Better Schools Report: Food, Glorious Food

Better Schools

Food, Glorious Food

Food in schools: School meals and the teaching of cookery

Tim Clark MA, PGCE, FRSA

January 2025 - Fourth Edition

Foreword

Mealtimes have always provided a certain structure to our day. From our earliest schooldays to business life, often there are three courses: starter, main and pudding. A bit like our employability support of candidates who arrive with a problem, work with mentors and then achieve great success.

Tim Clark’s “Better Schools” report could not be more timely, addressing one of the most crucial yet often overlooked aspects of education—food in schools and the teaching of cookery. I am acutely aware of the impact that foundational life skills have on young people’s ability to thrive in the workplace. Nutrition, learning to cook and understanding food’s role in our health are not just educational issues; they are societal imperatives that shape employability, productivity and wellbeing in later life.

Reading through this report, I was struck by its meticulous historical analysis of school meals, from the early 20th century provisions to today’s challenges with free school meals, breakfast clubs and the evolving role of food education in the national curriculum. Clark presents a compelling case for why school food policies must be about more than just sustenance; they are about setting young people up for success.

Employability is often framed in terms of qualifications, experience and soft skills, but we rarely consider how something as fundamental as food security and dietary education play into this equation. A well-fed child is better able to concentrate, learn and develop the resilience needed for the challenges of both academia and employment. It is alarming to read the statistics that suggest one in three children leaves primary school overweight or obese, or that many children go without a nutritious meal each day. How can we expect young people to excel in the workforce if they have not been given the tools to understand and manage their own health and nutrition?

Clark’s recommendations are clear and pragmatic: practical cookery should be compulsory in schools, universal free school meals should be seriously considered and schools should integrate food education more deeply into their ethos. These are not just educational reforms but economic ones, ensuring that future generations are equipped with the knowledge and habits that will lead to healthier, more productive lives.

At Finito, we work with young people at the crucial transition from school to the workplace, helping them to secure meaningful careers. In doing so, we see first-hand how life skills, confidence and wellbeing contribute to success. This report serves as a powerful reminder that education is not just about exams and league tables but about nurturing the whole individual. If we get food in schools right, we are not just helping children make it through the day—we are preparing them for a lifetime of success.

As a child, I always ate what I was given and still do to this day.

Ronel Lehmann, Founder and Chief Executive, Finito

Introduction

Banana custard and spam fritters (it was customary to press your fork on to the fritter to make the grease run out): the highs and lows of school meals at a village infant school in the early 1970s, delivered each day in large stainless-steel containers from the kitchens of the local secondary school. At break time, there was also the free third of a pint of milk, transported in an open milk float so that in winter it was semi frozen and, in the summer, putridly lukewarm. Not quite the utopia implied by the educationalist Professor Harold Dent who, writing just after the war, welcomed the fact that, “children in publicly maintained schools receive daily a wellbalanced and well-cooked midday meal at school.”

The issue of food in schools, both the feeding of children and the teaching of cookery in the curriculum, raises, perhaps surprisingly, some of the most profound questions and practical difficulties for today’s policy makers. Is it, for example, the duty of the state and the taxpayer to feed children? If so, is it only the most disadvantaged for whom we should provide? At what point is a child deemed disadvantaged enough to warrant state intervention? Is it purely a financial matter? What should be the role and responsibilities of parents? Likewise, the inclusion of cookery in the timetable raises the ultimate question for schools: is it the purpose of education to equip young people with practical life skills, such as the ability to cook, or should it be something more cerebral and academic? [The OED definition of academic being, “scholarly…. of no practical relevance, theoretical”.]

The purpose of this fourth report is, initially by tracing the history of the provision of food for pupils and the position of practical cookery in the curriculum, to try to identify some of the key questions and practical difficulties that emerge, and to then suggest realistic and workable ways forward.

01 School Dinners

The history and background

Early in the history of state education, a clear link was spotted between educational performance and nutrition. In 1883, following discussion of the demands of the Revised Code (payment by results) The Lancet commented that, “The educational system is not overworking children but demonstrating that they are underfed.” [The Lancet, 4th August 1883]

Prior to 1906, charities and some individual schools and school boards were involved with the very limited and localised provision of school meals, most notably in Manchester and Bradford. The first formal government intervention was the passing of the permissive Education (Provision of Meals) Act 1906 which empowered (but did not require) local education authorities (LEAs) to arrange meals for those children whose education was deemed to be suffering because of malnourishment. The meal did not have to be lunch and could just as likely be breakfast. If a parent could afford to pay, a small charge was made, otherwise the LEA would cover the cost through the local rates. This marked a clear desire by the Liberal government to get more directly involved with the health and welfare of children: the following year, compulsory medical inspections were introduced in elementary schools. These powers, however, were used between the wars to varying degrees by different LEA’s, with no uniformity or universality. The New Liberal government which won a landslide victory in the 1906 election was, however, the first government to tentatively move away from the laissez-faire attitudes of Gladstonian Liberalism and to adopt a much more interventionist approach. It was partly influenced by social studies such as those by Charles Booth and Seebohm Rowntree which highlighted the extent of grinding poverty, plus the frightening revelation that up to 40% of recruits had been rejected from the army during the Boer War owing to malnourishment and poverty-related

illnesses such as rickets. There was a genuine fear of national physical deterioration.

During the Second World War, meals became an integral part of school life and provision expanded enormously with lunch offered to all children. As a result, school meals lost the stigma of poverty and were accompanied by a free or subsidised third of a pint of milk. It is of course, one of the great anomalies of the war that despite the bombing, the U-boat campaign and the resulting significant drop in food imports, the increases in the cost of living and the introduction of food rationing in 1940, that from 1941 onwards the overall diet of the nation actually improved in terms of protein and nutrition, with a noticeable rise in food consumption for unskilled workers. There were several reasons for this, but the point was clearly made that government intervention in food provision, nutrition and health could make a dramatic difference to the least well-off in society. By the end of the war, about a third of the school population was being fed, 1.6 million meals a day.

QUESTION: To what extent were school meals responsible for the improved health of the nation during wartime?

After the war, the Labour Party contrasted the 1940s with the 1930s and claimed that, “In spite of shortages, the children are rosy cheeked, well clothed…. They are taller, heavier and healthier than before the war”. [Quoted in Wartime Britain, Juliet Gardiner p176]. Indeed, despite continued

food rationing [until 1954] children in 1950 had healthier diets than their counterparts in the 1990s. [Derek Gillard, “Food for Thought”, 2003].

In 1941 a National School Meals Policy introduced the first nutritional standards which set levels of protein, fat and calories for school meals. These were updated over the years until 1975 when some food-based standards were introduced, for example fresh meat was to be served three days a week.

Speaking in 1945, Lord Woolton [Conservative Minister of Reconstruction, previously Minister of Food] said of school food provision, “Feeding is not enough, it must be good feeding. The food must be chosen in the light of knowledge of what a growing child needs for building a sound body. And when the food is well chosen, it must be well cooked. This is a task that calls for the highest degree of scientific catering; it mustn’t be left to chance”. (Quoted by Matthew Fort, The Guardian 3rd December 1999). His words proved prophetic: in 1980, the Black Report on inequalities of health commented that nutritious school meals were vital to the health of children.

“To leave school children, especially young children, to make their own free choices as to what food is to be purchased would be wrong. Children will frequently prefer to consume foods high only in sugar and other sources of energy. As an inadequate substitute for a nutritious meal, this is likely to lead to increases in obesity”. The Report also concluded that, “Provision of meals at school should be regarded as a right…. [and] should be provided without charge.” The great 1944 Education Act extended the provision of meals and milk in the post-war world. Section 49 stated that:

“Regulations [Provision of school Milk and Meals Regulations, 1945] made by the Minister shall impose upon local education authorities the duty of providing milk, meals and other refreshment for pupils in attendance at schools and colleges maintained by them.”

A small charge was levied on those who could afford it, but once there were enough canteens, the intention was to make provision free of charge. Regulations in 1946 formalised a school milk and meals grant direct from central government that

was to apply to all schools, including independent schools, which from 1947 was to cover 100% of the cost of school dinners, and just over half the cost of other meals and refreshments. Free school milk was universal.

As with medical prescriptions, however, the New Jerusalem proved too expensive and from 1949, LEAs were permitted to charge 6d for meals, while still providing them free of charge to those in need.

FACT:

In 1968 the Labour government raised the cost of meals and ended free milk in secondary schools. This point is often forgotten unlike in the 1970s when Margaret Thatcher, the “milk snatcher”, completed the journey by ending universal free milk in junior schools [although, not usually reported, this was to release money for a primary school building programme].

A dramatic change came with the 1980 Education Act which saw school meals as a nonessential service and removed both the minimum nutritional standards for school meals and the obligation upon LEA’s to provide school meals, except for those entitled to free meals. Lincolnshire, for example, stopped meals in primary schools, except for those legally entitled to free meals. The drive was to reduce costs but there was also the acceptance that for many, traditional school meals were simply unattractive. Hence the ensuing rise of the cafeteria system and a rise in the number of children bringing snacks from home.

FACT:

McDonald’s opened its first UK location in Powis Street, Woolwich, south east London, on 13 November, 1974.

QUESTION: Should school meals reflect society or try to mould it? Should we tell children what to eat or let them choose?

Under the Local Government Act 1988 school catering was outsourced to private companies after compulsory competitive tender where the “lowest bid wins” became the norm; the policy became “best value” in 1998.

A 2018 study by University College London compared the weights and heights in groups of children from 1946, 1958, 1979 and 2000 and identified that poor children now outweighed their richer counterparts and blamed changes of diet since the war, including an increase in the consumption of sugar, salt and fat in processed foods and drinks. [Quoted in The Provision of school Meals Since 1906: progress or a recipe for disaster? Alan Finch, 2019, historyandpolicy.org]. This echoed an earlier Food Standards Agency report which said children were eating too much junk food, less fresh fruit and fewer vegetables than ever before and not taking enough exercise.

QUESTION: To what extent do school canteens and meal policies affect the overall diet of young people? Is a much broader, universal response necessary?

In 1999 David Blunkett issued new regulations for school meals to try to ensure that pupils had a more balanced diet. The nutritional standards for school meals – the first for over 20 years –were published in 2000 and became compulsory the following year. Chips, for example, were to appear no more than three times per week in primary schools and fresh fruit be offered at least twice a week.

In 2004, TV chef Jamie Oliver launched his campaign about school meals and in 2005 Channel 4 ran “Jamie’s school dinners”, highlighting the state of lunches in many schools. Partly as a result, the DfES set up the School Meal Review Panel and the School Food Trust in 2005 (became The Children’s Food Trust in 2012). Between 2006 and 2009 legislation was introduced by Statutory Instrument, setting out what caterers could and could not provide

in schools and demanding food-based and nutrient based-standards. The “turkey twizzler” became notorious and was practically outlawed. The standards were compulsory for all state funded schools, including those with private catering services, and were recommended for independent schools.

The healthy eating campaign, however, was not universally popular. Who can forget the scenes at a school in South Yorkshire where parents took to taking pupils’ orders for the local chip shop through the school fence and then delivering the takeaways from the grounds of a neighbouring cemetery? One parent said, “We are giving them what they’re asking for”, whereas the Head responded by saying, “The food these parents are handing out is not part of a healthy eating diet…. I just don’t think it’s helping their children and I don’t think it’s helping their children’s school”. [BBC News, 15/09/2006]

The arguments surrounding the cost, choice, health and the nutritional value of food once again became a topic for political debate more recently. During the Conservative Party leadership race, Liz Truss pledged to scrap the planned ban on multi-buy deals for unhealthy products [“buy one, get one free”: BOGOF] and not to introduce any new taxes on junk food, partly as a response to the rising cost of living crisis. She promised no new “nanny state” levies on products high in fat, sugar or salt if she became PM. People, “Don’t want the government telling them what to eat,” she said [Daily Mail August 2022]. Celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was amongst those to criticise the change of heart saying that Truss, “has no mandate to cancel it and doing so will not merely increase the burden on the NHS but shorten the lives of many thousands of people” [BBC News 14th Sept 2022]. Interestingly, former Tory leader Lord Hague also attacked the possible U-turn, calling it “morally reprehensible”. “Many Tories object to the “nanny state” image of anti-obesity policies and think it is “un-conservative” to pursue them….. As a former Tory leader, I emphatically disagree with this interpretation of conservatism. Conservatives support freedom of choice but have always seen that it is sometimes necessary to prevent consumers being abused or misled,” he said [BBC News 17th May 2022].

Following the reintroduction of food standards and the Oliver campaign, a number of initiatives appeared. In 2004 the DfES published the Healthy Living Blueprint for Schools, calling for compulsory healthy eating and physical activity, with the aim that half of all schools would reach “healthy school status” by 2006, with the rest working towards it by 2009. In 2005 The Dept of Health launched the Food in Schools Programme and a Food in Schools Toolkit with a range of guidance and resources on healthier eating.

“The belly rules the mind”. Spanish proverb

School food standards have since been reviewed several times. In 2012 Michael Gove set up an independent review of school food which led to the School Food Plan and to revised food standards which were, “designed to make it easier for school cooks to create imaginative, flexible and nutritious menus”. In 2014, further School Food Regulations introduced additional requirements such as to offer three or more fruits and veg per week; meat or poultry on three or more days per week and oily fish once or more every three weeks. The Standards continue to be revised, most recently on 19th September 2024.

Department for Education Guidance

School food standards practical guide

Updated 19 September 2024

As a general principle, it’s important to provide a wide range of foods across the week. Use fresh, sustainable and locally sourced ingredients (best of all, from the school vegetable garden) and talk to the children about what they are eating.

The food-based standards specify which types of food should be served at school and how often.

Remember to use Sustainable procurement the government buying standards alongside these standards to help reduce salt, saturated fat and sugar in children’s diets.

A child’s healthy, balanced diet should consist of:

• Plenty of fruit and vegetables

• Plenty of unrefined starchy foods

• Some meat, fish, eggs, beans and other nondairy sources of protein

• Some milk and dairy foods

• A small amount of food and drink high in fat, sugar and salt

Question: Is local provision of school food a practical, cost-effective reality?

For all these reforms, however, problems still remain and of course, they make no allowance for what children eat away from school.

