No High Needs Block data in NFF announcement

Posted on November 20, 2025 by John Howson

Yesterday, the DfE announced the National Funding Formula (NFF) for 2026/27 The national funding formula for schools The formula covers schools and local authority delivered central services

Unlike last year, there is no section on the High Needs Block that deals with SEND funding. The details will be announced later, at some unspecified time. One other small change seems to be in the calculation of the sparsity index, where the footnote from the 2025/26 NFF document seems to be missing from the main document this year.

Last year, there as a footnote that stated in a footnote on page 26 – paragraphs were not numbered last year – that “6 A compatible school means one of the relevant phases which a pupil could attend. Selective grammar schools are not considered when identifying the second nearest compatible school, but faith schools are included.”

This year, paragraph 25 states that “Eligibility for sparsity funding depends on the distance the pupils living closest to the school would have to travel to their next nearest compatible school, and the average number of pupils per year group.” However, there is no comment about what is a compatible school.

So, no change, apart from the lack of a definition of a ‘compatible school’. This footnote has now been relocated to the Technical Manual, and appears as footnote 9 on page 19 of the manual. Schools block national funding formula 2026 to 2027: technical note

Overall, the minimum per pupil funding for primary pupils increases from £4955 to £5115, and for secondary pupils up to year 11, from £6,455 to £6,640. Schools

in IDACI band G will, as before, receive no additional funding through that factor. If they don’t qualify for additional funds through other factors, and some schools won’t, as 62.5% of LSOAs are in IDACI Band G, this could be a challenging year for them.

Many of these schools will no doubt turn to parents for support, or perhaps more will follow the north London school, and look to bring in additional income from operating overseas alongside the many private schools that already have overseas campuses?

With the budget next week, and the local government settlement not being announced any earlier than last year, plus the delay in the High Needs Block announcement, this is going to be a tough budget setting time for schools and local authorities between now and February, when the upper tier local authorities responsible for the NFF must set their council budgets.

Perhaps the High Needs block will feature as a rabbit in the Chancellor’s budget speech to make everyone feel better that the government has found a solution to the massive deficits protected by the override that was extended to March 2027.

Reading the document, I was also struck by the fact that there are more references to local authorities than to the ‘schools forum’. Has the latter run its course as a decision-making body? Is it time to review its future, and certainly its membership?

Skills Issue: right issue, wrong solution?

Posted on November 14, 2025 by John Howson

A study also backed by former Tory education secretary Gillian Keegan and Liberal Democrat education spokesman Lord Storey has called for an expansion of University Technical Colleges (UTCs), which are schools where local employers often help deliver lessons to ensure children are trained for available jobs.

They supported a study by Policy Exchange, the think tank, which also called for University Technical College departments to be added to existing secondary schools. The report from Policy Exchange is called From School to the Skilled Workforce. Policy Exchange – From School To The Skilled Workforce

In a joint foreword to the report, the three politicians said: “Businesses consistently report that a lack of access to skilled labour is impeding their growth, with the shortages particularly acute in sectors including construction, technology and healthcare.

Let employers help run schools to end youth unemployment crisis, says David Blunkett

Now I agree with the premiss behind this report: a need for many more technicians to support our industrial and commercial base to the economy. However, I am dubious about the recommended way forward.

Kenneth Baker created City Technology Colleges when he was Secretary of State in the 1980s, and supported the creation of the present University Technology Colleges. These colleges have had a chequered history, not least because they were only open to pupils from Year 10 onwards. All too often that allowed existing schools to move pupils sideways, and schools rarely suggest that pupils doing well change school at the end of Key State 3.

This new report overcomes that difficulty by suggesting ‘sleeve schools’ within existing schools -effectively a technology pathway. Now, I really don’t believe that a conservative leaning think tank really wants to create 4,000 new headteacher posts to run these sleeve schools – think of the cost and bureaucracy involved – not to mention the need to sack teachers to employ those with the right skills to teach.

Fortunately, the report has a solution to both of these issues. A pilot of 10 sleeve schools, and give QTS to those in senior positions with relevant industrial experience. Not a surprising idea when you notice that the author spent two years in the classroom on the Teach First programme. He should know that teaching is not just about subject knowledge alone.

