Steve Besley's Education Eye: week ending 31 January 2025

What's happened this week?

Important stories across the board:

Lots of big questions bubbling around this week.

Many have a bearing on education.

They include government plans to stimulate economic growth, the need to make inroads on poverty, why children became involved in last summer’s riots and also why university students set up pro-Palestine encampments. And more fundamentally perhaps, how to tackle SEND, the range of issues facing FE, and the future concept of work.

All have been in the news this week so here’s a quick rundown of just some of the key points starting with economic growth.

This came in the form of a team talk by the Chancellor about building a better economic future. “I want to see the sounds and the sights of the future arriving,” she declared in a packed set piece speech, as she sought to banish the dark economic mood of recent months and reinvigorate it with economic optimism.

Adopting, according to one commentator a Spice Girls mantra of ‘I tell you what I want, what I really, really want,’ she ran through a hectic list of work being done and to be done to stimulate the economy.

Increased investment, improved transport and connectivity, a new approach to some planning decisions, working with devolved regions, unlocking the potential of the Oxford-Cambridge corridor and yes, supporting a third runway at Heathrow. All there, but more like a trolley dash according to one Guardian columnist.

For education, perhaps three things stand out.

First, recognition of the importance of the Industrial Strategy. “We are not wasting any time, and we will move forward with the next stages of the Industrial Strategy ahead of its publication in the Spring.” 

Second, a welcome emphasis on research and development, particularly in areas like AI and life sciences. “That is why we protected funding for research and development.”

Third, she talked about ‘visa routes for very highly skilled people’ but ultimately much of her Growth Plan depends on having a skilled workforce and capacity to deliver. Neither was mentioned.

As the FT put it, ‘it all depends on selling the positives.’

Next, and back to earth with a bump, the continuing issue of poverty which according to this week’s major report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has hardly changed in 20 years and is, in some cases, actually deepening. 

“In 2022/23, 6 million people – or 4 in 10 of those in poverty – were in very deep poverty, with an income far below the standard poverty line.”

In headline terms, poverty rates varied between different parts of the UK with the West Midlands and North West faring the worst and families with children, people in workless houses, minority ethnic groups, social renters and the disabled among the worst hit. But headline terms hardly tell the story.

As to what to do, the report calls among other things for better financial protection, support for carers and access to decent homes but worryingly concludes that ‘there is huge scepticism over what can be delivered.’

Its impact on education was highlighted by the NAHT. “The devastating impact of poverty harms children’s learning and life chances – pupils are not ready to learn if they are hungry or do not have stable living arrangements.”

The report came incidentally in a week in which the early years charity Kindred reported on its survey of this year’s Reception classes with teachers claiming the extent of the problem is getting worse. “49% of teachers say the school readiness problem is worse than in September 2023. A third (33%) say it’s about the same,” the survey reported, with many saying parents ‘lacked a clear understanding.’

Talking of poverty it was cited in a report this week as one of the reasons why some children became caught up in last summer’s riots.

The report, from the Children’s Commissioner, was based on interviews with children and young people charged as part of last summer’s riots.

The suggestion was that while some may have been driven by animosity towards the police or background poverty, most got caught up in the thrill of the moment.

As the report explains. “children’s involvement was largely spontaneous and unconsidered.” Or as one child put it “it was fun at the time but the guilt afterwards was so bad.”

The report seeks to explain rather than excuse and while not everyone may agree, it makes a noteworthy point. “Children are naturally impulsive. They take risks, act before thinking, and cannot yet fully consider the consequences of their actions and the impact on others. That is one reason why we have built protections into our public services that take account of children’s developmental stages.”

As for how to tackle SEND, this was raised in education questions by MPs this week and was the subject of an evidence session for the Education Committee a few days later. 

Witnesses pointed to a mix of carrots and sticks including putting SEND co-ordinators on school leadership teams as a carrot and penalising schools with high exclusion rates among the sticks.

But early intervention and looking again at the statutory position particularly with EHCPs appear popular options ahead of the Committee’s detailed inquiry which remains open for submissions until next Thursday.

 Moving on, what else has been happening across education this week?

In schools, the government’s current Schools Bill has continued to attract sharp debate. 

The Children’s Commissioner, Opposition MPs, the New Schools Network (NSN) and The Times have all pitched in this week.

The Times, for instance, took to an Editorial to argue that the reforms “are wrong in principle” and telling it to take the Times Education Commission’s report from 2022 off the shelf. Here’s one we had earlier perhaps.

Meanwhile, the NSN appointed a new lead to head up a campaign for school freedoms and innovation. It “will focus on two key missions over the next few months – championing school freedoms that the Bill imperils and making the case to revive the free schools programme, which is currently under review by the Government.”

Another topic continuing to attract debate is the curriculum and assessment review and last weekend, the Headteachers’ Roundtable group set out their principles for the secondary curriculum.

