Steve Besley's Education Eye: week ending 31 May 2024

Week one of the election campaign and plenty to take in. And perhaps wonder about.

When it comes to education, the Conservatives have seized many of the headlines with plans for national service for young people and for diverting money from ‘underperforming’ degrees to creating more apprenticeships.

Labour has confirmed plans to reform the apprenticeship levy, develop ‘a modern industrial strategy,’ and recruit 6,500 more teachers. More broadly, its confirmed, or rather Rachel Reeves has, that it won’t go for an early emergency budget if it wins, opting instead for an autumn statement. An important point for education as much as any other area.

Here’s a look at some of the detail from this first week of the campaign.

Conservative plans for a programme of national service for 18-year-olds were announced at the weekend. The reactions picked themselves. The Daily Telegraph described the proposals as ‘rekindling Britain’s fraying social cohesion,’ while The Independent saw it as a ‘desperate stunt.’

That said, other countries already operate similar schemes and as the BBC pointed out, not all young people are against it.  It will be left to a Royal Commission to flesh out the details, including ‘sanctions and incentives.’

Currently it would require 18-year-olds to undertake either a 12-month period of community volunteering or, less likely, a period of military training in areas like cyber security and civil response. 18-year-olds would be able to choose which but would have to do one or other. ‘Participation would be compulsory.’

Further details may appear in the manifesto but if they want any ideas about how to make it all work, perhaps this letter in The Times this week might help. “Sir, I wonder whether the Tories have missed a trick. The nation would surely rejoice if all 18-year-olds were signed up to a year of filling potholes.”

From potholes to apprenticeships with the PM returning to the fray on the unfortunately labelled ‘rip-off’ degrees this week and in another major announcement, arguing that the money for these could be better used to fund apprenticeships. 100,000 in all by the end of the parliament was the promise using the £900m saved from such ‘underperforming degrees.’  

Again the announcement provoked strong reactions.

Critics were quick to point out that actually apprenticeship numbers particularly among young people have been falling in recent years, that there’s no guarantee that employers could create the extra places needed, and that scrapping ‘poor outcome’ degrees wouldn’t be straightforward.

At the very least it would require new powers to be granted to the regulator, the Office for Students, and there’s no guarantee that either universities or young people would behave as expected. And anyway how would you define such courses? The Telegraph had a go this week citing circus studies but others have been more reticent. It could all be, as the IfS put it, rather ‘challenging.’

More centrally, as many such as the AoC among others have been arguing for ages is the point that we don’t need just apprenticeships or just degrees, we need both within a coherent tertiary system. Different routes for different aptitudes and different skills. And, ‘using apprenticeships to denigrate university courses when we need both to flourish’ isn’t going to help, as Neil Carberry of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation added.

There’s of course been plenty of other related activity this week with the British Chambers of Commerce, the British Academy, the County Councils Network and the Sutton Trust all releasing their various manifestos this week. The list of ‘asks’ increases daily.

To round off the education related election news this week, two other final news items of possible interest.

First, the Mail reported on a survey suggesting that Labour plans to impose VAT on school fees would leave ‘Four in 10 families to quit private school,’ leaving, in the words of the article, state schools swamped. The consultancy which published the survey has a vested interest in the independent sector and views vary on the likely impact of the policy which is still being widely debated.

According to a thread on Mumsnet, asking grandparents for help seems to be one way that parents might cope. “We won’t be able to pay the increase. Only hope is asking grandparents for the shortfall which we don’t want to do,” according to one concerned parent.

And second, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IfS) reported on the state of public finances at the start of the election campaign surmising that “the UK’s parlous fiscal position will hang over the campaign like a dark cloud.”

It called on all parties to be a bit more transparent about how they’d pay for things promised during the campaign.  “Parties will do everything possible to avoid revealing how they’d approach the difficult economic and fiscal trade-offs awaiting the next government in the autumn,” they noted before adding, “We wouldn’t allow parties to tell us they will raise taxes without specifying where from, yet we allow them to promise spending cuts without any detail as to where the axe will fall. 

On to other news this week.

In schools, Ofqual released provisional entry figures for this summer’s GCSE/AS/A level exams, pointing to increases for both EBacc and non-EBacc subjects at GCSE and notably for Further Maths at A level.

School leaders published their responses to Ofsted’s Big Listen consultation which closes today, with both the NAHT and ASCL expressing disappointment that the vexed issue of single-word judgements had been left out of the exercise. ASCL called the absence ‘a big miss.’

The Education Committee published its report into the impact of screen time on children’s education and wellbeing, saying the government should do more to protect children. “Screen time should be minimal for younger children and better balanced with face-to-face socialisation and physical activity for older ones.”

It called for formal monitoring of the mobile phone ban in schools with a blanket statutory ban to follow if necessary. Also better training for teachers, guidance on online learning, and a full risk assessment on the use of edtech and AI in schools ‘as soon as possible.’

And the Sutton Trust called for free school meals and the Pupil Premium to be extended as part of proposals to close the attainment gap and improve social mobility. “The next government must seize the opportunity to advance social mobility and bring about a revolution in opportunity for future generations.”

In FE, the government published the latest (estimated) data sets on the FE workforce for 2022/23. The overall picture suggested a slightly smaller workforce than the previous year, ‘predominantly female,’ generally full-time at least for teaching staff and with salaries ranging from £23,627 for support staff to £42,398 for managers.

And the Learning and Work Institute and partners highlighted concerns about UK skills over the coming decade in a new report, suggesting that cuts to funding over the last decade had led to a drop in learner numbers and skill outcomes, particularly at intermediate level. It’s left the UK stalling in terms of international performance. By 2035, ‘we’re on track to be 12^th out of 39 countries for low qualifications, 29^th for medium skills and 10^h for high skills,’ they reckoned.

In HE, Universities UK issued a timely riposte about the benefits of gaining a degree claiming that “Graduates earn more than non - graduates across all regions of the country, where our universities are located.” It argued that current data being used doesn’t reflect longer-term employment progression. "Crucially, these differences are not reflected in the government’s metrics for assessing course success.”

The Office of the Independent Adjudicator published its ‘Annual Statements’ page showing how institutions had handled complaints and appeals over the previous year. And the British Academy made a strong plug for support for the arts, humanities and social sciences as it published its manifesto for the election.

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