB).

Historically, most head teachers are appointed from the ranks of deputy head teachers, although, as some small primary schools don’t have a deputy, a number of assistant heads or even teachers with a TRL have been appointed to headships in the past. More recently, deputy heads in secondary schools have been moved across to primary schools in the same Academy Trust in order to fill vacancies for primary head teacher posts.

Looking at the data for the last four years from the School Workforce Census, the number of full-time deputy heads in the primary sector has declined from 11,563 in 2017/18, to 10,729 in 2019/20. The number of part-time deputy heads during the same period has, however, increased from 1,062 to 1,236. Nevertheless, the size of the pool has not grown. This is despite the number of schools remaining almost constant during the same period, the total altering only from 17,191 to 17,178.

Assuming some 2,000 primary head teacher vacancies each year, with 25% being taken by existing head teacher changing schools, this would create a demand for 1,500 first time head teachers each year. Assuming ten per cent of the 12,000 deputy heads are too new in post to consider promotion and a further 10% are too old to be still interested in headship, the remaining 10,000 or so leaves a generous margin of possible applicants.

However, other considerations then come into play; type of school – infant, junior or primary; organisation – maintained or academy; religious affiliation or none – Church of England, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Jewish, Greek Orthodox; Sikh, Muslim; size of school – one form entry to four form entry or larger?

All these variables can affect the size of the possible pool of interested applicants. A further wrinkle is the time of year a vacancy is advertised. Historically, 50% of vacancies appear in the January to March period and are the easiest to fill as that is when the majority of applicants are job hunting. TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk has detailed information on how schools advertising for a head teacher fare, and how many have to re-advertise. Each year, a report is published in January.

We shall be watching the current trends with interest.

Happy Birthday

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Today is the 150th birthday of the 1870 Education Act. This was the Act of Parliament that established State Schools in England for the first time. There had been funding for schools before this date, but 1870 marked the start of a State education system.

However, there was no requirement in the Act to send children to school, and there still isn’t. Parents must educate their offspring, but it is up to them how to do it. If they make no provision, then the state school system is the default catch-all option: parents cannot simply ignore the issue of education once a child reaches statutory school age.

It is perhaps symbolic that the Prime Minister has chosen today, probalby unknowingly, .to talk of the new term and a ‘moral duty’ to get all children back to school.

As I said in an earlier post, I worry not for the children, but for those they come into contact with both at home and at school. High risk teachers should be deployed working with high risk and self-isolating children that cannot attend school by using the developing technology to offer appropriate learning strategies available to all.

Much also needs to be achieved with those that have fallen behind over the past five months so that they can catch-up without just facing a diet of just English and mathematics.

Cash strapped local authorities need to consider retaining uniform grants for those pupils attending schools requiring special clothes whose parents are unable to afford the cost of this specialist clothing. Schools should also make uniform optional, and not mandatory, in the present climate, and certainly not use it as a means of discrimination against certain pupils.

The government must also not forget further education and apprenticeships. Those with long memories will recall the TVEI scheme of the 1980s. Perhaps it is time to create a 20th century version, so that no young person leaves education without some offer of continued education or employment.

Local authorities should investigate how much cash they have taken from maintained primary schools through the Apprenticeship Levy that is currently sitting in bank accounts and set up task forces to ensure it can reduce youth unemployment locally. There is no point in giving the cash back to government. The same is true for the MATs.

MATs, diocese and local authorities should also review the level of school balances. Now is the time to spend them and not to leave them in the bank doing nothing. It is just a rainy day, but a monsoon of unimaginable proportions. If head teacher need convincing, then offer suggestions for how the cash can be spent.

Finally, I have suggested before that the class of 2020 that graduated as teachers all be offered work in view of the steep decline in vacancies that has led to many not being employed for September.

Let us celebrate this special day in the history of education in England by working to provide the children of today with the best possible education in these unprecedented times.