Tag Archives: news

Dear Secretary of State – updated

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Two years ago, after the general election, I posted this open letter to the new Secretary of State. With the possibility of a cabinet reshuffle following the arrival of a new Prime Minister, I though it was worth taking a second look at my thoughts of two years ago, and what has changed.

Posted on July 6, 2024

At this important time in our history, I thought that I would post my views for the new Secretary of State for Education

An Open Letter to the Secretary of State for Education

Dear Secretary of State,

You have a tough job ahead of you. Firstly, you need to clear up problems resulting from the campaign promise of 6,000 extra teachers. Those of us in the know, are aware that this September, as for the past few years, all the training places for new secondary school teachers are not being filled. Those gaps need to be filled before you can start on adding 6,000 new teachers to the total.

We don’t have 6,000 more teachers, and training targets have been cut in many subjects, so reaching what you and I might have thought of as 6,000 extra teachers seems unlikely, and the pledge will be subject to a sleight of hand to show it has been achieved.

Don’t think of an easy way out, such as upgrading some teaching assistants to teachers, because it is teachers for the secondary schools that we need, not more teachers for primary schools.

And then, there is the state of our school buildings. Even before the concrete crisis, many of our primary schools were time expired, and many are more than 150 years old. There needs to be a programme of replacement and, for those that will remain, a programme to help make them carbon neutral or even sources of renewable energy. After all, school playgrounds are not being used for their key purpose for 95% of the year. How can we make them earn their keep for the rest of the year, by being sources of renewable power?

Some progress on buildings, but not much, and no real policy advocacy around renewables.

Don’t get me started on funding for 16-19 year olds. That’s a battle with the Treasury you must win. At the same time, you could increase the upper age for free transport for young people in rural areas from 16 up to the de facto if not de jure leaving age of 18 from where it now stops at 16. Start by offering it this September to those staying in the same school. This is a levelling up programme for rural areas.

Rural transport, and indeed, 16-18 transport has been ignored. This is despite the fact it may contribute to NEET numbers in rural areas. I have suggested reviewing motor insurance tax for 16-18s where there is no public transport to school or college, and extending free transport to 18 for those that receive it up to age 16. No sign government understands this issue.

AI and technology are important to our country’s future, and we need to work out how they impact on our education system. Are we training new and existing teachers in a curriculum and teaching style for the future, not the past? Do we need a research body for teaching and learning in schools?

Much more to be done here; especially in training new teachers. New teachers entering preparation courses this September at age 22, might not retire until 2063. In the past 40 years we have seen, the microprocessor revolution; the internet and social media sensation, and now AI. How have we responded to this revolution, every bit as significant as the arrival of printing more than 500 years ago: we have banned mobile phones from schools.

I am sure you will have much to say about early years, and perhaps you could reverse the name change Mr Gove announced when he had your job in 2010.  Bring back the Department for Children Education and Families.

Hopefully, early years will be a success story, but outcomes need monitoring especially for those children that fall behind when they reach school. Do you favour schools having an on-site nursery? What about a qualified workforce?

There are other issues, such as higher education, private schools and the consequences of VAT on fees, and the relationship between local authorities and the academies sector, not least for children in care that you will have to deal with, but solving the teacher supply crisis is the number one priority.

Well, we have VAT on school fees and it has shaken the tree for some of the weaker schools that were also suffering from falling rolls. However, there are still not enough teachers for state schools, and private schools can attract teachers where there are shortages leaving more challenging schools with less well qualified staff. What’s the policy to deal with this problem?

The dual regime of democratically controlled local authorities nominally responsible for maintained schools and the academy sector responsible to Whitehall and with no local democratic accountability is a blot on your copybook. Following the Blair/Brow government’s line on ducking the issue of selective schools for some and comprehensive schools for others is a waste of a big majority, especially as most Labour MPs represent areas with comprehensive schools.

You could take a leaf out of David Blunkett’s approach in 1997, and pay the fees of all trainee teachers studying as postgraduates to enter the profession. Paying them all a training salary, as his successor introduced, and the coalition removed, would be another step forward. This year, it should be possible to pay the bills from the unfilled training places where the money has already been allocated by H M Treasury plus the VAT receipts from private school fees.