My advice is readers is to read to page 10 of the report in order to understand the issue that after all isn’t new. After all, as far back as the 1960s, The Dainton Report Dainton Report – Wikipedia worried about encouraging science and engineering as a career for those interested in going to university and both the Crowther and Newsom Reports were concerned about the futures of the upper age groups in education.

My view is that the, much neglected, Further Education sector, removed from local authorities and many links to local labour market needs in the 1990s, should be a more effective route to solving the skills gap. There would also need to be better career advice in schools that encouraged consideration of the value of training for these areas of skill shortages. This is especially the case as the Policy Exchange report has little to say about whether the expansion of the UTC concept should be for pupils across the whole ability range or just not likely to be on pathways leading to higher education.

6500 new teachers: wasn’t that a manifesto pledge?

Posted on November 13, 2025 by John Howson

The DfE has today published the annual Education and Training Statistics for the whole of the United Kingdom. Education and training statistics for the UK, Reporting year 2025 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UKAs ever, there is a wealth of material and the devil is in the details.

The full-time equitant number of teachers in England increased between 2023/24 and 2024/25. The data for schools in England isn’t new, as it was first reported in June 2025 School workforce in England, Reporting year 2024 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

However, it is worth discussing the data again, as it will provide the basis against which any claims about increased teacher numbers will be judged.

Phase		201920	202021	202122	202223	202324	202425
Non-maintained mainstream	Total	76975	77310	71695	73255	75240	74100
Nursery	Total	1195	1160	1100	1065	1075	1060
Primary	Total	219960	221365	221230	220265	217460	214575
Secondary	Total	204715	209835	213630	216075	217565	219000
Special	Total	24280	25025	26005	27140	28240	29150
Total	Total	530800	538415	537285	541690	543930	542355
Total maintained	Total	453820	461105	465590	468435	468690	468260

The changes over one year and the whole of the time period are shown in this table

	Total	change on 202324	change on 201920
Non-maintained mainstream	Total	-1140	-2875
Nursery	Total	-15	-135
Primary	Total	-2885	-5385
Secondary	Total	1435	14285
Special	Total	910	4870
Total	Total	-1575	11555
Total maintained	Total	-430	14440

It is worth noting that as the school population increased, so did the number of teachers in state-maintained schools. Thus, between 2019/2020 and 2024/2025 teacher numbers increased by 14,440, although the decline in teachers in the nursery and primary schools had already started.

However, by 2024/25 the total teacher workforce was some 14,440 FTEs larger than it had been in 2019/2020 as a result of the increase in the number of secondary and special school teachers.

Between 2023/24 and 2024/25, teacher numbers in England continued to increase across both the secondary and special school sectors, but the decline in the primary sector teacher numbers continued. The nursey sector showed little change, but employs few teachers in state nursery schools as opposed to nursery classes in primary schools.

There is a message here for anyone considering a career as a primary school teacher. Before accepting a place on a teacher peroration course; do some homework on job possibilities in the area of the country where you would like to teach, especially if it is not where you are training.

I doubt that we have yet seen the end of the decline in teacher numbers in the primary sector, and it will be a buyer’s market, even in 2027 when those applying for courses starting next September will enter the labour market in large numbers.

In the past, under such conditions, schools have preferred to employ experienced teachers leaving new entrants to look for posts in schools for which they may not have been trained. Often the jobs will either be in schools with a higher deprivation index score or small schools with mixed age classes. Neither of these teaching situations may have been encountered during a one-year teacher preparation course, and can be challenging for new teachers if not adequately supported.

Don’t be afraid to ask about job prospects at interview, especially if you are paying your own tuition fees.

Slow progress on ethnic minority headteacher numbers

Posted on November 11, 2025 by John Howson

Earlier today someone viewed my post from 2021 ‘We need more black headteachers in our schools’ | John Howson so I thought that I would review the data from last November’s Workforce Census to see how the position has changed since then.

My 2021 blog post included White minority groups as well as other ethnic groups, when creating the totals, and ignored the issue of uncollected data, whether because of refusal or the necessary field not being completed in the census to allow for ethnic recognition. This post just considers the five key groupings (Other Ethnic Group, Mixed, Asian/Asian British, Black/Black British and White).

