Steve Besley's Education Eye: week ending 20 September 2024

Teacher recruitment, pay in FE, apprenticeship reform, 2024 university admissions, life skills, green skills, and two big Commission reports.

All have featured this week.

Politicians may be out and about contending with the delights of the annual Party Conference season, but plenty of education policy thinking is going on.

Let’s start with those two big Commission reports. Each claiming to set future policy agendas, each accompanied by supportive ministerial noises and each with wider implications for education.

The first came from the increasingly government aligned IPPR think tank.

Over the last nearly three years, its cross-party Commission on Health and Prosperity, co-chaired by Lord Darzi and Dame Sally Davies and backed by an impressive list of commissioners, has been looking into “the interaction between health and the economy,” taking in along the way factors like child poverty and economic inactivity.

Its report, following in the footsteps of Lord Darzi’s ‘rapid’ report last week, set out what it called ‘a bold plan for the future.’

In essence this meant building a health creation system, a whole-society system as it described it, built around “five founding principles” such as a health guarantee at the start of life, a healthy industrial strategy and proactive healthcare through the NHS. All aimed it seems “at kick starting a once-in-a-generation rethink of national health policy, to revitalise both wellbeing and the UK economy.”

The overlap with education and training is clear in a number of places. “Just as education is seen as an investment in children’s wellbeing today and economic prospects tomorrow, so should childhood health be seen as key to our long-term economic outcomes.”

With an “oven ready” plan in place and an enthusiastic health minister in attendance, it’ll be interesting to see how far health and education welfare reforms align for the benefit of all in the coming months.

‘Oven ready’ may not be a happy phrase but ‘healthy workplaces,’ be they in schools or offices, certainly are.

Second, the final report from the Commission on the Future of Employment Support which under the stewardship of the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) and arbn Financial Fairness Trust has spent the last couple of years looking at the thorny subject of how to help more Brits back into work and what sort of support might be needed for this.

Under the ambition of raising the employment rate from 74.5% to 77% and ultimately 80%, it called for what it described as “a fundamental reset in the relationship between employment support and the citizens and employers that use these services.” This included a revamped, online and easily accessible Jobs and Careers Service, new Labour Market Partnerships, and guarantees of employment for young and old alike.

The employment minister, ahead of her government’s own proposed white paper on the matter, offered warm words of support for the proposals and pledged that at least a Youth Guarantee would be part of the anticipated package.

That will please many, but how far government can guarantee ‘work, apprenticeships and skills training for everyone who needs it’ remains to be seen. A lot hangs on economic growth.

On to those other headlines spread across different parts of education, starting with schools and teacher recruitment and retention..

Here the lead story came from the Daily Telegraph which reported that the education secretary was preparing to issue fresh guidance on greater flexi working for teachers in an effort to boost recruitment and retention.

“Headteachers will be told they can let their staff do marking and planning away from the classroom” it wrote, ahead of a yes/no poll asking Telegraph readers whether teachers should be allowed to work from home or not. Responses maybe interesting.

On a similar theme, Teach First called, in a new report, for the government to improve working conditions and establish ‘a flexible working entitlement for every teacher’ if it wanted to tempt Gen Z in to work as teachers.

It will interesting to see if the education secretary has much to say on all this in her Conference speech next week. The Guardian headline of ‘Teachers in England offered lie-ins to make job more appealing’ might not have helped.

Moving on to life skills,  the subject of a report from the Sutton Trust this week. It reckoned that state school pupils get a raw deal when it comes to developing such skills. “1 in 5 teachers in state schools do not think their school provides good opportunities for pupils to develop these non-academic skills, compared to just 1 in 10 teachers in private schools,” it declared.

It called on the government’s curriculum review to consider the role of such skills, described in the report as “things like communication, resilience, motivation and confidence,” along with oracy, as part of its current work. One more for you Becky.