Training to be a teacher is still expensive in debt terms for many. Working abroad after qualification can bring higher income, and no fee repayments while abroad.

If the government is serious about education, then now is the time for action. Good luck in your first 100 days in the job.

However, will you still be in post after the arrival of the new Prime Minister? Of will we have to start all over again?

Don’t let this government kill off music in state schools.

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Regular readers will know that I have been championing the need for more teachers of music in our schools, and the government’s actions in first, cutting the bursary for these trainee teachers, and then halving the target number of trainees that they will fund. Now comes news of yet another year of funds not uprated for inflation that will mean cuts to services. Even more ominously there is talk by civil servants of the need to prepare and ‘exit strategy’.

Last evening, I attended a wonderful performance of pupils from both local state secondary and primary schools across Oxfordshire joining with the world-class Gabrieli Consort & Players to perform Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in the Silk Hall at Radley College. This is a great example of making elite-level musical experiences genuinely accessible to all children, including those from more disadvantaged backgrounds.


As we know, singing together fosters a profound sense of belonging.
However, as one of the key players behind arranging the event has noted ‘we cannot ignore the stark reality behind the scenes, core revenue funding for music services across local authorities has faced severe real-terms cuts. Children in under-served areas will be the first to lose out and music will once again become an exclusive luxury for the privileged few.’ I absolutely agree.

Programs like Gabrieli Roar from the Gabrieli Trust that facilitated the Radley performance, show us what is possible. About Gabrieli Roar – Gabrieli Consort & Players

Let’s celebrate the exceptional performance witnessed at Radley last night, plus the event tonight in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre with a different group of young musicians, but let’s also keep fighting for sustained, robust core funding for music education in our schools and with our young people.

Cuts to the ITT bursary for trainee teachers, cuts to teacher training numbers, this despite a shortage of teachers of music teachers in state schools, and the recent grant announcement that once again music funding from government hasn’t increased to cover inflation, all show a government across both DCMS and the DfE that isn’t successfully challenging the Treasury to support music in schools.

The government has an aim to channel cash into after school activities, doing so through music service is a quick win, as the infrastructure for delivery already exists, and there is no battle over a teacher’s 1,265 hours contract.

If you have any influence with policy-makers, please ask them to review and increase funding for music services, with a focus on helping engage disadvantaged groups in society to benefit from music of all genres, through both engaging as players and listeners.

I grew up in Tottenham, where school music thrived in the 1950s, and still does through Haringey’s Music Service. Let’s ensure music can still be for all in the future, and not just for those able to pay to unlock the enjoyment of both singing and playing an instrument.

Exporting education: still a success story

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The DfE has published the latest annual report in the success of education as a contributor to the nation’s wealth through exporting educational goods and services. This includes both selling and providing services , and the provision of services within the United Kingdom. Of the latter, UK Higher Education is the major earner.

I have written about trends from previous reports, but not for some time.  Making money from Education | John Howson In 2021 the DfE changed the methodology for collecting the data. This year, in the report figures for 2021 and onwards are presented using the new methodology only. Release home – UK revenue from education related exports and transnational education activity – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

The latest data are for the year 2024. The report notes that

‘total UK education related exports and TNE activity was estimated to be £36.7 billion in 2024, an increase of £7.2 billion in nominal terms since 2021. Over the same period, in nominal terms, education related exports have increased by £5.8 billion while TNE activity has increased by £1.4 billion.’

This is a good news story, although not all sectors have performed as well as in the past. Both further education and English Language training recorded improvements over the previous year, although further education fee income was down on the previous year, and both sectors had much higher earnings a decade ago, before covid.

As the report notes: ‘Higher education exports grew by £0.1 billion (0.5%) from £26.4 billion to £26.6 billion between 2023 and 2024. The low growth rate in HE exports can partly be attributed to the reduction in international HE student enrolments since 2022/23.’