Looking back over the whole period of the School Workforce Survey, from between 2011-12 to 2023-24, the percentage of headteachers recorded as White fell by 2.3% from 20,608 to 19,355 during this time period. During the same period, there were just under a thousand more headteachers across the other four groups.

Across the 15 years data has been Workforce Census data has been collected, the four ethnic groups have increased their headship numbers by an average of 64 additional headteacher per year. The Asian/Asian British group did best, averaging just under 30 additional headteacher per year. The Black/Black British group increased their number of headships by little more than 16 per year on average.

Taking the sex of the respondents into account meant that there were 48 more Black/Black British women heads over the period and 31 more Black/Black British male as headteachers.

Asian/Asian British women increased their numbers from 150 to 298, and Asian/Asian British men, from 56 to 112.

The Other Ethnic Groupa plus the Mixed Group increased by 124 women headteachers and 41 men as headteachers.

How accurate these figures are, of course depends upon how many minority heads either refused to disclose their ethnicity or the information wasn’t collected by the time of the census – presumably because a box was left empty.

Over the time period the number refusing to disclose ethnicity increased from 103 to 235: not a large increase. However, more concerning is the increase from 494 in the first census to 1,911 in the 2023/24 census from those described as ‘information not yet obtained’. Does this group contain a significant number of headteachers from ethic minorities? We just don’t know.

The good news is that all teachers and school leaders from the four minority groups have seen a 10%+ increase in their teacher numbers across all grades over the period between 2011/12 and 2023/24. This during a period where the school population has fluctuated, and by January 2025 was significantly smaller than it was a few years ago.

More classroom teachers will mean more headteachers if these individuals can be persuaded to stay in teaching. Sadly, there is a risk that won’t be the case. The lack of coordinated local governance of schooling across much of England makes the risk of departure greater than if local plans for retention across all groups of teachers were put in place. This is another governance issue the present system has created. Who cases about local policies for retaining teachers?

The governance of our schools – does pay matter?

Posted on November 11, 2025 by John Howson

Later this month Directors of Children’s Services will meet alongside their Directors of Adult Social Services colleagues for their annual conference. I am sure that one of the topics in the bar, if not in the conference hall, will be the pay grades for public servants.

In August this year, I once again started collecting data about headteacher vacancies, including starting salaries. This has been a research interest of mine since the early 1980s, and I still have my reports for the majority of years between 1984 and 2023, with the exception of the years between 2011-2014.

Unlike the pay of most teachers, and school leaders below the grade of headteacher, salaries of headteachers are less well controlled, and more subject to market forces. Interestingly, the first report of an advert for a headteacher on a salary of more than £100,000 was as far back as 1998. This was for the headship of a secondary school in an inner London borough.

Fast forward to the autumn of 2025 and there have been four secondary schools with advertised starting salaries of £113,000. The most a headteacher of the largest schools can earn according to the pay scales is £158,000, if the school is located in the inner London Pay area.

Why does the pay of headteachers matter to directors of children’s services and their staff? At present, they still provide the governance backbone to much of the system-wide decision-making about local schooling. To do so effectively needs a pipeline of staff willing to take on the most senior roles supporting education.

These days, there are few educationalists in the top posts as directors as these are mostly held by those with a social work background. However, most authorities still have a senior post for an officer responsible for everything from SEND to school transport, pupil place planning and school building, whether opening new ones, closing existing ones because of falling roles or just maintaining the fabric of those open schools. All this has to be achieved in cooperation with academy trusts, dioceses and the many others that now run schools across England.

When I came across a one form entry primary school, with just over 200 pupils in roll, offering a starting salary of £92,447, I wondered what the director earned in the same authority? Fortunately, senior officer salaries in local government are open to scrutiny, so I know that the director has a salary of less than £170,000, after a number of years of service. However, the most senior education officer earns less than £120,000, and little more than the advert for a secondary school headteacher quoted above.

The issue is about comparability. Chief officers of academy trusts earn more than their headteachers in most cases, sometimes substantially more. Is running a MAT much more challenging than being a senior officer in a local authority with responsibility for both community schools and authority wide strategy plus probably a couple of other roles as well? Are local government officers underpaid? I think you know my feeling on that issue, and I write as former cabinet member for children’s services.