The Food Foundation currently declares that young people in the UK are eating too much saturated fat, sugar and salt and too little fibre, fruit and veg, resulting in diabetes and obesity, ailments traditionally associated with adults. It is presumably impossible to legislate for what people eat at home, but what of packed lunches? Apparently only 1% of packed lunches meet School Food Standards [schoolwellbeing.co.uk] while it is quite possible that a healthy packed lunch (i.e. fulfilling the statutory food standards) is actually more expensive than a school meal:

of Michaela. It is where children are taught the soft skills of conversation, good table manners and kindness…..Pupils clean, serve and clean up after each other.” [Michaela website] All meals are vegetarian [School Food Standards?], teachers eat with pupils and there is a lunch topic of the day which pupils are required to discuss.

QUESTION: Can schools make school meals compulsory? What happens when parents do not want to pay? Can schools force parents to pay (unless on free school meals)? The answer may be that Common Law precedent has always been that by sending a pupil to a particular school, parents agree to abide by its rules and expectations on uniform and homework etc. This may be an issue, however, that ultimately needs to be settled in court or by statutory guidance.Some milk and dairy foods

• A small amount of food and drink high in fat, sugar and salt

Packed

Packed

Source: schoolhealthuk.co.uk

QUESTION: Packed lunches – is it the job of teachers to police what pupils bring to school in their packed lunches? What if a packed lunch is inappropriate? Is it confiscated and the child goes hungry? Many LEAs provide guidance on packed lunches, but can it be enforced? Before the 2024 general election, Keir Starmer proposed teacher-led toothbrushing sessions in primary schools to help combat endemic dental decay: again, is this the responsibility of the teacher?

Finally, there are the wider social and educational issues surrounding school meals to consider. The concept of “Family lunch”, where pupils eat together, serve each other and clear up afterwards is becoming more and more popular. An oft quoted example is Michaela School in north London: “Family lunch is the beating heart

FACTS:

Pupils only spend 17.5% of the year in school –82.5% of their time is spent beyond the school gates.

Over 2000 varieties of apple are grown in the UK – enough for a different apple variety every day of compulsory schooling!

One in three children is overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school; 2.5 million children are living in households where over the last six months food has been insecure - in Jan 2023 this was estimated at 24% of households with children, according to UK Parliament Post, 31st July 2023; one third of young children eat less than one portion of veg a day. The Food Foundation

Free school meals

The formal provision of free school meals effectively began to take shape with the 1921 Education Act which set out relevant criteria. But but the onset of the ensuing Depression and the allocation of a finite amount of money for free meals meant that the eligibility criteria were tightened over time and many malnourished children did not get the help they needed.

“Where the local education authority resolve that any of the children attending an elementary school within their area are unable by reason of lack of food to take full advantage of the education provided for them, and have ascertained that funds other than public funds are not available or are insufficient in amount to defray the cost of food furnished in meals under this Act, they may spend out of the rates such sums as will meet the cost of provision of such food” [p53, Section 84]

Again, there is a clear move by the government to require schools to be much more involved in the health and welfare of pupils. Section 86 for example, empowered [but did not require] schools to promote social and physical training and permitted the use of holiday camps, school baths and school swimming baths. Section 87 is equally well meaning, but the terminology probably a little dated: “Cleansing of verminous children”!

One issue with free school meals has always been the stigma attached to their receipt. In 2012 a report by the Children’s Society revealed that hundreds of thousands of children not taking up free school meals because of the stigma and made a strong argument for cashless catering. While a Head in Lincolnshire, I found many parents not applying for free school meals simply because of traditional attitudes of independence and not wanting to ask for help. The result was that many deserving children missed out.

A major extension of the provision of universal free school meals occurred under the Coalition Government when in 2014, Universal Infant Free School Meals were launched, with 98% of primary schools offering free hot lunches to Key Stage 1. All children in a government funded school have since been in receipt of a free meal if they are in reception class, Year 1 and Year 2. Universal infant free school meals must meet school food standards. The scheme has proved extremely popular with parents and in 2023/24 1.6 million infants took a free school meal on census day, of which 1.3 million were not normally eligible for free school meals.

“Leave your drugs in the chemist’s pot if you can heal the patient with food.”

Hippocrates

FACT:

The need for nutritional support is clearly evident. Freedom of Information responses have suggested that 11,500 children were admitted to hospital with malnutrition since 2015, with almost 2,500 in the first six months of 2020, double the number of the previous year. [sarahscotland.co.uk].

It is clear that free school meals can be an emotive issue. During the first Lockdown, March 2020, Marcus Rashford, the Manchester United and England forward, joined a campaign in his home city of Manchester, delivering meals to those children no longer receiving their free school meals.. The scheme became nationwide and ultimately provided four million meals a day. (The Independent, 14th July 2020). Rashford was also credited with encouraging Boris Johnson into a U-turn on his decision to end free school meals. vouchers during the summer holiday and agree to commit £120m to providing all free school meals. children with supermarket food vouchers over the six-week summer holiday. On Twitter he wrote, “The wellbeing of our children should ALWAYS be a priority”. (Independent, 16th June 2020).

The current situation

FSM eligibility rate increases to a new high in 2024 % of pupils known to be eligible, England

Pupils known to be eligible for FSM January 204, England

Note: Data includes non-maintained special schools from 2006 House of Commons Library 8th October 2024

QUESTION: The value of a free school meal is £2.58 per pupil, per meal. Is this enough? Many smaller schools are charging £3.50 or more per meal.

Free school meals are means tested, and must be applied for via the LEA, with the basic requirement that the parent/carer be in receipt of Universal Credit and the household income must be less than £7,400 per year, after tax. (Other qualifying benefits include Income Support, Child Tax Credit, Pension Credit etc may also apply, plus families with no recourse to public funds.)

Note: AP schools include maintained pupil referral units, and alternative provision free schools and academies.

Numbers of FSM children 2023/4 = 24.6% of pupils [2.1 million pupils] up from 23.8% in 2023. There is a significant and worrying hike in the percentage of children on free school meals attending both special schools and alternative provision.

QUESTION: At what point is a child deemed to be in need of state support? Is it solely a financial consideration? In Northern Ireland the income threshold is £14,000, almost twice the amount of the threshold in England.

“A pupil is only eligible to receive a free school meal when a claim for the meal has been made on their behalf and their eligibility, or protected status, has been verified by the school where they are enrolled or by the local authority.” “[P5 DfE Guidance, March 2024]. No specific provision is made for children receiving education otherwise than at school although LEAs are encouraged to make provision where appropriate. No provision is made for elective home education, where parents have chosen to not to send their children to school.

The Guidance states that, “The government recognises the benefits of providing a healthy school meal to the most disadvantaged pupils” and applies to eligible pupils between the ages of 5 and 16.

Breakfast clubs

Guidance on the National School Breakfast Club Programme [NSBP] was issued in November 2022 and updated March 2024 [gov.uk]. It states that,

“Evidence shows that providing a healthy school breakfast at the start of the school day can contribute to improved readiness to learn, increased concentration and improved wellbeing and behaviour”. Until July 2025 schools will receive a 75% subsidy for breakfast clubs, with schools contributing the remaining 25%. There is no cost to pupils or parents. Only schools in “disadvantaged areas” are eligible, this being determined by the income deprivation affecting children index [40% or more of pupils must be in bands A-F]. All food must meet the school food standards.

In September 2024 (updated November) the DfE issued new guidance on breakfast clubs, the “early adopters’ scheme”. “The government is committed to offering a free breakfast club in every primary school in England. Breakfast clubs support children’s attendance and attainment, enabling them to thrive academically and socially.”

From April 2025, the government will fund 750 early adopters (out of 20,000 primary schools) giving schools the “unique opportunity to shape the national breakfast club policy, contributing directly to its design and implementation”. The intention is that these prototypes will direct future government policy.

Some £30 million has been allocated to the scheme but divided between almost 17,000 primary schools, the funding equates to roughly £9 per school, per day. Supervision, even if paid on the minimum wage, will swallow up over £6 per day, leaving only £3 to cover the cost of the food and its preparation. Since the scheme is to be mandatory,

schools will probably be forced to contribute additional funds from budgets which are already overstretched, to support it. Is this universalist approach the best use of school money, especially if the scheme is neither wanted nor used by many, or even most, children?

The role of charities

The role of charities in helping to feed children is nothing new. A popular feature of The Salvation Army slum work in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, was the so-called ‘Farthing Breakfasts’ held in several deprived urban areas, but especially in London. For the price of a farthing (a quarter of a penny) children could begin their day with a filling breakfast, which they could eat in a communal space or take home to share with other family members.

Magic Breakfast - fuel for learning, is a contemporary registered charity. It argues that almost one in five children in UK is at risk of going hungry each morning. The charity currently works with 200,000 children every day as well as undertaking research, advocacy and working with politicians, regardless of party. Funding derives from donations from individuals, trusts, corporate partners and from a membership fee from participating schools. Their research shows that, “breakfast at school is central to supporting pupils’ learning, mental health and social skills”; that secondary pupils who had breakfast achieve, “on average, two GCSE’s higher than children who rarely eat breakfast”; that a nutritious breakfast boosts children’s reading, writing and maths “by an average of two months’ progress” compared to pupils with no breakfast and that attendance improves and late arrivals decrease.

QUESTION: Magic Breakfast claims that for every £1 invested in school breakfasts, more than £50 can be generated for the economy in the future. Is this true? Can it be proved?

This clearly echoes Winston Churchill’s famous comment that, “There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.”

[Churchill, radio speech, 21st March 1943]. The argument is the same: ensuring children have a strong healthy start is investing in the future; youngsters will, hopefully, grow into healthy productive adults who will contribute to society.

QUESTION: To what extent can investing in school food yield benefits in the future in terms of a healthy, fitter workforce?

Another food charity, The Food Foundation has developed the “Children’s Right2Food Charter” (2020) which, amongst other things, calls for raising the income threshold for free school meals to £14,000 per year as used in Northern Ireland; an expansion of holiday provision permanently to support free school meals children when schools are closed; an increase the free school meals allowance to £4.00 per day and the renaming of free school meals to the “school meal allowance” to remove negative associations. There are several interesting points here that need to be thoroughly and objectively costed.

Recommendations

• Unambiguous legal support must be given to those schools which want to make eating at school and “family lunch” a compulsory part of the school day; this will require those parents not eligible to claim free school meals to pay for meals, as part of the condition of accepting a place at that school.

• Free school meals should be automatically given to all eligible pupils, removing the requirement for parents to formally apply to the LEA. Recent research suggests that up to 500,000 children fully entitled to free school meals could be missing out because their parents have failed, for one reason or another, to make a formal application.

• Detailed and objective research should be undertaken into the true health impact of school meals, both at lunchtime and breakfast. There is much small scale, anecdotal evidence of the positive impact of improved diet in terms of health, behaviour and attainment, but do these views stand up to rigorous scrutiny? Consideration must also be given to diet outside of school, such as the impact of junk food and fizzy drinks on both health and performance in school. If the evidence is substantiated, then serious consideration should be made to making free school meals available to all. If the evidence is overwhelming, then the provision of universal free school meals becomes much more politically acceptable.

• Detailed and objective research must be conducted into the long-term costs of providing school meals –a genuine, long-term cost-benefit analysis. Is Magic Breakfast correct in alleging that there is a return of £50 in the long run for every £1 spent on school food? Again, if this is proven beyond reasonable doubt, then universal provision of free school meals becomes much more politically acceptable.

• Research and modelling to be conducted into:

a) raising the value of a free school meal to £4;

b) raising the threshold for free school meals to £14,000;

c) the cost of providing universal free school meals. Such calculations must include the costs of staff supervision and the provision of appropriate facilities.

• Nutritional school food standards should be practical, realistic, cost-effective and rigorously enforced.

• The responsibility for feeding children is clearly shared between parents, schools and government. More must be done in inform and educate all parents about how to ensure their children are fit and healthy, to clarify the links between food and obesity/health and to prove that healthy eating need not be expensive. If we are serious about genuinely improving the health of young people, there must be a recognition that it must be about much more than simply school dinners and breakfast clubs.

• Schools should be required to consider how they use lunchtime for wider educational purposes. They should each have a policy that covers the social benefits of pupils eating and socialising together. Consideration must be given to suitable supervision. (Traditional teacher contracts do not cover working at lunchtime; supervising pupils at lunchtime is usually voluntary and requires additional payment.)

02 Teaching about food and how to cook

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for his lifetime.” Anon

The national school system began with the 1870 Education Act. Early government funded schools concentrated on the 3 R’s, not least because of the Revised Code which funded schools according to their pupils’ performance in reading, writing and arithmetic. Over the next twenty years, as the Revised Code was gradually phased out, more subjects were added to the curriculum; the 1880’s, for example, saw the introduction of cookery “for girls”. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the idea of girls’ and boys’ subjects appeared perfectly acceptable to the mores of the time. Domestic subjects were seen as necessary not only for working class girls but also for middle class girls owing to the decline of domestic service. Courses focussed largely on running a household, though the emphasis on scientific cookery and domestic economy was seen as more appropriate for academically able pupils rather than basic cookery, laundry and needle craft. This was noticeable in the early twentieth century with the development of domestic science as a subject, which placed an emphasis on nutrition as well as the practical activity of cookery.

The forward-looking Newsome Report of 1963 still reflected the traditional attitudes of the times:

“Girls know that whether they marry early or not, they are likely to find themselves eventually making and running a home [388] …. Housecraft

and needle work easily justify their place in the curriculum to most girls [389] …. [An] element of realism needs to be introduced in claims on the pupils’ time. Real housewives have to take children to and from school, keep appointments and fit in their cooking and sewing and cleaning and their own recreation with demands that are outside their control.” [393] The Report did, however, welcome change: “We welcome…that some schools achieve a sufficient flexible organisation to allow boys to take cookery if they wish and girls, handicraft or technical drawing [375] … A boy may want to cook, a girl to build a canoe. If the school organisation can bend to make this possible, it may be their educational salvation.” [531]

The 1975 Sex Discrimination Act also helped to destroy the concept of traditional girls’ and boys’ subjects.

In the 1970s and 1980s, domestic science morphed into home economics which introduced a more scientific approach to food and nutrition. In 1978 a government document described home economics as a subject which “combines knowledge drawn from the sciences and arts and applies it to experiences which pupils can relate directly to their own lives...has strong links to science… [and enables] investigation and problem solving.”