This low growth rate must be a worry for the future as this has traditionally been such a key source of income from both fees and living costs.

 Between 2023 and 2024, schools’ exports grew by £0.1 billion (7.4%). This is good news for the economy, but a concern for state-funded schools if it diverts scarce teaching resources in subjects such as physics and mathematics away from upskilling pupils in state-funded schools to educate elites elsewhere in the world or in UK boarding schools.

Elsewhere, equipment sales grew from £0.20 Bn in 2021 to £0.37bn in 2024. During the same period, publishing income rose from £2.31bn to £3.15bn, and earnings from qualification awarding bodies, from £0.36bn to £0.51bn.

No doubt there is room for further growth along the lines of the export strategy Exports good, but the poor won’t be able to afford them | John Howson However, as I pointed out in my earlier post, there is also the contribution to development aid to consider alongside the income from exporting education goods and services. Sadly, as a nation we seem less interested in development aid these days.

What of the future? How will AI affect export opportunities, and will the nation’s attitude to those who are not natives cause a reduction in the significant higher education income if overseas students decide to go elsewhere to study. If that happens, will universities take their product overseas, or just retrench? How will our relationship with Europe affect education exports in the future, especially if there is a growth in Erasmus type programmes?

Finally, we do need to do more to help aspiring entrepreneurs starting out selling goods and services in the education field.

How about a university course for those wanting to start out in this field?

Oxfordshire and the defence dilemma

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Defence* and education are both important public services in Oxfordshire. The county plays home to Brize Norton – the largest RAF base in Britain; RAF Benson; Dalton and Vauxhall Barracks, plus MOD Bicester, and for good measure a University OTC plus cadet forces that also include naval elements.

There is also Shrivenham, the national Defence Academy, plus elements of the reserve forces. So, a real presence from our armed forces, even if not as significant as in West Surrey, Hampshire and Wiltshire.

Apart from its schools and colleges, both state -funded and private, the county hosts two universities and lots of enterprises selling into the education market, including a thriving publishing sector.

As a result, of the county’s engagement with both sectors, today’s announcement of shortfall in defence funding may well have implications for the education sector across the county if the gap in funding defence spending is to be closed by raiding the budgets of other government departments.

The government already has a win with falling pupil numbers. This decline will release funding from education if the remaining pupils and students remain funded only at their present levels, even if inflation is taken into account.

However, there will be other implications for the education sector if the defence funding gap is to be closed, and possibly even more funding to be found for that sector, the announcement of new rules for CEOs pay in academy trusts Government plans NHS-style rules for academy CEO pay will be a shot across the bows of many MATs. I have written about this issue several times on this blog. See The pay of senior staff in academies | John Howson as an example.

I would go further and ask why there are so many MATs, each with a CEO. In Oxfordshire, the 2025 accounts for MATs operating schools in the county revealed a salary bill for the highest paid -excluding large national MATs with outrageous salary bills – of some £3.9mn for the highest paid employee of each Trust. Cut the number of trusts to say, 5, the equivalent of the former 5 divisional directors under local authority management of schools, and perhaps more than £1mn might be saved. Multiply that across England and the saving mounts up.

Then there is small sixth forms. I wrote about this issue earlier this year in a post Are small sixth forms a good idea? | John Howson This is a hard area to tackle, but with falling rolls is the current arrangements in a county such as Oxfordshire best for both the country’s finances and the outcomes for students, especially if we need more cash for our defence?

If sixth forms eat up cash, what about small schools? I favour keeping schools, and especially primary schools, in their communities. Oxfordshire has been excellent at supporting village schools, but could rationalisation save money or would the additional transport costs outweigh the savings?

However, the big transfer of cash from education to defence would be due to decisions on the pay of those working in the education sector and the funding of the sector as a whole that are taken at the national level.

Will funding return measures, such as Pupil Teacher Ratios, return to levels last seen 50 years ago when spending on defence was a higher proportion of GDP than today. What that might mean across England was laid out in my review of PTRS. (PDF) PTRS OVER TIME: A REVIEW OF PUPIL TEACHER RATIOS BETWEEN 1974 AND 2024 AND TWO PERIODS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT RE-ORGANISATION PTRS OVER TIME: A REVIEW OF PUPIL TEACHER RATIOS

It is difficult to see anything other than challenging times ahead for education in Oxfordshire if the government is serious about more funding for defence.