In other schools news this week, the Confederation of School Trusts (CfBT) published the results of its latest annual leadership survey conducted earlier this summer and showing leaders particularly concerned not just about funding pressures and quality provision but also now about SEND. “SEND has surged to the forefront of CEOs' concerns, becoming the top priority within delivering high-quality education,” it reported

The private school VAT issue surfaced again this week with heads of the Independent Schools Council and Boarding Schools’ Association calling on the government to ensure that any VAT- based increase in private school fees for military families would be covered through the MoD rather than passed on. “Anything else,” they said, “would be a risk to the recruitment and retention of armed forces members and, therefore, the security of our nation.”

The government has promised to publish a full impact assessment of the decision as part of the Budget documents due on October 30.

Also this week, Ofsted published an updated school inspection handbook following the latest changes. No more beaming banners from the front of Outstanding schools for instance.

And the government published information for schools participating in the latest run of the National Reference Test due next spring. The NFER made a strong case for improving teacher retention through student loan reimbursements and the Education Endowment Foundation published new resources to help schools make the best use of the Pupil Premium in helping close attainment gaps.

On to FE, where the NFER’s commissioned evidence-based report into staff pay, highlighting the poor pay gap between FE staff and school teachers as well as peers in many industry sectors, unsurprisingly raised some loud cheers across the college sector. 

“This report echoes and evidences what we have long- known to be true: that we have major challenges in FE recruitment and retention, particularly in key sectors like construction, engineering and digital,” was the quick response from the AoC.

As ever much of it comes down to money and on that topic, the AoC has a helpful roundup of FE-related thoughts ahead of next month’s Budget. There’s still a lot of speculation but it’s a useful summary here.

Apprenticeship reform remains a popular topic with the government expected to set out its thoughts on a new Growth and Skills Levy shortly and it was the subject of a new report from Edge this week.

They were particularly concerned that any reforms proposed didn’t impact  negatively on opportunities for young and disadvantaged groups and in their report entitled ‘Flex without Compromise,’ they set out a number of options. The AoC’s David Hughes described the options as ‘sensible…and a great addition to policy-making conversations.’

As for green skills, the 5% Club pointed in a new report to a potential massive growth in green jobs both nationally and globally over the next five years, particularly with ambitions towards net zero.

“There are just not enough people and an insufficient skills base to move things along at the required pace,” the report reckoned, suggesting that anything between 135,000 and 725,000 new green jobs may be needed by 2030.

It argued that “the education system has not adapted swiftly enough to prepare students for green careers.” Give us the funding may be the response.

Finally, we couldn’t leave FE without pointing to the achievements of the UK team at last week’s WorldSkills event in Lyons. They came away with an array of medals. As the CEO of the organisation put it: “it’s fantastic to be in the top ten once again at WorldSkills.”

FE Week has been carrying great stories of the event over the past week or so.

In HE, as we await Universities UK’s blueprint for the future of the sector, for which parts have started to dribble out, debate has continued about university finances and tuition fees. An interesting poll this week from YouGov showed pretty mixed opinions -only 9% thought they should be increased for example.

Elsewhere the big news this week has been the traditional release of admissions data from UCAS, one month on from results day.

Broadly the figures are as suggested in August – more UK 18 yr olds accepted, international student numbers down – but as the Times Higher explained this year a new trend has emerged in the form of trading places through Clearing. In effect, declining a firm offer and taking up one instead at another institution, sometimes a similar type but not always.

‘Exercising agency in a market system,’ in the words of the boss of UCAS but with some fears about creating instability in the system.

In other news, the Office for Students reported that “the decade-long increases we’ve seen in the award of top degrees is slowing,” although ‘nearly a half remains unexplained.’

So plenty for government ministers to reflect on and perhaps announce as they polish their scripts for the Party Conference next week.  

Links to most of these stories below starting with the week’s headlines.

The top headlines of the week:

• ‘London primary school numbers to drop by 52,000’ (Monday).
• ‘Tuition fees must go up, unis say as term begins’ (Tuesday).
• ‘Teachers to be allowed to work from home’ (Wednesday).
• ‘Incredibly disheartening’ decline in special needs pupil attainment in England’ (Thursday).
• ‘The battle for regional school control’ (Friday).

More specifically ...