“Home economics stands for the ideal home life for today unhampered by the traditions of the past and the utilization of all the resources of modern science to improve home life.”

Ellen Swallow Richards 1842 –

1911, founder of the American Home Economics Association in 1908, changing its name in 1994 to the American Association

of Family and Consumer Sciences

The Nuffield Home Economics Project in the 1980s typified this approach, its course comprising four parts:

1. Food science (biological, chemical and physical nature of food) plus methods of preparation and cooking.

2. Nutrition

3. Fibres and fabrics

4. People and homes – the scientific principles underlying the effective and economic management of the home.

In 1985 EJ Bolton, a Senior Chief Inspector, published “Home Economics from 5 – 16”, in the HMI discussion series, Curriculum Matters. The document clearly values home economics and justified its inclusion in the curriculum. “The primary aim of teaching home economics in schools is to help to prepare boys and girls [sic] for some important aspects of everyday living and the adult responsibilities of family life……All pupils...[should] gain competence and to make informed choices in matters of hygiene, safety, health and diet….Although theory and knowledge are important….they should be related closely to the performance of practical tasks….Much of the work in home economics at every stage should be of a practical and investigative nature. Pupils

should be encouraged to judge and improve their own performance…. Teaching methods should encourage the development of pupils’ critical and analytical skills.”

Bolton also saw a clear employment-related argument to support the continuation of home economics in the timetable: “The expansion of service industries gives home economics an additional relevance.”

The report raised a particularly sensitive issue with which many schools today still have to grapple: where the expectations of school clash with those of the family, in this case, those where girls are expected to stay at home. Note Bolton’s blunt response: one that is as valid today as it was forty years ago:

“Pupils’ own parents already have views, some of which may be conditioned by religious or cultural background. It is most necessary that teachers be alert to and knowledgeable about the conflict of principles or loyalties which may arise…. That is not to say that they should avoid such problems at all costs. It is, for example, necessary to stress that home making is equally important for boys and girls and that in adult life the responsibilities of family life should be shared so that both men and women have sufficient opportunity to continue their own personal development.”

The National Curriculum

The major change in the teaching of cookery came with the National Curriculum, which was presaged by James Callaghan’s famous 1976 Ruskin College speech, one of the most revolutionary interventions by any PM in the field of education and which launched the “Great Debate”. It, “lit a flare that has illuminated education reform ever since”. [Andrew Adonis, 2006]

Callaghan called for a “basic curriculum with universal standards” and a “core curriculum of basic knowledge”, plus for reviews of the exam system, the inspectorate and of more informal teaching methodology, as well as for improved relations between industry and education. “There seems to be a need for more technological bias in science teaching that will lead towards practical applications in industry rather than towards academic studies.” In turn, the speech eventually culminated in the National Curriculum, GCSE’s and Ofsted.

The National Curriculum [1988 Education Reform Act, with some aspects introduced from September 1989] made “technology” a compulsory “foundation” subject until 16 (English, maths and science were deemed “core” subjects). It included craft, design and technology, (CDT) and food. This may have kept food on the curriculum, but it placed far less emphasis on practical cookery and much more on industrial processes, product design and the evaluation and testing of products. In 2005, QCA reported (QCA 2005:5) that the DfES had concerns over, “the quality of pupils’ experiences in practical cooking”. Was food technology about a life skill or simply a medium for studying design and technology? To help counter this, in 2008 the government introduced “Licence to Cook”, to ensure that all would learn, “basic cooking skills, diet, nutrition, hygiene and

safety and wise food shopping”. The programme, however, only lasted three years.

QUESTION: Is an effective cross-curricular approach to food and nutrition possible, one that includes science, maths, English, history, geography and RE? Such contrived approaches may be attractive in theory but are difficult to map and quality assure and are often seen as distractions from the main priorities of the individual subjects.

In 2013, a new GCSE in Food Preparation and Nutrition (initially entitled Cooking and Nutrition but deemed less attractive to boys!)) was introduced, focusing on practical cooking skills and food science. The current AQA GCSE specification states that it, “Focuses on practical cooking skills to ensure students develop a thorough understanding of nutrition, food provenance and the working characteristics of food materials…. At its heart, this qualification focuses on nurturing students’ practical cookery skills to give them a strong understanding of nutrition.” The course comprises five core topics:

1. Food, nutrition and health;

2. Food science;

3. Food safety;

4. Food choice;

5. Food provenance.

The purpose of the course was clear: “Upon completion of this course, students will be qualified to go on to further study or embark on an apprenticeship or full-time career in the catering or food industries.” Interestingly, no mention is made of pupils simply acquiring life skills or of adopting healthy lifestyles.

For many years there has been debate about the breadth of the school curriculum for example with the introduction of the EBacc which, by focusing on traditional academic subjects, was deemed to push out vocational and practical subjects. In 2014 there was a shakeup of GCSEs with some being culled or reclassified as vocational qualifications – film studies, leisure and tourism and home economics were just some which were scrutinised. Arabella Weir, writing in the Independent, attacked the scrapping of perceived “soft” subjects. She accepted that highly academic students may not opt for home economics or PE at GCSE but, “what about the kids for whom these subjects are the very means by which they engage with the overall learning process and for whom such qualifications are a meaningful and realistic achievement?.....I don’t believe for one minute that the absence of these “less academically rigorous” subjects will suddenly encourage these kids to discover an interest in, or an aptitude (never mind purpose) for, Latin and further maths.” [4th June 2014] I have long argued that a broader curriculum and the introduction of more practical, technical and vocational subjects at 14 rather than 16, would help improve standards, attendance, behaviour and attitudes to school and study.

QUESTION: What is the role of practical cookery in the curriculum? Is it a “soft” subject, suitable for the less academically able, or is it an essential life skill that should be compulsory for all? Presumably the classicist and the further mathematician have to eat?

The practical and essential benefits of being able to cook were highlighted during a parliamentary debate on the cost-of-living crisis and the explosion in the use of food banks. In May 2022, Conservative MP Lee Anderson caused

controversy by declaring, “we’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly… they cannot budget”. He invited MPs to visit a food bank in his Nottingham constituency where he said people, “have to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course…We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget…we can make a meal for about 30p a day”. There was an immediate backlash from the Opposition and on social media but he was supported by fellow Tory MP Brendan Clarke-Smith who tweeted a link to an article claiming that learning to cook was, “one of the best ways of fighting poverty and combating obesity.”

The wider, universal benefits of teaching about food in the curriculum are clearly argued in the article, Food in the curriculum. “Teaching about food in the school curriculum is more than the transmission of practical skills or preparing young people for work in the food industry, it should ensure that our children become better informed and responsible consumers of food. Current research…..has shown that food teaching has the potential to be a vehicle for informing and enriching the lives of children in the 21st century in practical, intellectual and social domains.” [OwenJackson and Rutland, 2017, Design and Technology Education]

The current situation

The National Curriculum was last updated in July 2014 and places significant emphasis on the teaching of cookery. “Pupils should be taught how to cook and apply the principles of nutrition and healthy eating. Instilling a love of cooking in pupils will also open a door to one of the great expressions of human creativity. Learning how to cook is a crucial life skill that enables pupils to feed themselves and others affordably and well, now and later in life”. At Key Stage 2 pupils are required to “prepare and cook a variety of predominantly savoury dishes using a range of cooking techniques”, and at Key Stage 3 to, “understand and apply the principles of nutrition and health; cook a repertoire of predominantly savoury dishes so that they are able to feed themselves and others a healthy and varied diet; become competent in a range of cooking techniques.” One must then ask, if this is in the National Curriculum, why has England not become a country of chefs and healthy eaters? Part of the answer may lie in the fact that despite its title, the National Curriculum is only statutory in Local Authority maintained schools, not in academies or free schools.

In 2015 the DfE, Public Health England and the British Nutrition Foundation published A Framework of Knowledge and Skills for food teaching in secondary schools and, similarly, one for primary schools. They outline the knowledge and skills that, developed over time, should result in “exemplary food teaching”.

The Frameworks are intended to help to implement the National Curriculum, core skills and the GCSE Food Prep and Nutrition. Both cover food preparation and cooking, designing, making and evaluating food, consumer awareness, food safety and hygiene. The British Nutrition Foundation (a charity) offers further support through its Food – a fact of life programme, a whole school approach for 3- to 16-year-olds, themed around healthy eating, cooking and understanding from where food comes. The programme, “cultivates critical thinking and decision-making skills, empowering children and young people to independently make informed food choices.” The charity provides resources and teacher training through conferences and webinars. “Our vision is simple. We believe that healthy, sustainable diets should be accessible to all”. The Foundation also helps to raise the profile of diet and nutrition by organising an annual Healthy Eating Week for schools, workplaces and communities.

As of June 2024, 42.7% of primary schools are academies or free schools and 81.9% of secondaries [gov.uk]

In 2016 the decision was made to remove food as a subject at A Level. The British Nutrition Foundation undertook a survey of schools in early 2020 to ascertain the impact of the decision and concluded that it had negatively impacted on GCSE and KS3 provision and called for its reinstatement, “not only to provide progression from GCSE but to also support the career aspirations and opportunities in food across the UK.” Crucially, “staffing remains an issue, in terms of capacity and subject specific knowledge and skills.” These views were echoed by a governmentcommissioned report by the National Food Strategy [Independent Review, Part 2] which found that, despite the requirements of the National Curriculum, food “remains a second-class subject – a fun but frivolous distraction from the

real business of learning. It is time to take food education seriously”. The scrapping of A Level Food in 2016, says the report, has reduced pupils’ chances and led to, “an inevitable slump in the number of cookery and nutrition leads”. It called for making schools work for accreditation schemes e.g. Food for Life, the reinstatement of food A Level and recommended that all schools should be required to have a cookery subject lead, that there should be an extension of holiday activities and that food provision should be inspected with, “the same rigour as English and maths”. Yet again there were calls to “address the current shortage of food teachers in secondary schools”. A survey by the Design and Technology Association (2004) found that some schools were no longer teaching food technology, mainly because of staff shortages. [Schools Week July 2021]

FACT:

The teacher recruitment and retention crisis: in 2022/3, only 24% of the recruitment target for new DT teachers was reached; it rose slightly in 2023/34 but only to 27%. [gov.uk]

QUESTION: The British Nutrition Foundation survey recommended that schools should pay for the ingredients that pupils use in practical cookery sessions, just as they pay for textbooks and consumables in science. The report estimates that over three years this would cost £124m: is this an accurate calculation?

The issue of inspection is an interesting one. There is always the danger that unless there is some form of compulsion – inspection, targets, external benchmarking, end of course examinations – that schools will sideline permissive guidance. When, for example, the coalition government dropped the targets for the number of schools achieving National Healthy School Status (which involved meeting a minimum number of criteria,) and moved to a more laissez-faire, “schools-led” approach, the Lancet worried that it may lead, “to a de-prioritisation of this initiative within schools, which could put the achievements of the NHSP [National Healthy School Programme] at risk.” Interestingly, the same article states that there is evidence that NHSP is associated

with improved general behaviour and achievement in pupils, but, at the same time, “It is not known if the NHSP results in improved health outcomes in children.” [sic] [6th May 2011]

QUESTION: What is the genuine impact of recent government health and dietary initiatives in schools?

Recommendations

• Practical cookery should be made compulsory in all government funded schools to the end of Key stage 3 and be formally inspected by Ofsted as part of the mandatory curriculum.

• As argued in all previous reports, immediate and radical action needs to be undertaken to resolve the current teacher recruitment and retention crisis.

• At Key Stage 4 (GCSE, Years 10 and 11), a range of examination courses should be offered, including practical cookery for personal benefit, courses which could lead to employment in the field of food or catering and more academic, scientificbased food and nutrition courses for those who wish to undertake further study.

• The possibility of a formal “life skills” course at Key Stage 4 (GCSE) should be considered, which would include food, nutrition and cookery. To give the qualification credability with pupils, parents and employers it would need to be assessed and certificated.

• Research should be undertaken to ascertain the true cost of covering the cost of pupils’ ingredients in practical cookery lessons, as recommended by the National Food Strategy, which estimates the three-year cost at £124m.

Conclusion

Last year the NHS spent £11.4 billion pounds treating obesity; according to the Daily Telegraph, obesity costs the economy £100 billion a year. Surely, there can be little argument about the benefits of a healthier and fitter population, but to what extent can schools make a significant contribution to the diet and future health of the nation? We must never forget that children, even those who attend full-time, only spend 17.5% of the year in school; for the remaining 82.5% they may be exposed to fast food, junk food and, most influential of all, to whatever they are fed at home. That said, what young people learn and experience in school can, without doubt, influence future choices and lifestyle decisions.

The topic of food in schools, both feeding children and teaching cookery and nutrition, raises fundamental questions about the role of the state and the very purpose of education. As a result, it is unlikely that universal consensus will ever be reached about either topic. One conclusion of this report is, therefore, that further research into the long-term financial costs and health outcomes of feeding pupils at school must be undertaken to objectively ascertain its true value – financial and social, as well as in terms of health and wellbeing. The DfE must fully support those schools which want to make lunchtime an integral and important part of the school day by making school lunch compulsory for all (both for those eligible for free school meals and for those whose parents have to pay). Equally, meaningful and effective teaching of cookery and nutrition should be compulsory in all state-funded schools until the end of Key Stage 3, and a range of practical, vocational and more academic courses covering cookery, food and nutrition should then be offered at Key Stages 4 and 5.

There should be no stigma about such an essential, fundamental and enjoyable aspect of life.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

Virginia Woolf

Better Schools The Future of the Country

Special Educational Needs and Disability

Rationale of the Third Edition

This third edition of Better Schools differs from the first two in a couple of significant ways. Firstly, it covers special educational needs provision, a topic which both previous editions consciously avoided. Secondly, this report concentrates solely on that one topic, rather than covering a number of unrelated issues.

The rationale for this approach is that SEND [Special Educational Needs and Disability] provision is an enormous, crucially important and highly challenging area of education. In this report, I have tried to explain the background to SEND, to highlight many of its complexities and to then offer a number of recommendations. Only by understanding the background and the current issues is it possible to really grasp some of the difficulties and questions that SEND provision raises. For many, much of this report will simply repeat what they already know, and possibly deal with on a daily basis, but by succinctly analysing the topic, I hope it is then possible to offer some practical and cost-effective recommendations.

