Education News

Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Schools in England must stay open five days a week this winter despite struggles with soaring energy costs, an education minister has said. Some school leaders are reportedly […] More

Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter GCSEs and A-levels should be ditched in favour of a new qualification that better prepares school-leavers for the workplace, former Labour PM Tony Blair’s think tank has suggested. […] More

Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter The government needs to have a “serious conversation” about how to tackle soaring demand for higher education to make sure poorer students don’t miss out, the university admissions […] More

Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Funding intended to boost the academic performance of the UK’s most disadvantaged children has been cut in real terms by nearly half a billion pounds in seven years, […] More

Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter A North-South regional divide has emerged in A-level results, as the first exam results since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic also showed a dip in top grades. […] More

Universities failing to take tough action on sexual misconduct should risk losing their official status, ministers have said. Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi and Universities minister Michelle Donelan have told the higher education regulator it should become a sanctionable offence to not follow its recommendations on tackling sexual violence, The Independent can reveal.This could involve a range of penalties, with the worst or repeated breaches potentially resulting in a loss of university status. Last April the regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), set out a list of recommendations aimed at helping universities to prevent and respond to sexual harassment and misconduct on campus. These include introducing sound processes for reporting incidents, support for those involved in investigations and governing bodies making sure approaches to tackling sexual misconduct are “adequate and effective”. At the time, the regulator said it would consider giving these more weight by making them a “condition of registration”.This would give it powers to issue sanctions for breaches but a year later that has yet to be introduced.The OfS recommendations were made in the wake of the Everyone’s Invited campaign, which saw current and former students share thousands of testimonies of abuse. The website, as well as the murder of Sarah Everard, had also sparked campus protests calling for tougher action on sexual violence. Students have told The Independent they felt let down by universities after experiencing sexual assault, saying there had been a lack of support or they were put off reporting in the first place.Jo Grady, the head of the University and College Union, told The Independent there needed to be a “strong stance” from the university regulator to tackle “endemic” sexual violence on campuses.“Although the sector is waking up to the issue, the pace of change remains slow and far too variable in places,” she said.Education ministers say they made clear in a letter published online late March they wanted regulatory powers to cover sexual misconduct policies as soon as possible. “The Office for Students – which regulates universities – has published a statement of expectations on how universities should handle cases sexual harassment and misconduct,” a Department for Education spokesperson told The Independent. “In March the education secretary and Minister Donelan wrote to the OfS making clear his view that this should be made a condition of registration, meaning the regulator would have very real powers to penalise universities which are failing victims of sexual harassment and assault. “In our view, the OfS should include this in a condition of registration as soon as possible.”John Blake, the OfS director for fair access and participation, told The Independent last week: “We are now examining how universities and colleges have responded to the statement of expectations, and this work includes listening to the views of students and students’ unions.“Once this work is complete, we will consider what steps to take next including whether to connect the statement directly to our conditions of registration.”The regulator says universities would likely be given an opportunity to “improve performance” before anything else in the case of breaches.If they fail to do so, they could face further escalating intervention. Among the lighter sanctions are fines, while tougher ones include revoking the use of “university” in its name.“The consequence of this approach is that the OfS would be willing to use its power to deregister a provider that continues to breach conditions, or where an initial breach was judged to be sufficiently serious,” the OfS says online.“Such providers would therefore no longer be able to operate within the regulated higher education sector.”The Independent has approached OfS for comment about the education ministers’ letter. More