Acknowledging the difficult balancing act that comes with any such review they argued for “a core curriculum that is common to all, leaving the how and the when of innovation and flexibility for student advantage, to leaders who know their demographic best.”

Elsewhere, the Confederation of School Trusts (CfST) signed a new agreement with procurement experts Value Match “aimed at helping trusts make smarter decisions when buying goods and services.” 

And the government published latest stats on per-pupil funding for 5–16-year-olds in schools in England, pointing to an improved figure of £8,020 for 2025/26 after flat, and in some cases reduced, funding over the previous decade or more.

In FE, the Education Committee announced a new inquiry into the FE sector.

As it says, “the further education sector is currently navigating a series of reforms and challenges.”

It was ever thus perhaps but it’s keen to hear evidence of what could be done better with written submissions due by 7 March. 

Key areas of interest include the impact of curriculum reform, apprenticeships and wider skills training, support systems for young people and funding and delivery challenges.

The Guardian used an Editorial this week to raise the issue of sixth-form college teachers not being awarded the same pay award as school teachers.

In their view it was part of a wider concern about colleges being treated ‘as second-class citizens’

In HE, the government launched consultation on ‘bringing franchised courses under greater scrutiny.’

As the Education Secretary explained ‘franchising can be a valuable tool to widen access to higher education’ but there have been concerns in the past about not just poor-quality provision but fraudulent activity as well.

The consultation proposes that unless exempt, franchised delivery partners typically with more than 300 students on board, would need to be registered with the OfS.

Also in the news this week have been Degree Apprenticeships with a report from Edge urged the government to use its current focus on skills reform to look at some system reform for Degree Apprenticeships as well.

“The government needs to take stock and consider a more systematic approach here that serves to rationalise the way that employers are supported to offer a wide range of work-related and work-based opportunities to create their talent pipeline.”

Edge’s report came as the Office for Students (OfS) published the interim findings from its evaluation of equal opportunities under its Degree Apprenticeship Funding Competition. Early days but targeted outreach and clear roles worked well but staffing, recruitment and time pressures acted as barriers.

In other news, HEPI’s Policy Manager looked in a new briefing at what lessons might be learned from the pro-Palestine encampments et up on many campuses last summer.

Clear expectations from all sides and learning how to disagree better were among the conclusions from recipients. “We need to agree on the first principles of how we should agree to differ, the parameters of peaceful protest and the accountability mechanisms for those that violate them,” as the VC of SOAS put it.

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

General:

• Plan for Growth. The Chancellor set out a range of measures to help stimulate UK economic growth in a much-anticipated speech, running through plans to unlock investment, shake up planning, prioritise transport links and support the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor and skills development as well as a third runway at Heathrow in a speech designed to fire up UK enthusiasm and capacity.
• Infrastructure Strategy. The government set out the latest thinking on its proposed 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy, due to be formally published in June, and currently including ‘targeted replacement and maintenance of the education estate’ among its famed missions.
• Growth outlook. The CBI reported the results from its latest Growth Indicator, painting a fairly gloomy picture with private sector firms showing ‘a further significant fall in activity over the next three months.’
• The Future of Work. The institute for the Future of Work published the Final Report from its three-year research project led by Sir Christopher Pissarides into how work will develop in future, pointing to emerging ‘frictions’ in the labour market and calling for a new concept of Good Work built around a form of ‘human-centred automation’ that ‘manages risks and identifies opportunities.’
• UK Poverty 2025. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation published its latest major report into UK poverty, collated last year before the general election, showing no great change to poverty rates over the past 20 years with many groups including families with children, ethnic minority groups and disabled people living in deep poverty.
• Children and the riots. The Children’s Commissioner published the results of interviews with children and young people charged following last summer’s riots, indicating that most were caught up in the moment and were not driven by particular ideologies and suggesting the government’s response was often ‘severe.’
• Inclusion. The Centre for Young Lives announced that it was working with Mission 44 to host a series of roadshows this spring bringing teachers, youth organisations and others together to tackle issues of inclusion and lost learning for young people at a local level.

HE:

• Franchising. The government launched a new consultation on franchised arrangements in HE, acknowledging the importance of such provision but pointing to the risks of fraud and proposing as a result that unless they were exempt, providers with 300 or more students would need to be registered with the OfS.
• Horizon. The government announced a further big push around UK-EU science and technology links which will see a new nationwide advertising campaign to help boost UK participation in the Horizon Europe research programme as well as the UK joining the European Research Infrastructure Consortia.
• OfS Strategy. Former Universities Minister Jo Johnson reflected in a blog on the HEPI site about the OfS’s latest 5-year strategy which is out for consultation, taking it to task for its failure to support start-ups and innovation, arguing that the ‘pausing’ of registration of new providers should be reversed.
• Degree Apprenticeships. Edge called on the government to take the opportunity of its skills system reforms to simplify the system around Degree Apprenticeships as it published new survey evidence showing both employers and apprentices often struggling with some of the current requirements and expectations.
• Pro-Palestine encampments. Josh Freeman, Policy Manager at HEPI, reflected in a new report on some of the lessons that could be learned from the setting up of Pro-Palestine encampments on campuses last year, using evidence from all sides to suggest that clear expectations, robust communications and clarity over the parameters of freedom of speech might help.