For simplicity, I have used the term “school” throughout, but this should also include academies, UTC’s, community colleges etc. I have also consistently used the terms “children” and “pupils” but these should also include “students” and “young people”. The Children and Families Act 2014 gave significant new rights directly to young people once they reach the end of the academic year in which they turn 16. From this point onwards, local authorities and other agencies should normally engage directly with the young person rather than the parent.

Definitions and Key Terms

The statutory SEND Code of Practice [Special educational needs and disability code of practice: 0 to 25 years Statutory guidance for organisations which work with and support children and young people who have special educational needs or disabilities January 2015] states that a child aged two or more has special needs if he/she requires, “educational or training provision that is additional to or different from that made generally for other children or young people of the same age”.

xiii. A child or young person has SEN if they have a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her.

iv. A child of compulsory school age or a young person has a learning difficulty or disability if he or she:

• has a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age, or

• has a disability which prevents or hinders him or her from making use of facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or mainstream post-16 institutions

Many children will require additional support at different times during their school journey, but roughly 17% [over 1.5 million] are deemed to have special needs, about one quarter of whom need specific EHC [Education, Health and Care] Plans. In summer 2023 4.3% of pupils required EHC Plans and 13% were identified as having SEND but did not require an ECHP. The Ofsted report, “SEND: old issues, new issues, next steps” of June 2021 noted that the number of children identified as having SEND has grown in recent years [in 2021 the above figures were 3.3% and 12.1% respectively]

and that inspections have repeatedly revealed a continuing lack of ambition for pupils with SEND. Ofsted also found that boys made up 73.1% of pupils with a EHC plan and 64.6% of pupils with SEN support. Particularly concerning is that pupils with SEND are disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds and “that the discrepancies between disadvantaged and advantaged backgrounds have increased 2010-2020”.

The definition of SEND is broad in the extreme and has grown since the 2001 Special Education Needs and Disability Act [SENDA]. The needs of the academically able child who is confined to a wheelchair are obviously very different from the needs of the academically weak child with profound learning needs which, again, are very different from those of the bright but challenging child with ADHD. Some children may have SEND because of a medical condition or disability, while others may have SEND without a medical diagnosis or disability.

Children are not considered to have SEND just because their first language is not English, although some children for whom is English is a second language may also have SEND.

Children considered to have special education needs may have difficulties in one or more of these four areas:

• Communication and Interaction: A child may have difficulty in talking to, understanding or in interacting with others

• Physical and Sensory: A child may have hearing or vision loss or a medical condition which affects them physically.

• Social, Emotional and Mental Health: A child may display challenging or disruptive behaviours or have low self-esteem or anxiety.

• Cognition and Learning: A child may find all learning difficult or have difficulties with specific activities such as reading or spelling. The child may have poor comprehension or analytical skills or weak factual recall.

Children with SEND related to cognition and learning are usually classified in one of the following four ways:

• Moderate Learning Difficulty (MLD): a child is likely to require extra support in school.

• Specific Learning Difficulty (SpLD): specific learning difficulties include Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and Dyscalculia. A child might require some specific in-school targeted support, such as with spelling or numeracy.

• Severe Learning Difficulty (SLD): significant learning impairments requiring high levels of specialist support.

• Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulty (PMLD): a child with complex learning needs, possibly compounded by physical difficulties, will require a high level of specialist support at all times.

Two specific examples

A social, emotional and mental health issue: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) –The child often exhibits impulsive behaviours and can have trouble concentrating which, in turn, can often lead to the disruption of the learning of others if in a mainstream class. The causes are thought to be a combination of factors, possibly differences in the brain (scans have suggested that some areas of the brain are smaller, others larger), but also brain damage; premature birth or smoking, alcohol or drug abuse during pregnancy can also be factors. ADHD is possibly genetic, with parents and siblings often exhibiting traits. It can often be alleviated through medicine and psychological therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

A specific learning difficulty: Dyslexia – This causes problems with reading and writing but is not related to intelligence. It is estimated that 1 in every 10 people in the UK has some degree of dyslexia. On the whole, most cases can be supported by specific teaching strategies, specific resources such as electronic programmes, additional or one-to-one support, perhaps with a specialist teacher or a speech and language therapist.

Importantly, neither example necessarily has any relation to the child’s academic ability.

[www.nhs.uk]

History and Background

The education of children with SEND has a long, if uneven, history. Support for the physically disabled stems from the 19th century with Acts such as the Education Act (Blind and Deaf Children) 1893 and the Elementary Education Acts (Defective and Epileptic Children) 1899 and 1914. The seminal 1944 Education Act made it the legal duty of local authorities to ascertain which children in their area, were “handicapped by physical or mental disability” and required “special education treatment” either, “so far as is practicable”, in special schools or in mainstream schools.

It was, however, the Warnock Report (1978) that marked a seismic shift in attitudes and approaches to SEN and is often seen as significantly influencing the 1981 Education Act which gave parents new rights in relation to Special Needs, encouraged the inclusion of SEN children in mainstream classes [schools now had a duty “to use their best endeavours” to provide for pupils with SEN] and introduced the system of “statementing” children to provide those with high-level needs an entitlement to special education support. Following the Children and Families Act 2014, statements were replaced by Education, Health and Care plans (EHCP). As a result of the 1993 Education Act, the first SEN Code of Practice was introduced in 1994 which, amongst other requirements, designated SENCOs [Special Education Needs Co-ordinators] mandatory in every school. From 1996 there was a requirement for SENCOs to be qualified teachers and since 2009 every new SENCO has required a specialist professional qualification. SEN then experienced a significant expansion following the 2001 Special Education Needs and Disability Act [SENDA] that required schools to make “reasonable provisions” to enable disabled pupils the same opportunities as non-disabled pupils and mandated that failure to make reasonable adjustments would be deemed illegal discrimination.

Until 2014, a simple three-level classification of SEND pupils was used: school action (in-

school support, perhaps with specialist teaching resources); school action plus (pupil remains in school but with additional external support eg from a speech and language therapist or an educational psychologist); and SEN statement (significant specialised support either in-school or elsewhere for those with the most complex needs). Since 2014, however, these descriptive categories have been scrapped in favour of simply stating that a child either requires additional support or not.

Warnock

The enquiry under Mary Warnock was established by Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher in 1973 and reported in 1978 when Shirley Williams was in post. The report tried to humanise the system by, for example, by no longer using terms such as “educationally subnormal” (ESN) or “maladjusted” and provided the basis for the 1981 Education Act. Several of Warnock’s findings such as “parents as partners”, the need for multi-disciplinary assessment and the necessity of early intervention, have remained the basis of best practice. Famously, Warnock went on to reject many of the reforms for which her report was seen to be responsible. Most radically, in 2005 [Special Education Needs: A New Look] she rejected the drive to inclusion and trying to educate “all children under the same roof” and instead argued that real inclusion was about teaching children “wherever they learn best”. She

also railed against the “appalling system” of statements which had become “a terrible thing” [The Guardian, 2003] because of the resulting stigma, bureaucracy and huge administrative expense (appeal tribunals etc). She also argued that by focussing on statementing, there grew a tendency to ignore the needs of mildly disadvantaged children. She recommended the establishment of a new inquiry. [“The cynical betrayal of my special needs children”, The Telegraph, 2010]

Latest SEND developments

The current government published a major new policy document in March 2023, titled SEND and alternative provision improvement plan: right support, right place, right time. That calls for some much needed and welcomed improvements, for example, to make EHCP assessment less adversarial, reduce bureaucracy and to open more special free schools in order to increase capacity. [Over £2.5 billion has been allocated in the SEND capital fund 2022-2025 for new special free schools.] Crucially, there are to be new National Standards setting expectations of support in mainstream schools, “a significant proportion” of which will be published by the end of 2025. It is “intended” that there will be a new mandatory leadership level SENCO National Professional Qualification. Teaching training is to be enhanced to ensure high quality teaching for all and that “every teacher is

able to adapt their practice to meet the needs of their classroom”.

There is much to be applauded here for taking a radical, long term look at such a major educational issue and, if enacted, the plan could lead to significant improvements. There are, however, two fundamental drawbacks: it is a long-term plan that will bring little relief in the immediate future and the current teacher recruitment and retention crisis means we do not have enough teachers, let alone enough teachers of quality to even maintain the status quo, let alone to raise standards or to volunteer as SENCO’s. This is especially worrying considering, “Teacher quality is one of the most important in-school determinants of pupil outcomes” (SEND and alternative provision improvement plan, 2023).

Current Requirements and Procedures

The

Foreword to the current Code of Practice begins with, “Our vision for children with special educational needs and disabilities

is the same as for all children and young people – that they achieve well in their early years, at

school and in college, and lead happy and fulfilled lives.”

Each local authority is required to publish a Local Offer, setting out in one place information about provision they expect to be available across education, health and social care for children and young people in their area who have SEN or are disabled, including those who do not have EHCP’s. Individual schools must publish more detailed information about their own arrangements for identifying, assessing and making provision for pupils with SEND. Schools must work with the local authority in developing the LA’s Local Offer. Governing bodies must then publish information on their websites about the implementation of their own school’s SEND policy.

Schools are required to record details of additional or different provision made under SEND support. This is usually referred to as the SEND Register although there is no statutory duty to maintain a register. Neither are there any formal guidelines as to what the register should look like nor even any standardised requirements as to what should merit inclusion. Once identified, schools are required to meet with parents of SEND pupils and to set targets which will be included in an Individual Education Plan or Personal Learning Plan.

There should be a member of the governing body or a sub-committee with specific oversight of the school’s arrangements for SEND, and

governors must ensure that there is a qualified teacher working at the school designated as SENCO. A newly appointed SENCO who has not previously been the SENCO at that or any other relevant school for a total period of more than 12 months, must achieve a National Award in Special Educational Needs Coordination within three years of appointment.

The Code maintains that most pupils can be catered for by high quality teaching that is “differentiated [sic, see below] and personalised”. The minority of pupils who need provision that is additional to or different from this are those deemed to be SEND.

Where SEND is identified, the Code calls for a four-part cycle: Assess – Plan – Do - Review.

“Doing” may involve working with and supporting classroom teachers, providing additional in-class resources and/or using external specialists – for example educational psychologists; CAMHS [Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services]; therapists. Where the child has not made expected progress, the school or parents should then consider requesting an Education, Health and Care needs assessment.

It is also important to note that SEND provision is not solely concerned with a pupil’s academic

development. It is also about “supporting successful preparation for adulthood…..help[ing] children to realise their ambitions in relation to: higher education and/or employment….[to] participating in society – including having friends and supportive relationships, and participating in, and contributing to, the local community….. being as healthy as possible in adult life”. Schools are required to regularly check SEND pupils’ progress and this should include progress in areas other than academic attainment, for instance, assessing where a pupil needs to make “additional progress with wider development or social needs in order to make a successful transition to adult life”.

Ofsted

Requirements of the Code are enshrined in the latest Ofsted Framework (2023 – the eighth in 12 years). Inspectors must consider:

• Whether the curriculum is ambitious and designed to give pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils (including pupils with SEND) the knowledge they need

• The school [should] not offer disadvantaged pupils (including pupils with SEND) a reduced curriculum

Inspectors are also to check the impact of the provision for SEND pupils, in particular:

• How well the school identifies, assesses and meets the needs of pupils with SEND

• whether leaders are suitably ambitious for all pupils with SEND

• how well leaders ensure that the curriculum is coherently sequenced to meet all pupils’ needs

• how successfully leaders involve parents, carers and, as necessary, other professionals/specialist services

• how well leaders include pupils with SEND in all aspects of school life

• how well leaders ensure that pupils’ outcomes are improving as a result of any different or additional provision

• how well pupils with SEND are prepared for their next steps and adult lives

Funding

The funding of SEND pupils is almost Byzantine in its complexity, allocation and administration.

Each school is annually given a notional SEN budget, which is set by the LA, and which many schools will use to commission services (such as speech and language therapy or counselling services) to support pupils.

The notional SEN budget is an identified amount within a school’s overall budget. Schools are not expected to meet the full costs of more expensive special educational provision from their core funding. They are, however, expected to provide additional support which costs up to a nationally prescribed threshold per pupil per year. The responsible local authority, usually the authority where the child lives, should then provide additional top-up funding where the cost of the special educational provision required to meet the needs of an individual pupil exceeds the nationally prescribed threshold [currently £6,000 per pupil].

The notional SEN budget is not separate from the school’s overall budget, is not ring-fenced and is “neither a target nor a constraint” on a school’s duty to use its “best endeavours” to secure special provision for its SEN pupils. The notional budget is also not intended to provide a specific amount per pupil. Where schools have pupils with high level needs, they may apply to their LA for specific, “top up”, ring-fenced funding for each individual (which may be stated in an EHC Plan). When the LA is calculating the notional budget, there is a basic national formula which enables LAs to take into account: prior attainment; English as an Additional Language; Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index; free school meals and the mobility of pupils. One obvious factor appears to be missing: the actual number of SEN pupils in each individual school! The reason for this is quite simply that there is currently no national standard for being classed as SEND: there remains, therefore, an element of subjectivity

in the classification whereas the components listed above are fairly objective and governed by external qualification.

As always in the real world, the additional services that a school or LA can offer are ultimately constrained by funding. For all the best of intentions, there will be times when SEND provision is limited simply by the funding available. The 2023-2024 allocation for high needs funding alone is £10.1 billion, “an increase of over 50% from the 2019-2020 allocations”, The SEND and alternative provision improvement plan, 2023

EHC Plans

The legal test for when a child requires an EHC plan remains the same as that for requiring a statement under the Education Act 1996, which is, if:-

“it is necessary for the authority to determine the special educational provision which any learning difficulty he may have calls for”. Section 323(2)

Put more clearly, EHCP assessment is deemed necessary when it is beyond the individual school’s capacity to fully meet the needs of a specific child.

A child’s parents, young people [over 16], schools and colleges have specific rights to request a needs assessment for an EHC plan. The Code includes some ten pages of guidance on how to write an EHCP. Local authorities must ensure that children, their parents and young people are involved in discussions and decisions about their individual support and about local provision. Parents’ views are obviously crucially important but the Code recognises that at times, parents, teachers and others may have differing expectations of how a child’s needs are best met. The final decisions on both whether to proceed with an assessment following a request and on what is contained in any eventual plan lie with the LA but where a decision is not accepted by the parent, the LA must notify the child’s parent of, “their right to appeal to a Tribunal, of the requirement for them to consider mediation should they wish to appeal, plus the availability of information, advice and support and disagreement resolution services”. Young people and parents of children who have EHC plans have the right to request a Personal Budget, which may contain elements of education, social care and health funding. EHC plans should be used to actively monitor children’s progress towards their outcomes and longer term aspirations. They must be reviewed by the local authority as a minimum every 12 months.