Poorer pupils will be left behind by the government’s new plan for schools because of the failure to offer adequate funding and ambitious ideas, experts and teachers have warned.Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi announced on Monday that all pupils will be offered targeted support as part of the long-awaited white paper on schools. But the plan was criticised by educational leaders for being too “vague”.The vision for England’s schools over the next decade includes a “parent pledge” that guarantees extra support for pupils falling behind in English and maths, such as small-group tutoring sessions. But the Education Policy Institute (EPI) think tank described the white paper as “disappointing”. It said the plan was “not well-funded enough” to help disadvantaged pupils catch up after the pandemic and close the inequality gap.Adding to the criticism was the National Association of Head Teachers union (NAHT), which said the proposals “fall short” of the ambition required. “Commitment to adequate funding, access to support services or detail on how these bold ambitions will be achieved is sadly missing,” said general secretary Paul Whiteman.The white paper said the government would aim for the national average GCSE grade achieved in English and maths to rise from 4.5 in 2019 to 5 by 2030. Schools will also have to offer a 32.5-hour school week by 2023 as part of a push to increase teaching hours, and Ofsted will be asked to inspect every school by 2025.But the EPI criticised the failure to set out a clear plan to reduce the disadvantage gap leaving the poorest pupils behind. The institute said disadvantaged pupils in England – the 1.74 million children eligible for free school meals – will still be 18 months of learning behind their peers by the time they finish their GCSEs. “This gap had stopped closing before the pandemic and is now significantly wider,” said EPI executive chair David Laws.“If the government wishes to meet the white paper aims, it may well need a further education recovery package, targeted on the pupils, schools and local areas which have missed out most,” the former Liberal Democrat minister added.Meanwhile, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said the plan lacked “big ideas”, describing the proposal for boosting pupils’ literacy and numeracy targets as “vague”.“There is little recognition of the wider societal factors which affect those outcomes, such as the fact that nearly a third of children in the UK live in poverty,” he said. “It is hard to learn when you are hungry, cold, poorly clothed and live in inadequate housing.”Labour accused the government of making a “smoke and mirrors” announcement, saying that developing good reading, writing and maths skills should be fundamental and not just an “add-on”.Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said the strategy is “distracting from the business of teaching with yet more tinkering with school structures whilst offering nothing to change children’s day-to-day experience in the classroom”.And Conservative MP Robert Halfon, chair of the Education Committee, said he hoped that “increasing parental engagement through the ‘parent pledge’ will help break down long-standing and often complicated barriers that exist to help increase attendance”.Mr Zahawi said the white paper was “levelling up” in action. It also includes a pledge for all schools to join a “strong” multi-academy trust by 2030, and a commitment for Ofsted to inspect every school by 2025.Councils will be able to establish and run their own academy trusts, which it is hoped will encourage more primary schools to become academies. Councils will also legally be able to request for their non-academy schools to join a trust.And where schools have received two consecutive Ofsted judgements below “good”, the government plans to help them to join strong trusts – with an initial focus on schools in the 55 education “cold spots” identified in the levelling up paper.The NAHT said the decision to change school structures was likely to be “controversial”, warning it could prove distracting unless the government presented a “compelling case” for the changes.Among the white paper’s other announcements is that 500,000 teacher training and development opportunities would be introduced, and a commitment to raise starting salaries to £30,00 was affirmed.However, Mr Zahawi indicated that senior school teachers would not be receiving a pay rise, saying that the public sector had to “exercise restraint” as inflation levels soar. The education secretary told Times Radio: “For more senior staff, we’re looking at a 5 per cent increase over two years … inflation is running ahead of that, of course.”He was also grilled over findings from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) showing that the gap between private and state school spending has doubled in just over a decade. The education secretary blamed a period of “tightening our belts” after the financial crash. “The important thing is to continue that investment now and deliver,” he told Sky News.Mr Zahawi also defended the “deserved” awarding of a knighthood to Sir Gavin Williamson – who oversaw the exams fiasco in 2020 – but said the closure of schools during the pandemic was “a mistake”. More

The former top Department for Education (DfE) civil servant received a payout of nearly £278,000 to quit his post in the wake of last year’s exam grade fiasco, it has emerged.Jonathan Slater was ousted as permanent secretary after Boris Johnson demanded “fresh official leadership” in August 2020.He had just months left in the £165,000-a-year role when the DfE said he agreed to step down. Official department documents have now revealed Mr Slater was paid £277,780 “for loss of office”.He took home as much as £380,000 in the last financial year, including the severance payment, salary and pension benefits, the annual report and accounts show.His departure from the DfE sparked outrage last year, with Boris Johnson accused of “throwing civil service leaders under a bus” as Mr Slater joined a list of officials to be removed. Less than two weeks after the A-level exam fiasco, the government said in a statement: “The prime minister has concluded that there is a need for fresh official leadership at the Department for Education. “Jonathan Slater has therefore agreed that he will stand down on 1 September, in advance of the end of his tenure in Spring 2021.”Earlier that month, the DfE had come under fire for its system for working out exam grades – which initially relied on an algorithm – after exams were cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. After tens of thousands of A-level grades were downgraded in moderation, the government U-turned and allowed students to take higher grades predicted by their teachers. Mr Slater told Schools Week he first heard about his departure after an enquiry from a journalist for The Times. “One of the advantages of the prime minister having had enough of me is I have more time with the family,” he said earlier this year. Mr Slater and the DfE have been approached for comment. More