Tweets and posts of note:

• “I agree phones have no place in the classroom. It is entirely right schools take firm action to stop their use, and I know that is what the vast majority of schools already do’: @bphillipsonMP rejects a Tory plan to legislate against phones in lessons” -@tes.
• “Marking This is the biggest waste of time in education. It takes *hours*. There is no evidence that taking up science or history exercise books every couple of weeks, ticking and flicking, writing a couple of things in the margin and two or three points at the end does anything at all” -@greg_ashman.
• “The absolute biggest irony at the moment in education is that 21st century tech (AI) has made the more traditional assessments (hand written exams) more important. And yet proponents of ‘21st century skills’ typically dislike that form of assessment” -@BradleyKBusch.
• “In one of Dante’s circles of hell is an endless Y1 computing class of 30 where everyone is trying to log on” -@Emma_Turner75.
• “So I’m teaching today and a huge rumble of thunder sounds. Class falls silent then someone utters” thunder”. Then a blinding flash of lightning and someone says “lightning”. And I had to summon inhuman levels of self-control not to declare “THE WAY YOU LOVE ME US FRIGHTENING” -@ShakinthatChalk.
• “If there was a spelling test before you could get a social media account, social media would be better.” -@CrowtherSim.
• “I had to drive 50 miles through ice, snow and wind to get a computer part. It was a hard drive” -@AS332L.
• “Just went to the Oreo website and hit “accept all cookies” … and now we wait” –@CooperLawrence

A selection of quotes that merit attention:

• “Constructive optimism” – how one world leader felt about the future as he left Davos last weekend.
• “Prejudice is an incredibly light sleeper, and old hatreds are not always that far from the surface; they have never completely gone away” -@ Labour MP David Pinto-Duschinsky reflects from family experience on the importance of Holocaust Memorial Day.
• “Cyber threat to UK government is severe and advancing quickly” – the NAO reports on the extent of cyber threats to the UK government.
• “It is 20 years and counting since we last saw a prolonged period of falling poverty” – the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on Poverty in the UK.
• “In this inquiry, the Education Committee will examine the issues that matter most to students, teachers, parents, school and college leaders, and employers” – the Education Committee launches a new inquiry into the FE sector.
• “It is astonishing that a Labour government is now treating them less favourably than the Conservatives by refusing to spend an additional £13m” – The Guardian takes up the case of the lack of an equal pay award for sixth-form college teachers.
• “Employer engagement with DAs is not currently systematic, nor do DAs fully accommodate the needs of all employers” – Edge reports on changes needed for Degree Apprenticeship (DA) programmes.
• “The tampering will be an unnecessary distraction” – The Times casts its editorial verdict on the Schools Bill.
• “Children are different to adults, and a child must be seen as such first and foremost, rather than as an offender, to keep communities safe by preventing and reducing offending behaviour” – the Children’s Commissioner reports on children charged during last summer’s riots.
• “We do think it is time for the government to explore ways in which they could restrain travel firms from raising their prices during school holidays. We cannot see how this problem can be solved another way” – ASCL comments on the rise in fines for term-time holidays.

• Population projections. The ONS’s (Office for National Statistics) latest projected figures for the UK population by mid-2032 has attracted lots of headlines this week.  Put simply, ‘the population of the UK is projected to increase by 4.9m over the ten years from mid-2022 to mid-2032. Given the likely projection of more deaths than births over the period, the only source of population growth over the next 25 years, according to the ONS, is likely to be net migration. The bald figures are that between mid-2022 and mid-2032 6,790,000 people will be born, 6,807,000 will die, 9,914,000 will immigrate long-term to the UK and 4,978,000 will emigrate long-term from the UK. It’s worth re-iterating again that these are projected figures only but as much of the media pointed out, they do raise questions about future pension sizes and the size of the working-age population. ‘For the state pension triple lock, the end is nigh,’ as the headline from the i-newspaper put it. More reassuringly as the Resolution Foundation intimated, “a larger working-age population means a bigger economy, more workers, and higher tax receipts, which should deliver a fiscal boost of around £5 billion a year by the end of the decade.” A link to the full ONS data is here.

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Steve Besley

Disclaimer: Education Eye is intended to help colleagues keep up to date with national developments in the education sector. Information is correct at the time of writing and is offered in good faith. No liability is accepted by Steve Besley or EdCentral for decisions made on the basis of any information provided.