The process of assessment is cumbersome and time consuming. The whole process must take no more than 20 weeks (with exceptions). The child’s parent or the young person should then be given 15 calendar days to consider and respond to a draft EHC plan.

One right of the parent is, as part of the EHC provision, to request a transfer to another school. In such a case, the local authority “must comply” with that preference and name the new school or college in the EHC plan unless:

• it would be unsuitable for the age, ability, aptitude or SEND of the child or young person, or

• the attendance of the child or young person there would be incompatible with the efficient education of others, or the efficient use of resources

An example of where the LA may conclude that the individual request to transfer schools fulfils the latter standard is where the child’s behaviour “systematically, persistently or significantly threatens the safety and/or impedes the learning of others”. This statement, probably more than anything else, highlights the difficulties of providing an effective education to some children with SEND, especially in mainstream schools.

Differentiation and Adaptive Teaching

In recent years there have been moves to include more SEND pupils in mainstream classes by broadening the accessibility of lessons through the use of differentiation or, more recently, adaptive/responsive teaching, often referred to as Quality First teaching, in which classes are made more inclusive of differing abilities.

Making higher quality teaching normally available to the whole class is likely to mean that fewer pupils will require such SEND support. Such improvements in whole-class provision tend to be more cost effective and sustainable. Code 6.15

Differentiation, as recommended in the 2015 Code, simply means that teachers try to reach all learners in the class by adopting one of three approaches: differentiation by outcome [all set the same task in which some will perform better, some will do worse, as in public exams]; differentiation by task [whereby the topic is the same for all in the class but with some tasks are more academically demanding and others that are more accessible]; or differentiation by resource [whereby worksheets, textbooks and other resources are varied in their complexity]. Significantly, however, research by Ofsted into teaching and learning styles in 2019 concluded that, “In-class differentiation, through providing differentiated teaching, activities or resources, has generally not been shown to have much impact on pupils’ attainment…”

Since 2019, Ofsted has instead encouraged adaptive or responsive teaching where the topic and tasks remain the same for all pupils in the class, but the level of support, challenge, scaffolding or extension varies from child to child.

Ofsted reported in 2019 that, “Adapting teaching in a responsive way, for example by providing focused support to pupils who are not making progress, is

likely to improve outcomes. However, this type of adaptive teaching should be clearly distinguished from forms of differentiation that cause teachers to artificially create distinct tasks for different groups of pupils or to set lower expectations for particular pupils.”

Some Issues and Problems

Complexity

The first problem with SEND is its sheer complexity and the plethora of Acts, Regulations and other related documentation: SEND can be a legal minefield. In addition to the 287 pages of the 2015 Code, practitioners must also be aware of The Children and Families Act 2014, The Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014 and The Equality Act 2010. They might also have recourse to The Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970; The Children Act 1989; The Education Act 1996; The Children Act 2004; The Mental Capacity Act 2005; The Education and Inspections Act 2006; The Care Act 2014; The School Admissions Code of Practice and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Identification and classification

The identification and classification of pupils with SEND is, in itself, often difficult. Confusingly, “Slow progress and low attainment do not necessarily mean that a child has SEN and should not automatically lead to a pupil being recorded as having SEN…..Equally, it should not be assumed that attainment in line with chronological age means that there is no learning difficulty or disability.” [6.23] There is also, perhaps understandably and even necessarily, a vagueness about classifying children with SEND. The Equality Act 2010 categorises a pupil to have a disability if they have, “a physical or mental impairment which has a long-term and substantial adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-today activities,” with ‘substantial’ loosely defined as ‘more than minor or trivial’. This definition includes sensory impairments such as those affecting sight or hearing and long-term health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, epilepsy and cancer. Children with such conditions, however, do not necessarily have a special educational need and certainly not an academic or cognitive need (although there is a

significant overlap between disabled children and those with SEN).

Likewise, where youngsters exhibit “persistent disruptive or withdrawn behaviours”, it does not necessarily mean that the child has SEN. “Where there are concerns, there should be an assessment to determine whether there are any causal factors such as undiagnosed learning difficulties, difficulties with communication or mental health issues. If it is thought housing, family or other domestic circumstances may be contributing to the presenting behaviour a multi-agency approach…may be appropriate.” The key point being that a child may simply be badly behaved or come from an unsupportive home background that fails to maintain clear boundaries. Either of these scenarios will require action on the part of the school but would not be classed as SEND.

This difficulty of classification is why SEND cannot be used in the calculation of an indicative budget, simply because there is no nationally standardised definition or qualification. Only when we have National Standards will greater consistency be more likely, but whether it is actually possible to have objective, watertight standards, remains to be seen. Although there is absolutely no doubt that the vast majority of schools and teachers take their SEND commitments and responsibilities extremely seriously, it is unfortunate that in the absence of national criteria, a small minority of schools have been guilty of over identification of SEND needs in order to try and attract more funding, to “pass the buck” or to explain away poor performance; some others have been guilty of under identification in order to simply ignore difficult issues or because they think that having large numbers of SEND pupils might damage their image or reputation. Similarly, SEND children currently remain more likely to be “off-rolled”

than non-SEND children [removed from the school roll surreptitiously and illegally, usually so as not to damage exam results and league table performance].

The challenge of “how inclusive?”

The vast majority of children with SEND needs are obviously catered for in mainstream schools. The minority, either because of the complexity of their needs or because of the impact they have on others, need to be educated off site or in special schools. The fact that SEND children remain more likely to be formally excluded from school than non-SEND pupils should hardly come as a surprise especially when their behaviour, “systematically, persistently or significantly threatens the safety and/or impedes the learning of others”. The legal test for permanent exclusion remains:

• [a] response to a serious breach or persistent breaches of the school’s behaviour policy; and

• where allowing the pupil to remain in school would seriously harm the education or welfare of the pupil or others, such as staff or pupils in the school. Suspension and Permanent Exclusion, guidance September 2023

Different schools tolerate different levels of impact on the learning of others partly, again, as there is no national standard as to what is acceptable. Surely, however, the basic premise that “no child has the right to disrupt the learning, or threaten the safety, of others” should be the accepted norm? The fact that this sometimes must necessarily lead to permanent exclusion may, sadly, only serve to add to a child’s stigma and lack of self-belief.

Funding

Anything that requires individual or personalised approaches is bound to be more expensive than teaching a group of thirty youngsters, especially when the involvement of external services and professionals is involved. Of course, all funding is finite and SEND provision is probably an area where there will never be enough money. What

is paramount, however, is to ensure that there are enough special school places, speech and language specialists, educational psychologists or CAMHS resources to be effective. One of the real problems currently facing the system is that pupils, when referred to external agencies, have to wait far too long for effective intervention while many with complex needs cannot be offered a special school place because they simply do not exist.

Although the concept of the notional budget is rather vague and complex, one cannot argue for a more pupil-centred or ring-fenced budget. If it were all allocated on a pupil-by-pupil basis (not just to those with high-level and complex needs), the requisite accounting procedures would be monumental and would remove the flexibility for schools to use their funds in the most effective manner. When in Hackney, for example, we allocated some of our notional budget to fund both a full-time school nurse and a full-time, professional counsellor (the only school in the Borough to directly employ two such staff). Both of these provided a tremendous service to all pupils, not only to those with SEND, and they enabled us to provide in-house support for many issues for which most schools would have to look externally. (There was, however, a significant cost in terms of salaries.)

Bureaucracy and time

All aspects of SEND provision, be it the creation of additional teaching resources, or the drawing up of individual learning plans, especially, the creation and monitoring of ECHP’s, all take time and involve a great deal of bureaucracy and paperwork. There is no simple answer to this as all SEND decisions must be made carefully and accurately, and must be based on objective educational evidence; a wrong diagnosis will obviously do nothing to support a child and could even make the situation worse. The 2023 Plan calls for a reduction in bureaucracy so it is to be hoped that, in future, the onus will be on what really matters – identification and effective support - rather than on reams of paperwork.

Recommendations

The recruitment and retention crisis

The recruitment and retention crisis in the teaching profession has to be tackled as an absolute urgent priority. In both previous reports this has been a key focus but we are now reaching absolute breaking point. In terms of SEND the availability of high-quality teaching staff, especially if more effective in-class support is to be offered, is paramount. There is no need to regurgitate the evidence given in earlier reports but suffice to repeat the findings of a headteacher survey last year that reported that 50% of Heads had at least one vacancy they could not fill and, in some ways even more worrying, 40% of Heads admitted to appointing a candidate who interviewed badly or who did not have the requisite experience or qualifications, simply because there was no one better available. That is hardly a recipe for high quality teaching. As argued previously, however, the recruitment and retention crisis is not primarily about pay – it is about workload, respect, pupil behaviour, weak and unsupportive leadership, Ofsted, job satisfaction – and does not, therefore, require a massive injection of new money.

A broader curriculum at KS4

Again, as highlighted previously, currently one third of each year’s GCSE results are “failures”, despite eleven years of compulsory schooling, increased expenditure on schools and the plethora of reforms over the past forty years. A broadening of the curriculum to include more practical, technical and vocational courses, will enable more youngsters to achieve. Of course, not all SEND pupils are weak academically, far from it, but for those with cognitive and learning difficulties, as well as those pupils who are simply academically weak, a broader curriculum will enable many more to progress, be successful and, ultimately, to play a much greater role in society. Many suitable courses already exist or may just need adapting for the 14 – 16 age bracket. The real constraint is not funding, it is again the shortage of good and appropriate teachers.

The Plan 2023

The key objectives of providing more special school places, introducing new standardised EHC Plans to reduce bureaucracy and making the EHCP process less adversarial, should be actioned as quickly as is feasibly possible. The introduction of the new National Standards will, it is hoped, bring more consistency to the system and to provision. It is essential, however, that the National Standards still permit a certain level of flexibility and professional judgement: trying to rigidly compartmentalise the vast range of pupils with special needs and the variety of requisite provision would fail to recognise the necessary subtleties of such a complex issue. Much of the plan will not have significant cost implications, apart from the opening of new special schools for which money has already been allocated.

Adaptive/responsive teaching

Adaptive/responsive teaching techniques clearly enable a wider ability range of youngsters to be effectively catered for in mainstream classes. The techniques are not always the most appropriate and there are times when other approaches will be more effective, but that is the mark of the great teacher: the ability to adapt what one does and to select the most effective strategy for that particular class, studying that particular subject on that particular day. The ability to do this, however, requires expertise, experience and training. Adaptive/responsive teaching techniques, alongside other tried and tested methodology, should be an integral part of all Initial Teacher Training programmes and of the continuing professional development of existing teachers and teaching assistants.

Inclusion

Inclusion must only be the response where it works effectively. It must be accepted that mainstream schools are for the mainstream: teachers trained to teach in mainstream schools

cannot be expected to be highly effective with non-mainstream pupils.

Schools should be encouraged to adopt a “no right to disrupt the learning of others” approach and, in all instances, the education and/or welfare of the majority must be given at least the same consideration as the needs of the individual SEND child.

Where SEND pupils do damage the learning of, or are a threat to, others, then the school must prioritise its duty of care to others in the school. An improvement would, therefore, be the introduction of a new mechanism for removing/ transferring a SEND pupil on the grounds that his/her SEND is impacting negatively on the education or safety of others. [Currently, a child can only be removed from a school roll under three circumstances: he/she is permanently excluded and the exclusion is upheld on appeal; a child is formally enrolled at another approved provider or the child dies. To remove a pupil from the roll under any other circumstances would currently be deemed “off rolling” and is illegal.]

This would save the stigma of the child being permanently excluded and could be seen in a much more positive light than permanent exclusion in that the child was removed/ transferred in order to access more appropriate provision. Of course, for this to work, that appropriate provision must be available.

Tribunals

Some effort, time and money could be saved by only permitting appeals to tribunals which, following a pre-tribunal assessment, are evidencing a breach in the Code of Practice or some other illegality.

Performance Tables

In national performance tables, even greater

emphasis should be placed on progress and value added rather than on raw examination scores, to encourage all schools to be ambitious for all pupils. (Raw scores say as much about the ability of the pupils as about the effectiveness of the school.) Special schools should also be removed from mainstream performance tables and be assessed separately. Since special schools cater for such a diverse range of pupils, however, it may be fairer not to include them in any type of performance table since it is almost impossible to compare like with like.

Funding

It is impossible to quote a figure as to how much should be allocated for SEND provision – it is a bottomless pit. What can be done, however, is an immediate national audit to ascertain the level of need for specialist provision, such as the number of required special school places and the projected demand for CAHMS, Educational Psychologists and speech and language specialists etc to enable more immediate intervention. If we believe that such provision is effective, then it must be readily available when and where it is needed. There will, no doubt, be a cost of increasing such services, but ever since Warnock it has been proved that the earlier the intervention, the more effective it is. In the long run, therefore, providing the services necessary for more immediate intervention could be far more cost effective than permitting specific needs to develop and grow. Furthermore, if the recruitment and retention crisis can be resolved and the amount of high-quality teaching increased, then demand for some specialist services may decline.

Conclusion

SEND provision is a large and fundamentally important area of English education. It is also complex, expensive and challenging. As in other areas of education, however, there are a number of practical and cost-effective changes that can be implemented to help to make almost immediate improvements for all in the school system.

Attendance and behaviour

There is a consensus amongst teachers and Heads that pupil behaviour and attendance have deteriorated since COVID; there is also a feeling that the attitude of many pupils and parents has become much less supportive and far more aggressive since schools reopened. This is especially regrettable considering that one of the few positive consequences during and immediately after Lockdown was that more parents/carers, trying to teach their own children at home, realised just how demanding teaching is as a long-term job. For the first time, over a longish period of time, parents had to cope with the demands of teaching: of keeping youngsters occupied, amused and engaged, often on things that are difficult and taxing. Since the return to normality, however, schools are reporting that far more parents (but by no means all) have become much more demanding and unreasonable.