Does it matter? I believe that it does, because it is another symptom of a refusal to understand the importance of a governance system for schooling that will help develop our schooling system for the needs of children that entered school at three this September, and won’t retire from work until the 2080s under present arrangements.

Governance matters, and for good governance you need good staff. Are current differentials between the salaries for headteachers, those running MATs, and our local government officers fair and equitable. I think not.

What is the role of the State in schooling?

Posted on November 9, 2025 by John Howson

This is an interesting philosophical question for a Sunday morning. It arises out of my post yesterday questioning a decision of the Labour government to allow a state school to open sites overseas, presumably for profit. Has Labour gone mad? | John Howson

The genesis of that blog post was a tes magazine piece about a grammar school in London teaming up with a global brand to open sites in Dubai and Delhi Queen Elizabeth’s School to open fee-paying school in Dubai | Tes

What is the role of the state in schooling in the second quarter of the 21^st century? When the 1870 Education Act was passed, as one of the Gladstone government’s first Bills before the new parliament, it was to ensure all children received at least some education. There was a feeling that a lack of literacy was resulting in British’s industry losing its advantage in the industrial revolution to countries with better educated populations.

After 1870, the State increasingly became the default position for schooling. Parents didn’t have to use it, but if they didn’t choose an alternative, basically the private sector or home schooling, then attending the local school from five to early teens was required of children. State paternalism or practical politics to allow the economy to continue to be successful?

155 years later, and we have the State, now run by a Labour government, sanctioning a state-funded school partnering with a global company to create school sites overseas selling its brand of education.

Why not allow this? After all, as someone pointed out on LinkedIn, the State too often rescues loss-making industries, why then shouldn’t it make money out of education?

Of course, the State already helps British Industry and commerce make money from exporting aspects of our successful education enterprise, from textbooks to teachers and private schools with sites overseas, as well as private schools bring in overseas students and their fees the government offers help and advice.

So, should State capitalism in this country support state schools opening branches overseas, and those schools making a profit on that work, to be ploughed back into their school in England, thus potentially earning it more cash than the State provides?

Firstly, profit is not a given. Secondly, how will the countries where such schools are located react. Happy not to worry about attracting expatriate workers because there will be high quality education for their children. And, also happy for its own citizens to attend such schools, with a different curriculum to what State schools in that country might teach?

The issue of state schools topping up their funding, whether from parents, donors or now profits, has worried me ever since I taught in Tottenham in the 1970s. School fetes, a feature of those days, run by primary schools in Highgate made thousands of pounds, those run by schools in Tottenham couldn’t match such income. Was this acceptable? At that time, local authorities ran schools and could compensate for this discrepancy. Now, the National Funding Formula make such compensation more challenging, except through the Pupil Premium.

The entrepreneur in me applauds the school making money overseas; the politician takes the opposite view. In this case, I think the politician wins. We need to debate afresh the role of the State in schooling in England, and both its purpose and its limits.

Has Labour gone mad?

Posted on November 8, 2025 by John Howson

Queen Elizabeth’s School, a selective grammar school in North London, is to open an affiliate fee-paying branch school in Dubai – becoming the first state school to open overseas. Queen Elizabeth’s School to open fee-paying school in Dubai | Tes

I am going to state my opposition to this proposal outright. If we had a sufficiency of high-quality teachers for all our schools, then I might, just might, look on this as part of the export drive using resources not currently needed for the home market.

But the blunt truth is that we don’t have enough qualified teachers for our secondary schools. It is bad enough private schools offering UK teachers jobs overseas, but most of them probably weren’t in the state system anyway.

Here we seem to have a state funded school spending leadership time becoming part of a global brand, and at the very least risking taking a couple of hundred teachers out of the UK system to teach middle class children in the UAE and India.

Even if the investment is funded by Global Education, a company with a strong base working with universities and higher level vocational providers, I am not sure why a Labour government has allowed the DfE to approve this move?

I do think there should be a policy designed to maximise UK revenue from our strong background in education across the board, but a government’s first duty is to its own citizens, and this move by a state school, along with the growth of our private school’s overseas campuses, risks the education of our own citizens by sucking teachers overseas, and away from schools that badly need them, not only in some of our most deprived communities.

The DfE must make clear both why it approved this venture, and what happens if lots more state schools want to go down this road as a means of earning income to support the homebase.