Schools:

• Flexi working. The Daily Telegraph reported that the education secretary was preparing to bring out new flexi working guidance for teachers in schools, such as making it possible to undertake lesson plans and marking in agreed time at home, in an effort to encourage more women into the profession as well as support teacher retention.
• Future teachers. Teach First in collaboration with the consultancy Public First looked into how to attract future teachers particularly those from Gen Z into the profession, calling for a more ‘positive’ recruitment narrative, one that incorporated benefits such as flexible working, reduced workloads and with the offer of training and early career benefits.
• VAT and military families. Leaders of independent and boarding schools called on the government to ensure that any increase in private school fees arising through VAT was covered through the MoD ‘Allowance’ and not passed on to families.
• Ofsted inspections. Ofsted updated its inspection handbook to reflect recent developments including the removal of overall inspection grades and changes to notification procedures for inspections as well as to safeguarding procedures and to deferral requests for schools part of a MAT.
• Teacher retention. The NFER highlighted the important role that a Teacher Student Loan Reimbursement (TSLR) scheme could play in enhancing teacher recruitment, pointing to modelling indicating that if introduced for eligible teachers next year, it could generate an increase over a two thousand teachers in the first year.  
• Life skills. The Sutton Trust called for the government’s curriculum review to include opportunities to develop life skills and oracy as it published a new research report showing that although teachers rated the importance of such skills highly they felt they had few opportunities currently to develop them.
• Trust priorities. The Confederation of School Trusts published the results of its latest annual survey among England’s academy trusts showing tackling attendance, SEND provision and financial pressures as the top three concerns of trust leaders.

FE/Skills:

• WorldSkills 2024. WorldSkills UK reported on the successes of the UK team which last week came away from the latest WorldSkills competition in Lyons with two silver and two bronze medals plus 14 medallions of excellence.
• FE pay. The NFER reported that that FE teachers earn nearly a quarter less than teachers in schools, let alone compatriots in industry as well as having to deal with high workloads and some challenging demands, calling in a new report commissioned by the Gatsby Foundation for the government to commit to closing the pay gap.
• Apprenticeship reform. Edge looked at options for transforming the apprenticeship levy into a more flexible model and how far it was possible to reach what they called ‘a flexible compromise’ which could offer the changes needed while not compromising opportunities for young people.
• Green Jobs. The 5% Club called on employer members to integrate green skills into their training programmes and to work more closely with colleges in support of programmes on green skills, as it published a new report pointing to ‘a critical skills gap’ in the coming years which could limit government progress towards net zero.
• Manufacturing Outlook. Make UK and BDO pointed to ‘cautious optimism’ as they published their Q3 Manufacturing Outlook, finding that although the economic performance of the sector hadn’t changed a great deal since the new government came in and much now depended on the Budget and anticipated skills reforms, the general mood was one of hope.
• Construction skills. The NOCN Group reported on the demand for construction skills both globally and nationally over the next five years calling among other things for a more coherent Growth and Skills Levy able to incorporate current levies as well as a focused skills and training strategy if the government is to be able to meet its ambitions around housing and infrastructure generally.
• Resits. FFT Education Datalab examined what happened to students who failed to achieve the basic grade 4’s in GCSE English and maths, using latest (2022/23) data to show that this amounted to some 200,000 learners, generally male and more disadvantaged, creating quite a challenge for colleges over resits.

Not-to-be-missed numbers of the week:

• 2.2%. The UK inflation figure for last month, unchanged from the previous month according to latest figures from the ONS.
• 20%. The percentage of UK workers in severely insecure work, according to a new briefing from the Work Foundation.
• 26%. The number of people in a survey who think that tuition fees should be scrapped entirely while 21% think they should be left as they are, according to a poll from YouGov.
• £79 a week. The cost of a shared first year residence room at the University of Surrey, one of the cheapest on offer according to research reported by the i-newspaper.
• Two-thirds. The number of school trusts hoping to grow in the coming year, according to a survey from the Confederation of School Trusts.
• 96%. The percentage of teachers in a survey who reckon life skills are as or more important than formal qualifications, according to research from the Sutton Trust.

Everything else you need to know ...

What to look out for next week

• Labour Party Conference (Sunday 22 – Wednesday 25 September)