“22.5% of pupils were persistently absent, which is around double the pre-pandemic rate, and 1.7% of all pupils were severely absent [meaning they missed at least 50% of possible sessions] compared to less that 1% prepandemic.”

House of Commons Education Committee, “Persistent absence and support for disadvantaged pupils”.

September 2023

School absence has numerous negative consequences, in addition to the obvious decline in attainment – youngsters are more susceptible to gang pressure and grooming; they can lack social development and face additional mental health issues.

“The pupils with the highest attainment at the end of key stage 2 and key stage 4 have higher rates of attendance over the key stage compared to those with the lowest attainment”. “Working together to improve school attendance” DfE 2022

Clearly there is an onus, and legal duty, on parents to ensure good attendance, “Where parents decide to have their child registered at school, they have an additional legal duty to ensure their child attends that school regularly”. [DfE 2022]. Clear sanctions exist for those who fail to comply: fixed penalty notices, an Education Supervision Order or court action, which may result in higher fines, community orders or up to three months in prison. But the procedures are often cumbersome, taking far too long to result in any formal action plus fines are not always appropriate where socio-economic disadvantage is a factor, and prison can obviously destroy a family that is struggling. Very often, schools and LA’s face a dilemma: action needs to be taken, but formal legal action can often lead to far more serious and lasting consequences than the non-attendance.

Schools are also obviously key players in ensuring good attendance and are required to publish an attendance policy and their attendance procedures. Strategies may include ‘phoning home or texting on the first day of absence, home visits, pastoral support, regular meetings with parents/carers, individual support plans, sanctions and rewards. The DfE has intervened with the expansion of Attendance Hubs, where schools share good practice and of the Attendance Mentors Programme, whereby trained mentors work directly with persistently absent children.

Clearly, more needs to be done. As in my previous report, I again argue for putting greater responsibility for both attendance and behaviour on the shoulders of each and every pupil by introducing a non-academic leaving certificate at 16 and 18. Whilst many disaffected youngsters may not fully understand the long term consequences of their truanting or poor behaviour, knowing that their actions will be recorded and that they will have to be accounted for at future interviews will be a strong stimulant for many. What better preparation for adulthood and the world of work than requiring youngsters to take personal responsibility for their actions?

Recommendations

• The introduction of a non-academic leaving certificate at 16 and 18 – possible format attached.

• A broader curriculum at 14-16 to encourage greater engagement and achievement, especially from those who struggle academically and those disaffected youngsters who see little point in school attendance.

• Additional, ring-fenced support for extra/ co-curricular activities to encourage pupil engagement in wider school and community life.

• Schools to be permitted to permanently exclude persistent truants.

• A return to the concept of “truancy” and the reintroduction of truancy officers. Although education welfare is of crucial importance, parents and pupils must understand that the law requires full-time education and to fail to comply

is against the law. Although punitive sanctions may not be appropriate, it is essential to reinforce the message that the law is not negotiable and applies to everyone. Truants are not breaking school rules: they are breaking the law.

NATIONAL SCHOOL CERTIFICATE AT 16/18

Name: Date of Birth:

Home address:

All data is for Years 10 and 11 or for Years 12 and 13 only

Work ethic Honesty Manners

Attendance

Unauthorised absence

No of days suspended

School average (days)

National average (days)

School average

No of detentions

No of isolations/internal exclusions

Positions of office/responsibility/leadership held Positions of office/responsibility/leadership available

School teams/organisations attended regularly School teams/organisations available

Awards, certificates and prizes attained – sport, music, drama, Duke of Edinburgh

Awards, certificates and prizes available – sport, music, drama, Duke of Edinburgh

Any additional positive or extenuating comments:

School authorisation number:

Authorising signature:

The Advanced British Standard

In his final speech at the Party Conference, the PM emphasised the crucial importance of education: “It is the best economic policy, the best social policy and the best moral policy”. His comments built on his previous statements about making maths compulsory for all students up to 18 and his proposals would see post-16 students studying five subjects, including English and maths, instead of the traditional three A-Levels (although some, especially more able students, do currently take four or five subjects).

There is no doubt that the current English sixth form curriculum is much narrower than that of many of our competitors and the proposed merging of A-Levels and T-Levels will do much to help achieve greater parity of esteem between academic and vocational subjects. Obviously, there are many questions yet to be answered: –

Will it be possible to pass/fail individual components or will students have to pass the whole award, as with the old School Certificate?

What will be the purpose of the additional maths – will it be primarily for those who have failed at GCSE or will it be aimed at making those who have passed GCSE study maths to a greater depth?

Will the additional English be literature or more functional English language?

Where do key skills such as critical thinking fit in?

One very reassuring statement is that the changes will not be rushed in, with implementation possibly not until 2033. Unfortunately, previous major curriculum changes such as the introduction of GCSE’s in the late ‘Eighties or Curriculum 2000 (the broadening of the curriculum to study a one-year AS in Year 12 in addition to three or four two-year A-Levels) were introduced before requisite teacher training had been provided and even before the necessary textbooks and other teaching resources had been published.

An obvious result of a broader curriculum is that depth may be affected. Currently, an A-Level student will typically study each subject for about five hours per week, with time for sport, pastoral education and independent study. Will this still be possible with more subjects on a student’s timetable? It is suggested that students will study three major subjects and two minor ones, so it may be possible to maintain the depth and high standards demanded by A-Level, as urged by our top universities.

When I was the Head of a grammar school, I was often asked by very able sixth formers that they be permitted to study four or five subjects; each year I checked with admissions officers at Oxford and Cambridge and each year the response was the same – instead of studying additional subjects, top universities would prefer students to use any free time to read around their chosen specialism (plus, in subjects such as medicine, to undertake relevant work experience) and to develop a wider knowledge and deeper understanding. They wanted, for example, the top linguists, not mediocre ones who could also offer mathematics. Of course, our whole education system should not be geared around Oxbridge, but we must be conscious of unintended consequences and not damage what currently works; it is often maintained that in the USA, owing to a wider senior school curriculum, many first year university courses are no more advanced than A-Level in England.

The PM has promised that students will spend more time with a teacher and he acknowledges that this will require an significant increase in the workforce. For this, he has promised additional funding. The issue, however, is a very serious one and cannot be taken lightly: we are currently facing a teacher recruitment and retention crisis. The DfE target for teacher training recruitment has been missed in seven of the past eight years, with only 59% of initial teacher training spaces filled in the Year 2022-23.

Certainly, the offer of tax-free bonuses for those who teach core subjects may help to attract some people, but we must remember that there is a shortage of teachers – not simply a shortage of teachers in some subjects. Bonuses for some, may also deter others.

Key Statistics

• Secondary job advertisements are up by 12%

• Only 59% of teachers expected to be teaching in three years’ time, a drop from 72% in 2019

• Fewer senior leaders now aspire to become headteachers (43%, down from 56% pre-pandemic)

• Half of secondary leaders say their school couldn’t interview any candidate for a position due to a weak field; 40% had reluctantly appointed a candidate lacking adequate qualifications or who performed poorly at interview.

• Half of primary teachers said that at least one class in their school was being taught by a temporary agency teacher or a non-qualified teacher (such as a teaching assistant)

• 80% of teachers in the most deprived schools said at least one of their subject’s GCSE classes faced major disruption this year, compared to 52% in feepaying schools

In the primary sector, 59% of senior leaders indicate a decrease in the number of applicants compared to usual, slightly higher than the 54% reported last year. In the secondary sector, the recruitment cycle appears to be even more challenging, with over 80% of leaders stating a decrease in applicants compared to the norm, a notable increase from 65% reporting the same last year.

Teachertapp.co.uk/Gatsby.org.uk June 2023

One key question is, from where is the pressure coming to change the A-Level system? Is it coming from employers, universities, students, teachers or from political advisers? Simply because our system is different is not a reason to change it. The PM has stated that because of the long gestation period there will be time for consultation. This is essential.

The A-Level system is certainly not perfect, but neither is it completely broken. In the past, A-Levels have been seen as the “gold standard” of English education, so if they are to be retired, what replaces them must be better, not just different. The new Advanced British Standard must maintain high standards (be they academic, technical or practical); it must adequately prepare every student for the next step, be that university, college, apprenticeship or employment. That then begs the question as to whether any single qualification can fulfil all these demands.

The PM’s vision of creating the “best education system in the western world” in which “no child should be left behind” is both highly commendable and achievable but only if we approach an analysis of our current education system holistically, objectively and by considering the needs of all involved – students, teachers, employers, universities and taxpayers.

Recommendations

• Research to be undertaken to ascertain what all relevant stakeholders - teachers, universities, employers - want from reformed post-16 education.

• To ensure requisite breadth post 16 – academic, technical, vocational, practical, professional.

• Once again to recognise that recruitment and retention are key and that pay incentives are not, for most teachers, the prime consideration.

• To review the 14-16 curriculum: at present, most students only commence technical or vocational qualifications at 16, after “failing” traditional GCSEs at will never enable parity of esteem. Greater breadth 14-16 will help improve attainment, attendance and attitudes.

Labour’s attack on independent schools

The Labour Party has raised the issue of private schools by attacking their charitable status in general and the exemption from 20% VAT on their fees in particular.

As a state-school teacher for 32 years and Head for 18, I cannot deny that I have, at times, been galled by the enormous educational benefits given to a very small minority of pupils simply through the possession of money, Some private schools offer benefits denied to us in the state sector, including small class sizes, amazing facilities and curriculum freedoms. As a Head in the East End, I received about £8,500 per pupil (in rural Lincolnshire it was only £5,500), a far cry from the £40,000+ charged by the leading public schools (although a large portion of those fees will go on boarding). The debate is nothing new: in 2017 Michael Gove famously commented that it is wrong that some parents can buy advantage and privilege for their children, putting the majority of us at a disadvantage, whilst the tax loophole just adds insult to injury. There is no doubt that the ability to pay to attend one of the most prestigious public schools, can bring untold benefits. The fact that those benefits are denied to most youngsters simply because they cannot afford to pay is surely wrong – morally, philosophically and educationally. But we must also be very careful not to destroy the excellent work undertaken by many independent schools nor to “level down”. We must also, again, be very wary of creating serious unintended consequences.

There is no doubt that some independent schools take their charitable status and the requirement to provide “public benefit” very lightly. That said, there are others that take the status extremely seriously. Wellington College under the leadership of Sir Anthony Seldon was one of the first independent schools to sponsor an academy, outreach support that Seldon successfully encouraged several other leading independent

schools to provide. Eton, for example, supports both a local academy in Maidenhead and a very successful, high performing sixth form college [The London Academy of Excellence, known locally as the “Eton of the East End”] in Newham, one of the most deprived boroughs in London. These are genuine examples of private schools engaging in valuable outreach work, often in deprived areas. Should charitable status be taken away and independent schools feel they no longer have the encouragement or the money to support such projects, the losers will not be pupils at Eton, whose parents will continue to pay the higher fees, but aspiring young students in Newham.

VAT on school fees may appear a logical policy but again may result in unintended consequences. Were fees to rise, this would probably not affect the super-rich (if one can afford £40,000+ one can probably afford £48,000+) but a 20% increase would affect those aspirational parents who scrimp, save and make sacrifices in order to afford to give their children a good start in life. [It is clearly wrong to judge all independent schools in the same league as the most famous and well-established public schools – most private schools do not have the same status, money or endowments while some are run on an absolute shoestring.] It should also be remembered that those parents that choose the private sector still pay their taxes to support the state sector but choose not to take up their places – an argument propounded by Margaret Thatcher to defend those who use private healthcare. HMC (admittedly not a disinterested party) has suggested that this saves the Exchequer £3.5 billion.

Labour has guestimated that a 20% tax on school fees could raise in the region of £1.5 billion, a not

inconsequential amount of money. This assumes, however, that the same number of parents will continue to pay school fees, despite the 20% increase: this is highly unlikely, so the amount raised will probably be much lower. Even if the amount raised did not fall, divided between the 26,000 state schools in England and Wales, it amounts to roughly £60,000 per school. Although no Head would turn it down, £60k is clearly not going to revolutionise our state schools, reduce class sizes from 1:30 to 1:10 nor provide schools with a new science block or “the playing fields of Eton”. One Labour commentator said the money would be used to provide 6,500 new teachers, tremendous news in an era of teacher recruitment and retention crisis, but again, it equates to about one new teacher between every four schools. Soundbites lacking in substance.

As with many debates in education, this is not a black and white issue – there are subtleties and nuances to it as well as the risk of far-reaching unintended consequences. There is precedent for this: in the 1970’s, Labour closed our Direct Grant Schools (private, fee-paying selective schools which were required to offer at least one quarter of their places free of charge to local children who qualified academically); they were given the choice of either becoming state comprehensives or fully independent. The vast majority chose the latter route and, therefore, denied bright local pupils without the means to pay the fees a firstclass academic education. (Manchester Grammar, one of the country’s highest performing schools, probably being the most famous example.) So here lies the real answer: we must “level up” our state education system to such an extent that parents see no advantage in spending money on

school fees. We are a long way from this at the moment, with 200,000 primary pupils unable to access “good” schools, let alone “outstanding” ones, and still too many secondary schools, especially in areas of deprivation, where aspiration and standards are too low. On the other hand, look at our highest performing state schools [Mossbourne, Michaela et al], which consistently give the best independent schools a run for their money, but without their funding, endowments and facilities – it can be done.

Recommendations

• Private schools should not, per se, have charitable status: they should, however, be able to earn it. There must be a statutory minimum charity requirement; private schools can then choose to either fulfil the statutory requirement, continue to make a very valuable contribution to wider society and to benefit from charitable status, or decide not to offer substantial outreach work and consequently lose the benefits of charitable status.

• To concentrate on providing the best possible education for all so that there is no advantage in paying for private education – strong discipline, high academic standards and a rich and diverse extra/co-curricular offer.

• To level the playing field by not permitting universities or employers to ask where someone went to school, just as a job interview is not permitted to take marital status or sexuality into account – qualification, merit and character should be the determinants, not “the old school tie”.

RAAC

The Labour Party made a great deal of political capital out of the summer school concrete issue. There can be no doubt that some schools faced a nightmare start to the new academic year with buildings either partially or fully closed, preventing an ordered and disciplined return to class (especially disappointing for those starting at a new school).

We should not forget, however, that over 99% of schools in England returned for the new year as planned. This is not to underestimate the difficulties or dangers that a small number of schools faced, nor to underestimate the damaging political fall-out, but we were far from facing a mass of school closures.