 Of course, the government could just put up taxes.

*Defense for those with a Ministry of War

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.

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.   

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.

Can we make savings in our school system?

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We all know that government finances are tight, and with both defence and the NHS on the lookout for more cash to spend, the Labour government has a challenging time ahead if it doesn’t want to raise taxes. Welfare reform is a big issue, but the increase in the number of pensioners, and especially older pensioners, together with an increasing number of young NEETs provides a real challenge for any government when allocating priorities for the taxes it can raise.

Before looking at three possible areas for savings in the school system, here is a suggestion for attacking the NEET problem. Every school should offer one apprenticeship for every 25 pupils. Smaller schools should be encouraged, but not required to take on at last one apprentice.

This scheme might create perhaps 20,000 new jobs that offered real work to those currently unemployed. I would have paid for the scheme both by unused Apprenticeship Ley cash returned to the Treasury, and by using the dormant assets funds for this much more defined scheme than for the recently announced ‘Every Child Can’ programme that seems a good intention but won’t necessarily reduce the number of NEETs.

Now for my ideas about efficiency savings. There are three areas where I think a national strategy could reap dividends:

Small Sixth Forms

Small Schools

MATs numbers and costs

Earlier this year, I wrote a post on this blog about small sixth forms, and their results. This was based upon an analysis of ‘A’ Level results for one year in one local authority area, where all secondary schools are academies. Are small sixth forms a good idea? | John Howson

Wit the prospect of a period of falling rolls, a national strategy for post-16 education might be unpopular with schools and teachers, but might pay dividends in reducing expenditure in this sector.

Falling school rolls also offers the opportunity to take another look at small schools.  I know that overheads have been brought down by creating executive heads for several schools, and allowing primary schools to open nursery classes, but could a strategic look at the school estate provide significant savings? Of course, such an approach would bring the government into direct conflict with both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.

The third saving would be achieved by doing away with the dual system of local authority and academy schools, and returning to a single system of governance for schooling. I would prefer a school system with local democracy at its heart, but even an NHS style MAT managed system ought to capable of saving lots of cash compared with the present shambles.

I looked up a series of MAT accounts for 2024-25 in one authority area and estimated spending of nearly £28 million on a range of services.

000s of £sSpend
2158LEGAL
446ACCOUNTANCY
64PROF FEES
1569INSURANCE
1021GOVERNANCE
2211RAISING FUNDS
5196OTHER SUPPORT COSTS
14241OTHER COSTS
932EDUCATION CONSULTANCY

As the DfE already has the data, they will know how much could be saved just on governance if there were no more than five MATs in each local authority, and legal and accountancy services were purchased from the public sector. Completely rationalising the governance of the school sector should save a nit insignificant amount of cash.

Sadly, I think there is little chance of any significant savings under the present government.

No, No, No, please do not impose a GCSE test on university applicants

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There was a discussion this morning on the BBC radio Today programme about a suggestion from Whitehall that everyone claiming a student loan should have a pass in English at GCSE. By English, I assume they mean English Language. I am vehemently opposed to such an idea. Let me explain why.

In the 1960s, when I was in the third year of my sixth form career, with ‘A’ Level grades of BBC in History, Geography and Economics, and a merit in what was then the special Paper, I still didn’t have a pass in English. (After six attempts, I finally succeeded in the following January examination).

Looking to universities where I could apply to study, some of whom had only recently dropped Latin as a compulsory requirement for many subjects, I struggled to find six courses that I could apply for without a pass in English Language.

In the end, LSE, a university with large number of mature students with non-standard entry requirements, Leicester, and a couple of then new universities were my only options. Eventually, I joined my twin brother to study at LSE, following in our father’s footstep, although he studied as a part-time mature student, and I was a full-time day student with both a grant and a scholarship.