As regular readers know, I am a strong support of democratic accountability for our schooling, and the academy system doesn’t provide that support to our system. Rather it provides fragmentation and encourages this sort of move all the while costing the system millions of pounds in unnecessary CEO’s salaries and other overheads.

This move reminds me of the Attlee government struggling with the aftermath of the Second World War and restricting sales of cars and other items in the home market to boost exports. Here we have a Labour government opening the doors to sending UK teachers to educate children of parent s that can afford their fees, and to directly set up in competition with private schools.

I might have understood a Conservative government sanctioning this move, but not a Labour government.

Please tell me I have missed some important value here.

Fine words butter no parsnips

Posted on November 5, 2025 by John Howson

What is one to make of a government that announces an expansion of the place of the creative arts in the National Curriculum review literally weeks after cutting the bursary for trainee teachers of music? Labour’s determination to recruit new teachers doesn’t include music | John Howson 8^th October 2026

If I am being kind, it would be that one part of the DfE doesn’t know what the other is doing. Recruiting trainee music teachers has been a challenge over the past few years, and with universities eyeing the future of music degree courses, recruitment probably won’t get any easier.

Did a Minister, when sanctioning the bursary withdrawal, ask what the forthcoming Curriculum Review might have to say about the subject? If so, why was the bursary withdrawn if the creative arts re to play a larger part in the new curriculum?

Hopefully, someone at Westminster will ask this question over the next few days. Perhaps media arts programmes might also like to interrogate a Minister about this curious state of affairs.

Of course, it is possible that the talk of expanding provision is just that, and the government has no real intention of putting funds behind any expansion in order to make it happen. Blame can then be laid at the door of schools for not switching resources into the creative subjects.

After all the government just said that

‘A new core enrichment entitlement for every pupil – covering civic engagement; arts and culture; nature, outdoor and adventure; sport and physical activities; and developing wider life skills.’ New curriculum to give young people the skills for life and work – GOV.UK

Not much meat on the bone there. Delving into the detailed response from the government we find that

“We recognise the Review’s concerns around access to music and that some schools require support to deliver music well, including from specialist teachers, particularly to help pupils to develop their knowledge and skills in learning to read music and play instruments. We continue to invest in instrument stocks through the music hubs. Our £25 million investment will provide over 130,000 additional instruments, equipment and other music technology by the end of 2026, with around 40,000 already in the hands of teachers and pupils. We will consider how we maximise the impact of this investment to ensure the opportunity of and access to a reformed music curriculum is fully realised.” Government response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review page 34.

Not much joined up thinking there. Encouraging singing has a much lower capital cost than instruments, and can capture more pupils – see the great scheme at Debry Cathedral that has over 900 possible singers.

The first sentence of the paragraph bears no relation to the rest of the paragraph, so don’t hold out hopes that music will achieve more than lots of instruments sitting on shelves or being played by children whose parents can afford the lessons.

I am very disappointed in the music section of the government’s response, especially that now I chair the Oxfordshire Music Board and so music is a particular interest of mine.

Not more B…..y Vikings

Posted on November 5, 2025 by John Howson

During her interview on the Today Programme, just before 8am this morning, I heard the Secretary of State talking about the need to review how to remove duplication in the teaching of the National Curriculum. That very sentiment was in part the Reason Kenneth Baker introduced a National Curriculum in the 1988 Education Reform Act.

In the 1980s, discussion was about the repetition of the same topic, with little additional learning taking place when it was taught in both the primary and secondary sectors, so that an eight-year-old was drawing the same Viking boat as a thirteen-year-old – we didn’t have ‘year with numbers’ back then. There was both duplication and a lack of progression.

This morning, the Secretary of State cited the lack of coordination over languages between what is taught in primary schools and the secondary schools they feed into as an issue.

Now, during the past forty years since the idea of a National Curriculum became common currency in education, progress has been made in codifying what is taught, and England’s PISA scores have increased. Both no doubt great achievements.

However, many of my maths friends tell me there has been a price to pay in their subject. I think the idea of a new diagnostic test in Year 8 for English and mathematics highlights the dilemma facing secondary schools. How do you staff a school to both develop pupils’ knowledge and experience when they are on track, but also work to try to build on the knowledge and skills of those that have fallen behind where they are expected to be at that age?