“It is extremely concerning that DfE does not have good enough understanding of safety risks across school buildings for it to fully quantify and mitigate these risks and keep children and staff in schools safe….Given how crucial it is to get safety matters right, it is shocking and disappointing that…DfE could not provide basic information…..The school estate has deteriorated to the point where an alarming 700,000 pupils are learning in a school that needs major rebuilding or refurbishment.” House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, “The condition of school buildings”, November 2023

There were, presumably, one of two possible explanations for the rushed announcement to close some schools: either, people in Whitehall had known about the urgency of the problem for several months but “sat on their a***s” and did nothing. If so, there need to be clear repercussions and consequences. Alternatively, it might transpire that whilst RAAC has been known about as a low-level risk for many years, it was only over the summer that the scientific/structural engineering assessment changed and that, for the first time, it was seen as an immediate risk. If this were the case, then the DfE should be commended for taking unpopular but prompt and essential action – a mark of good leadership.

One inaccurate aspect of the debate was the attempt to suggest that all was well under the last Labour government. RAAC was used extensively in the pressured school building programme of the sixties (to replace war-damaged schools, to cater for baby boomers and to prepare for the raising of the school leaving age in 1972). If RAAC does have a shelf-life of about 30 years, then it passed its sell-by date in the late nineties and early part of this century - when Labour was in power. Why did the Blair/Brown governments not remove RAAC in their 13 years in office? Shadow cabinet ministers have made much of Labour’s Building Schools for the Future [BSF] programme which certainly did expend billions of taxpayers’ money on school buildings, but the scheme was heavily bureaucratic and it aimed, primarily, at building glossy, state of the art new schools (some of which might even have been seen as vanity projects) rather than concentrating on unglamorously improving all schools. This is not to argue that these new schools were not needed or welcomed –I speak as the former Principal of one! – but bright flashy new schools are obviously more headline catching than “replacing RAAC” with a new roof here and new staircase there, which would go largely unnoticed. As a result, hundreds of schools benefited from BSF, but not thousands. [There are approximately 3,500 secondary schools in England, and 18,000 primaries, the majority of which saw no improvements under BSF.] BSF also concentrated on secondary schools; primary schools were only included from 2007. Michael Gove called an end to BSF in 2010 not because he was against improving school buildings but because it was an expensive, cumbersome and headline grabbing scheme, not to mention, “There is no money left” [Liam Byrne, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, 2010].

Recommendations

• The DfE must undertake, immediately, a full national school condition survey (the DfE may already hold much of the relevant information) which clearly outlines the level of need – what needs doing immediately, in the medium term and in the longer term; money must be allocated accordingly. This approach, the exact opposite of BSF, offers best value for money, is fair and, above all, puts safety first.

• The above will clearly show that the safety of pupils and staff is paramount. We must enable all youngsters and school staff to work in a safe, fit for purpose and pleasant learning environment.

Advice to Ministers and Schools

It is essential that the advice given to ministers and thence to schools is timely, appropriate and useful. Sadly, in recent months, this has not always been the case. To take four specific examples: (i) during Conference week, the big announcement about mobile phones; (ii) Heads being encouraged to undertake home visits to collect truanting pupils; (iii) schools told to share RSE materials with parents and (iv) the long-awaited guidance on catering for trans pupils.

(i) Mobile phones can be a cause of serious disruption and bullying, but the powers and procedures to ban them have existed since before I took on my first headship in 2002. Of course, raising and clarifying the issue is to be welcomed, but the guidance must be clear and practical. What is meant by banning ‘phones? Does it mean they are banned around the school site and must be locked in lockers during the school day? Or, does it mean that pupils are not permitted to carry them to and from school? I adopted the former in my first headship which had a large rural catchment area and saw pupils traveling up to 30 miles to and from school, but in my second, inner city headship, we banned ‘phones completely, partly to stop pupils communicating with any of the 21 local gangs but also, on the advice of the Met, to stop pupils from becoming targets for muggings. Counterintuitively, pupils were safer without them. This sort of granular discussion is necessary and helpful.

(ii) Home visits are a powerful tool for tackling school refusal but research will, I have no doubt, show that most schools already undertake them, either by senior staff or by dedicated attendance officers. The rather glib suggestion that schools should do this not only showed a lack of knowledge of current school practice, it also revealed a complete lack of understanding: the home visit is the easy part, the difficult bit, not mentioned in the advice, is what to do when the truanting child or, worse still, parent/carer, tells the teacher to F off. No advice was given on how to tackle this nor did the statements acknowledge that there were some homes in both my schools, rural

and inner city, where I would not permit a teacher to attend without a police officer present.

(iii) There is no doubt that the teaching of RSE, compulsory since 2020, is a contentious issue. It is also one where many teachers feel uncomfortable. Some children “feel that RSE offers too little too late (whilst most teachers feel ill-equipped and ill at ease delivering it)”, [Ofsted Report, 2021]. The statutory guidance issued to schools is, by its nature, rather permissive, but the underlying principle is that delivery must always be “age appropriate”. Accepting there have been some horror stories about primary pupils being taught about oral sex or that there are 100 different genders, such instances are extremely few and far between and, it should be added, nowhere do such topics appear in the guidance. What is more, schools must not be criticised for doing what they are told:

[Section 360] “If a secondary school does not teach about lesbian, gay and bisexual relationships, it will not be meeting the expectations of the DfE’s statutory guidance. In those circumstances, the school will not ordinarily receive a judgement for Leadership & Management better than Requires Improvement.” Ofsted Handbook, 2023

All schools, local authority and academies, are also currently required to publish a RSE policy and primary schools are required to discuss with parents their plans should they choose to teach sex education. [At Key Stages 1 and 2 only relationships education and not sex education is compulsory.]

[Section 68] “Where a maintained primary school chooses to teach aspects of sex education (which go beyond the national curriculum for science), the school must set this out in their policy and all schools should consult with parents on what is to be covered. Primary schools that choose to teach sex education must allow parents a right to withdraw their children. Unlike sex education in RSE at secondary, in primary schools, head teachers must comply with a parent’s wish to withdraw their child from sex education beyond the national curriculum for science.”

RSE Statutory Guidance, 2021

We must not underestimate the importance of RSE. Quite rightly, the emphasis has always been about pupil safety, about making the right choices and on building healthy relationships. Quality delivery helps to keep children safe, negates the role of the proverbial “behind the bike sheds” but also especially supports those children from homes where such topics are either never discussed or are approached in a manner inappropriate for Britian in the 21st century.

(iv) The draft non-statutory guidance on catering for trans pupils, promised in 2022 when Nadhim Zahawi was Secretary of State, was finally published on 19th December 2023, with a three-month consultation period. The document, “Gender Questioning Children”, which covers issues such as pronouns, uniforms and toilets, recognises that there has been, “A significant increase in the number of children questioning the way they feel about being a boy or a girl”. It also accepts that schools have been in, “A position where they are having to navigate a highly sensitive, complex issue”. Understandably, such sensitive guidance is both difficult to formulate and is far reaching: it brings into question the very definition of society, and of social mores, in contemporary Britain. So far, however, individual Heads and schools have been left to navigate this minefield alone.

The draft guidance, quite rightly, prioritises the “best interests of the child” and requires schools, wherever possible, to work closely with parents, unless to do so would put the child at risk – the standard limiting factor for working with parents.

Although the guidance appears clear cut in some areas, for example stating that there is “no general duty to allow a child to socially transition” and that no teacher “should be compelled” to use preferred pronouns, it then reminds schools, possibly in contradiction, to “comply with their legal obligations” under the Equality Act 2010 [which recognises “gender” as a legally “protected characteristic”] and the Human Rights Act 1998. Even more unsupportive for teachers is the statement that, “It is not possible for the guidance to state a definitive legal position on all areas”. Schools are still left, therefore, without the clear legal framework they crave and require. In the past, Heads have been nervous of the litigious parent who could take them to court for their stance on providing for trans pupils, whatever that may be; henceforth, Heads could still be at the mercy of the litigious parent but now because they are following the very guidance for which they have been waiting.

Recommendations

• As a matter of urgency, to issue statutory guidance on catering for trans pupils which is legally watertight. This must include a clear definition of “life in 21st century Britian”.

• RSE statutory guidance must be revisited and if necessary, to avoid any danger of ambiguity, made more specific. Regard, however, must always be made for the age, mental development and wellbeing of pupils; teachers must, therefore, be able to retain the necessary level of professional discretion.

• Mobile phone guidance should be reissued, stating clearly a school’s right to ban them and what this means in practice.

• Ministers must seek advice from experienced professionals: young graduates who have never worked in, let alone run, state schools, are not the most appropriate advisors. The recommendation in the original report for a National Schools Council, regularly and formally bringing together practitioners, policy makers and other relevant agencies, would significantly improve the quality of advice given to ministers and schools and help to end the reliance on inexperienced SPADS. Since we are ultimately concerned with the safety and welfare of all young people, the quality and efficacy of guidance is paramount.

Conclusion

Education is a fundamental component in the future development and prosperity of this country. Our school system remains reliant, first and foremost, on having access to the requisite number of dedicated and highly trained professional teachers. Evidence clearly proves that the answer to the current recruitment and retention crisis depends on a broad range of factors, many of which can be quickly resolved without excessive additional demands on the Treasury. The rewards for raising the status of teachers and of empowering “teachers to teach and pupils to learn” will not only be the provision of a world-class education system but may also be electoral success at the ballot box.

Rationale

More than one million people work in schools in England, either as teachers or in non-teaching roles. The purpose of this report is not to see how politicians can actively win electoral support from the profession, it is rather to show that by adopting common sense policies, often at very little cost to the Exchequer, based on limited state intervention, the freedom of the individual, value for money and the creation on an environment in which all can flourish, we can improve all our schools, significantly raise standards and make a genuine contribution to “levelling up”.

This report does not try to cover all aspects of schooling; there are many areas, such as mental health, T-Levels, SEND, EYFS where excellent work is being undertaken. It simply focuses on 10 key issues which will have an immediate impact on mainstream primary and secondary schools. For clarity, throughout this report, the term “school” also refers to all mainstream academies, free schools, CTCs, UTCs and community colleges.

Introduction

Education is a devolved topic. This report will, therefore, look solely at education in England, although many of the issues will apply equally to all parts of the UK.

Headline figures for state-funded schools in England [School Workforce in England 2021, Gov.uk]:

• The full-time equivalent of the school workforce is 968,079 (5 in 10 teachers, 465,526, [actual headcount = 512,000] 3 in 10 teaching assistants and 2 in 10 other non-teaching staff).

• The mean average salary of teachers: is £42,358

• The workforce was getting younger until the trend peaked in 2017-18. Since then, older age groups are increasing in proportion. (This may be the result of changing retirement policy.)

• Roughly 20% of the workforce is aged 50 and over. (2021/22 = 16.5% 50 to 59; 2.6% 60 and over)

• There are 54,000 teachers in Scotland [gov.scot], almost 24,000 in Wales [gov.wales] and nearly 21,000 in NI [ni.gov.uk]

Whatever one thinks of the recent Hancock/ Oakeshott headlines, there is no doubt that the publication of comments saying that teachers and their unions just want “an excuse to avoid having to teach”, “I know, they really really do just hate work”, will have further damaged relations between Westminster and the teaching profession.

The contemptuous tone appears even more offensive to teachers when one considers that these were probably the same people responsible for recommending the use of algorithms to decide students’ examination grades. The leaked suggestion that face masks were only introduced in schools to keep up with Nicola Sturgeon also does little to inspire confidence. Education is too critical to be used for political ends.

In January/February’s edition of “Educate”, Mary Bousted, General Secretary of the NEU, called for members to stand up and be counted in “the

pay ballot”. [0nly 53% of members voted.] Most teachers would, no doubt, like a significant pay rise, but the low turnout suggests that the majority recognise the difficulty of funding pay rises in the current financial climate and/or have concerns other than pay. These are most commonly, depending on the school, poor pupil behaviour, weak and unsupportive leadership, a lack of resources, changing goalposts, workload, teaching to the test, the lack of appropriate vocational courses, not being valued as professionals, Ofsted and continual change (the latter, sometimes contradictory, but often introduced with the conviction of the zealot).

Such an assessment was reinforced in 2021 by the report, “Understanding Teacher Retention”, produced for the UK Office of Manpower Economics (OME). It concluded that whilst pay and rewards are important retention factors, they are not the only factors that shape teachers’ retention choices.

Workplace characteristics (workload, school culture and teaching environment) are highly valued by teachers and most teachers (but not all) would be willing, “to trade-off higher pay/rewards to work in supportive environments with fewer challenges from pupil behaviour”.

It is on these wider issues that this report focuses on.

Recruitment and retention

In 2018, the Education Policy Institute reported that England’s schools were facing a “severe shortage” of teachers, and the then Education Secretary, Damian Hinds, announced that staff recruitment would be a top priority. Since then, things have got worse.

Initial Teacher Training Census 2022/23 [gov.uk], published 1st December 2022:

• Percentage of ITT recruitment target reached for secondary subjects - 59% (down from 79% in 2021/22)

• Percentage of ITT recruitment target reached for primary subjects - 93% (down from 131% in 2021/22)

Percentage of total ITT recruitment target reached:

Targets were exceeded in a few secondary subjects (history, PE, drama) but the take-up of places in others is frightening:

Mathematics 90%

Chemistry 86%

Biology 85%

Physics 17%

English 84%

Computing 30% (66% in 2021/22)

MFL 34% (69% in 2021/22)

Interestingly, numbers were up in design technology and geography, for both of which a bursary was reintroduced for the 2022/23 training year.

The census attributes the isolated “unprecedented increase” in recruitment in 2020/21 to the impact of COVID-19. (COVID-19 also led to increases in teacher retention, with the number of leavers in 2020/21 being the lowest since the Census began in 2010.)

Critically, the targets for recruitment have had to be raised in 2022/23 owing to “an increase in the number of teachers forecast to leave the workforce in future years”.

“The House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts (2018) stated that the number of secondary school teachers has been falling since 2010 and the number of teachers leaving for reasons other than retirement has been increasing since 2012.”

See “Understanding Teacher Retention”, both of which OME, 2021

To add to the problem, retention figures for new and younger teachers are worryingly poor. Almost a quarter of newly qualified teachers leave the profession within three years (23%) and almost one-third within five years (31.2%).