So, I oppose any move to ration university places by such an arbitrary measure as a pass in GCSE English, just as I oppose the idea of a sudden death all or nothing Baccalaureate – even the IB, with its many good points.

However, I don’t just rest my opposition on the basis of my personal testimony.  As previous posts on this blog have demonstrated, the education offered to pupils that put their trust in the State to educate them varies significantly from place to place, and over time.

After a period of teacher shortages, lasting more than a decade, the nation may now be moving towards a period when becoming a teacher becomes more difficult and everyone can be taught by teachers qualified in their subject.

But, should those teaching music, art, parts of design, and other subjects be restricted by a requirement to be proficient in English before taking a degree course?

Well, of course, they already are if they want to be a teacher, as ITT has minimum standards. When undergraduate teaching degrees were still commonplace, universities used to set approved tests for those without the paper qualifications in English. I guess such local tests would be a way around any new requirement. However, if the government mandated that access to student loans required either a pass in English or any other such approach, individual institutions might find circumventing the new rule more of a challenge.

The figure of 33,000 students without a pass in English was mentioned in the radio piece. However, we weren’t told what subjects they were studying. There may well be a debate about the numbers going to university, but as a society I would hope that we had moved beyond such an arbitrary rule: then I look at requirements for entry into school sixth forms, and know that today, I would not even have made it to ‘A’ Level, and those grades I acquired, in far too many schools.

We may need more cash for defence, but not at the expense of the education of late developers, those brought up in the wrong geographical area, and those facing the many other barriers already in place for our young people considering higher education and a degree.

Is Labour wrecking London’s Schools?

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This blog has revealed in a previous post how in many London borough the fall in pupil numbers in the primary sector has resulted in a worsening of the pupil teacher ratios (PTRs) in many boroughs. Worsening PTRs will most likely mean larger classes or greater use of unqualified staff to ‘teach’ children. Falling rolls in London: much worse than the rest of England | John Howson

A closer examination of the data reveals that the boroughs with greater issues of deprivation seem more seriously affected by the worsening PTRs. However, boroughs are frequently not homogenous in nature. Haringey has affluent Highgate in the same borough as Bruce Grove and Wood Green.

As a result, it is worth looking at the data from the lens of a smaller unit such as the parliamentary constituencies, although it has to be acknowledged that many of those are also not homogenous:  Edmonton & Winchmore Hill and Southgate and Wood Green both spring to mind as two constituencies with very different localities within them. However, constituencies are better than boroughs and larger than council wards – too small for this exercise.

The following chart plots the index of multiple deprivation score for each current London parliamentary constituency against the index of education, skills and training deprivation taken from the work undertaken by the House of Commons library  Deprivation in English constituencies, 2025 – House of Commons Library

The red dots on the plot are constituencies where the PTR in the constituency, as measured by the DfE, has worsened between 2022/23 and 2025/26. The green dots show constituencies where the PTRs has improved, and the yellow dots are where the PTR was the same in the most recent year as it was in 2022/23.

As expected, there is a strong correlation between constituencies with a high score for multiple deprivation and their score on the education, skills and training deprivation index. However, many constituencies with high deprivation scores have also seen their PTRs worsen – red dots on the chart.

Of course, London primary PTRS are still some of the most favourable in the country, but just not as good as they were a few years ago. The question therefore arises as to whether worsening PTRs will lead to a deterioration in outcomes from the levels achieved in the quarter century since the introduction of the London Challenge and all that went with it.

It is also worth noting that the data was based upon the ratio of qualified teachers to pupils. Many London schools have unqualified teachers, employed through programmes such as Teach First and the apprenticeship scheme. However, both schemes are more common in the secondary sector than in primary schools.

The following table lists the changes in primary PTR by constituency and adds my view of whether each constituency is an:

Inner-City        IC

Inner Suburb  IS

Outer suburb OS

Constituency. This is a subjective judgement on my part, but it does reveal that from the list that Holborn & St Pancreas appears to be the only inner-city constituency with an improved PTR over the period. Why that should be is an interesting question that cannot be answered from the data alone.