Will the test be used to see the difference a school achieves in Progress 8 between the end of Year 8 and GSCE? More importantly, what will be the consequences of under-achievement? If there are no consequences, then why would schools do more than pay lip service to these new tests?

In the original National Curriculum, there were 10 levels, and every child had another level to aspire to reach. That was about motivation, not checking for failure. After all, as Phil Willis sometime Lib Dem spokesperson on education used to say, ‘you don’t make pigs fatter by just weighting them.’

But, back to the issue of continuity across all subjects. This requires mandated programmes of work about what is taught and when to be fully achievable across all schools. Such rigidity risks undermining teacher flexibility and professionalism as it has been recognised in the past.

However, in a more mobile society, some continuity of delivery across the country must be a price schools have to pay to support change. Hopefully, technology is the friend of teachers in that respect. The digitising of the curriculum is a useful suggestion, and one Oxford Brookes University’s School of Education first undertook in the early 1990s, when increased computer power made it possible.

Elsewhere, in the announcement, I applaud the extension of the National Curriculum to all schools, but am horrified that support for the IB has been withdrawn from the small number of schools teaching that curriculum. Here is another example of national direction versus local flexibility.

In Oxfordshire, with many parents from across Europe working in the science and technology industries, this rigidity of approach might be counterproductive if the Europa School cannot continue teaching a language-based curriculum. Westminster may not always know best.

Classroom teacher turnover in London needs watching

Posted on November 4, 2025 by John Howson

Historically, the turnover rate for classroom teachers in London has tended to be higher than elsewhere in England

Year	Inner London	Outer London
2016/17	14.9%	12.5%
2017/18	13.1%	11.9%
2018/19	12.8%	11.4%
2019/20	9.9%	8.4%
2020/21	11.1%	9.6%
2021/22	12.8%	11.1%
2022/23	12.3%	10.7%
2023/24	12.5%	10.7%

Source DfE evidence to STRB October 2025 Data annex

In 2016/17, turnover for classroom teachers in the Inner London boroughs reached 14.9%, or around one in seven classroom teachers either leaving the profession or moving school. Three years later, in the year where covid disrupted the summer term, turnover rates dropped below 10% for the only time in the last eight years. Once the pandemic subsided, turnover quickly returned to over 12%, or one in eight teachers.

In Outer London turnover rates have followed a similar pattern to those in Inner London, but a couple of percentage points lower than in the Inner London boroughs.

By way of contrast, in the North East, during 2023/24 turnover for classroom teachers was just 7.7%, some 4.8% lower than in Inner London schools.

Leaving aside the two years where covid affected the recruitment round (2019/20 and 2020/21), the national turnover rate for all levels of posts (classroom, leadership and headship) has generally been between 9-10%, but has been falling. In 2023/24 it was 9% compared with 10.6% in 2016/17.

Rates of turnover for assistant head and deputy heads probably reflect demand side issues more than what is happening on the supply side. When school rolls are rising, new schools may be created increasing demand: falling rolls may mean posts are cutback, and demand reduced, so less turnover.

Headship turnover is very closely linked to the age profile of headteachers. When a cohort of new younger headteachers has replaced a generation that has retired, turnover is likely to fall for a few years. However, turnover tends to be within a narrow range of between 9.5-10.5% per year. There is now no discernible London effect on headteacher turnover, as there used to be many years ago when headteacher salaries were more tightly controlled.

Might we now be entering a period of stability, with lower turnover rates for classroom teachers , especially should the possible upheaval in the graduate job market created by the AI revolution coincide with the period of stable rolls in the secondary secto,r and falling rolls in the primary sector?

Year	Primary	Secondary	STEM subjects	Non-STEM	All Teachers
2016/17	86.35	83.1%	81.2%	84.5%	84.9%
2023/24	90.0%	89.4%	88.0%	90.2%	89/7%

The table taken from various tables in the DfE evidence to the STRB shows a consistent trend of improved retention for teachers at the end of the first year of service. However, the same tables show that there is still a job to be done to retain these teachers in larger numbers beyond their first few years of service. The government needs to be aware that teaching is now a global career, and teachers from England can easily find work overseas.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

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