Recommendations

• To accept that there is an emerging national recruitment and retention crisis and to act effectively and immediately. No school can be better than its teachers.

• To ensure salaries are as generous as is practicably possible, but to also understand that pay is not the only or, for many teachers, even the most important issue.

• To implement this report as most recommendations will significantly contribute to recruitment and retention by improving morale, raising the status of teachers and empowering teachers to do their jobs well - our priority must be to enable “teachers to teach and pupils to learn”.

• To publish a new DfE recruitment and retention strategy. This will include a national recruitment campaign but it must be understood that this will only succeed if there is systemic change that will encourage teachers to stay in the profession. The DfE must, therefore, consider all relevant issues, many set out in this report, such as workload, protecting teachers, behaviour management, professional development and, above all, enabling “teachers to teach”.

• To require every school to devise a recruitment and retention policy, which should be available to all existing staff and to all who apply for work at the school.

• To develop a national strategy for ongoing professional training to enable staff, teaching and non-teaching, to develop all aspects of their careers including subject knowledge, pedagogy and pastoral work. This could include attending training courses, school-based training and sharing good practice but without increasing teacher workload.

• To introduce a standardised national job application form. Currently, all schools ask for the same basic information but in different formats (qualifications, experience, NI number etc); a standardised pro forma, with the option of asking for additional, school-specific information, would simplify and speed up the application process.

Workload

Teaching is demanding, not least in terms of the time commitment required. For the conscientious teacher, standing in front of the class for five hours a day is the easy (and most enjoyable) part of the job; it is everything else, including the preparation before and the marking/assessments after lessons, that takes time. A recently leaked DfE report [schoolsweek, March 2023] has revealed that 2 in 5 teachers work “unacceptable” 12-hour days.

In 1991, the introduction of School Teachers Pay and Conditions sought to clearly define the specific number of hours and days that teachers should be directed to work – 1,265 over 195 days, including five non-teaching days (i.e. roughly 6.5 hours per day). Staff are entitled to a minimum of 10% timetabled PPA [planning, preparation and assessment] time. This does not, however, include the number of hours spent preparing and marking at home in the evenings, at weekends or during holidays, nor extracurricular activities outside of school hours. It has been said many times that teachers complete the highest number of unpaid overtime hours of any profession.

The concept of directed time is now probably accepted by most teachers, but one immediate consequence of its introduction was a significant decline in the number of extracurricular activities, trips and visits, from which some of our schools have hardly recovered, despite the importance of such activities for young people. If teachers were required to work for 1,265 hours, some decided to do precisely that and subsequently stopped running many out-of-hours activities.

Fortunately, many willingly chose not to take such a rigid stance. It is not always possible to quantify precisely what teachers do, and trying to do so can be counterproductive.

Encouragingly, the latest Ofsted Frameworks have required schools to consider staff workload and work/life balance under the inspection of Leadership and Management; Ofsted also

now clearly values the importance of a good extracurricular offer.

Controversially, however, the most recent Ofsted Framework advocates a school week of 32.5 hours. This, multiplied by 39 weeks, creates a total commitment of 1,267.5 hours, leaving no directed time for parents’ evenings, staff meetings or departmental meetings, without even considering marking and preparation, let alone out-of-hours extracurricular activities. Of course, after-school clubs and activities could become part of the 32.5-hour week, but unless this is the case, many teachers will see these demands as a massive imposition or a forced change in contract.

This is not sensible, especially at a time of a recruitment and retention crisis, and could easily lead to pupils losing many extracurricular opportunities if teachers choose not to volunteer to do extra.

A

view from Down Under: A recent report (January 2022) by the Grattan Institute, an Australian public policy think tank, found that 92% of Australian teachers said they did not have enough time to prepare effectively for classroom teaching – the core of their job, and that teachers felt overwhelmed by everything they are expected to achieve. The Institute states bluntly that, “if governments don’t hear this cry and act on it, they will be letting down our children”. Their recommendations included that “they should let teachers teach”, reduce “unnecessary tasks…. Reduce the need for teachers to ‘reinvent the wheel’ in curriculum and lesson planning.”

[One of the biggest complaints about Ofsted since 2019 has been its demands for curriculum-related paperwork.]

Recommendations

• To undergo an attitudinal change – the recognition that teaching is demanding and that the vast majority of teachers go above and beyond basic contractual requirements.

• To require schools to agree with staff clear marking expectations in terms of frequency, quantity and depth. [Marking is “a key driver of large teacher workloads”, Workload Challenge survey, 2014.]

• To require schools to consider ways of supporting workload and work/life balance as a part of their recruitment and retention strategy. This should include reducing all bureaucracy to a minimum, making reporting and assessment as manageable and efficient (but also, as effective) as possible, and supporting staff with an effective behaviour policy. Best practice would be to produce the policy in consultation with staff.

• To develop AI to support marking, planning and bureaucratic necessities, but accepting that it cannot,” teach, up close and personal” [Gillian Keegan, May 2023]

• To understand that most teachers give extra, e.g. in terms of extracurricular activities, because they see it as part of their vocation and valuable to pupils. This must be recognised and respected by schools (but not necessarily financially rewarded).

• To not attempt to change contracts and working hours without the agreement of staff.

OFSTED

Rigorous, robust and objective external validation and accountability are essential for schools, pupils, and parents. Ofsted’s aim, ever since the 1990s, is, “to improve the overall quality of education and training”. It has certainly contributed to this development, but it could be both far more effective and ambitious. Is, “Banging on the chicken shed” [a nerve-wracking, two-day visit every four years, often followed by a fairly bland and anodyne report] the best way of improving our schools? School improvement is a serious and crucial subject, but Ofsted keeps changing the goalposts – the 2022 Framework is the seventh Framework in 10 years (with two in 2012). Hence, schools are continually forced to chop and change and “to play the game” rather than concentrate on substantive, long-term development.

We should also remember that many of the things that Ofsted currently criticises [off rolling, teaching to the test, narrowing the curriculum, qualification gaming etc] are caused by the “culture of fear” of Ofsted (acknowledged by Amanda Spielman, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, 23rd April 2023).

One should not underestimate the pressure that inspections put on teachers - they are public and can be highly personal - a point made obvious following the tragic suicide of Headteacher Ruth Perry, whose primary school was graded “inadequate”.

Notwithstanding this terrible chain of events, action must be taken where schools are underperforming, especially where schools are deemed to be unsafe. Now is surely the time for dialogue about the best way to inspect schools; we need a system which is both developmental and effective but also practicable for teachers and Heads.

To be clear, this is not a call for a decline in standards or rigour, but quite the opposite: it is a call for professional dialogue and genuine support to enable all schools to improve.

During lockdown, inspections were suspended and there was a change of emphasis to supporting and working with schools:

“In the autumn term, Ofsted will be carrying out ‘visits’ to schools and colleges, not inspections…. we will help them through collaborative conversations, without passing judgement – this isn’t inspection by stealth.

We’ll use our visits to listen to school leaders’….. and to provide constructive challenge…..The visits will not be graded…….. this is about a constructive conversation – we’re not trying to catch schools out. After all, we share the same aim: helping this generation of children and young people make up for lost time and get the high-quality education they deserve.”

Ofsted reported that “school leaders found these visits supportive and helped them to reflect on their priorities during this difficult time”. [www.gov.uk]

One improved approach would be for inspectors to identify clear areas for development, with accompanying specific, practical advice and then revisit the Head one or two years later to discuss progress. Whether or not Ofsted possesses the capacity and personnel to offer this level of practical support and real improvement, however, is another question.

Recommendations

• To undertake immediate discussions with the profession to create an inspection system that is both effective and manageable. A robust and objective external monitoring system is essential but it must be fit for purpose, practical and beneficial for all stakeholders. There should be an attitudinal shift from “name and shame” to ongoing development.

• To review the effectiveness of the current single overall grade and the four specific grades; increasing the number of specific grades could allow for more precise and accurate reporting

• To require all judgements and outcomes to be substantiated with more specific, detailed evidence. This may result in longer reports but should encourage greater consistency between inspections and also facilitate both challenges to and defence of inspectors’ judgements.

• To ensure that inspections result in specific and meaningful areas for development, with precise and practical advice on how to improve; these should form the basis of ongoing dialogue with each individual school.

Pupil behaviour

Poor pupil behaviour is one of the most frequently quoted reasons for teachers quitting the profession early, along with weak and ineffective leadership which fails to tackle (or even to admit) bad behaviour. Post-COVID-19, many schools have reported an increase in low-level disruption in class, whilst teachers are still sometimes subject to insults, rudeness, defiance and even physical assault. (See Geoff Barton’s blog, 28/04/2023: “Since the pandemic behaviour is unrecognisable”.) Nothing could be more obvious: if pupils do not behave, they will not learn; if teachers cannot do their job, they will leave the profession. The blame here largely lies with the leadership of individual schools. The law on the management of behaviour – detentions, suspensions, permanent exclusions, searching pupils – is clear, so it is, therefore, up to schools to use the sanctions and strategies open to them. The most recent Ofsted Frameworks have referred to suspension/exclusion as a “vital tool” in maintaining good behaviour, so Heads should not be afraid to resort to it whenever necessary.

That said, certain obstacles remain. Should a school suspend a pupil for more than five days, the school has to make arrangements for the child to be educated elsewhere. The 70-page statutory guidance on exclusion is all about the law, appeals and pupils’ and parents’ rights; nowhere, not even in DfE model letters for permanent exclusion, does it refer to appalling or unacceptable behaviour. We want young people to be in school, but those who cannot and will not behave must be removed. Our basic mantras must be that no pupil has the right to disrupt the learning of others and that teachers must be able to teach and pupils to learn. Anyone who repeatedly disrupts this must be prevented from doing so.

Those schools and LA’s that opt for a “no exclusion policy” are simply making life harder for teachers and preventing other youngsters from learning. Hackney, one of the most deprived boroughs in London, has historically been a high-excluding Borough but has also become one of the highest-

performing. There is surely a link here. [See School exclusion rate in Hackney is worst in inner London – Eastlondonlines]. At the same time, schools must also have the support they need in dealing with pastoral and mental health issues, which have grown exponentially post-COVID-19, be it by offering in-school professional counselling (at a financial cost) or by involving external agencies such as CAMHS that are currently massively overstretched.

Likewise, for parents/carers who abuse or threaten staff, procedures do exist for imposing bans from the site (schools are, after all, private property) but these must be simplified and strengthened. Schools must be able to ban parents from the site until further notice following any verbal/physical assault on a member of staff or pupil and any ban must be easily enforceable.

One of the key issues is what to do with excluded pupils; if suspension and exclusion are made easier, numbers will rise. With a short suspension, it may suffice for the pupil to stay at home and become the responsibility of the parents/carers, but longer suspensions and permanent exclusions require specialist provision. Passing badly behaved pupils from one school to another is not the answer, it simply gives the problem to someone else without the pupil’s unacceptable behaviour. (This is not to argue that managed moves – the voluntary swapping of pupils -are not sometimes positive and successful.) Urgent work is needed on providing far more effective placements for those removed from mainstream education. The absence of such provision is not, however, an argument for not suspending/excluding – the safety and education of other members of the school must always come first.

Individual pupils will have specific behavioural needs, which fully deserve appropriate and effective support, but the needs of a minority cannot be permitted to negatively impact the education of others. It should also be noted that

good behaviour is definitely not solely dependent on the range of punitive sanctions that a school uses. The schools with the best behaviour and ethos also have dynamic and engaging teaching, a flourishing extracurricular programme, a genuine and effective pastoral care system and place great importance on the mental health of both pupils and staff. At the same time, however, these schools also have clear, non-negotiable rules and boundaries which are, when necessary, enforced with appropriate sanctions.

Recommendations

• To simplify the rules and procedures on suspension and permanent exclusion, with the safety and education of others being paramount. Schools should feel supported in using “assertive discipline” approaches. Behaviour policies should state clearly that the decision to sanction a pupil lies with the school and not the parent. It is, for obvious reasons, always better to work with parents, but if there cannot be agreement, the school’s decision is final.

• To urgently provide many more places in good quality alternative provision and at effective Pupil Referral Units.

• To support schools with the unequivocal right to ban parents/carers from the site, and for such bans to be legally enforceable. The policy is to be clearly stated in each school’s prospectus and on its website.

• To require all schools to include a statement in their Behaviour Policy confirming that any false or malicious accusation/allegation against a member of staff, however minor, will lead to serious sanctions, up to and including permanent exclusion. It should also state that any such actions by a parent/career may have formal legal consequences. The safety and protection of staff and pupils is paramount.

• To permit schools to exclude pupils for persistent truancy. At the moment schools cannot take effective disciplinary action – they are not permitted to exclude for truancy, but if the truant refuses to attend detentions or to accept other help or sanctions, the school is impotent.

• To establish a specialist unit for parents within the DfE dedicated to all aspects of parenting including child behaviour, cognitive development, the role of play, healthy relationships, safety, health and wellbeing. This is long overdue, especially considering that even school-aged youngsters only spend on average about 17.5% of their time in school - 82.5% of their time is beyond the school gates.

Vocational and technical education

For far too long, successive UK governments have failed to recognise the importance of vocational and technical education, despite it being highly valued in countries such as Germany. There have recently been some very positive developments in these areas, but these have largely been at post 16 level. The government has an ambition (Ofsted Handbook, S207) that by 2025, 90% of Year 10 pupils will be studying the Ebacc [English Baccalaureate – English Language and Literature, maths, at least two GCSEs in science, humanity and an MFL].

Nowhere, however, is there a similar ambition for practical, technical or vocational outcomes, even though, after 11 years of compulsory schooling, between one-third and one-quarter of pupils fail to attain even a basic pass (grade 4) in each subject. [Average number of GCSEs taken by 16-year-olds has remained fairly constant over the past few years at 7.78 (2022)]. One is reminded of Sir Anthony Seldon’s comment that we should be considering not, “how intelligent you are….but how are you intelligent?” It is essential to not only ask of the curriculum, “Are we doing things right”, but, more importantly, “Are we doing the right things” and how do we know?”

GCSE outcomes across all subjects at grade 4/low C (England only) – the spike in 2020 and 2021 was due to the absence of summer exams (teacher assessments) [GCSE results 2022, www.gov.uk]:-

academic subjects. Academies, supposedly “free” from the National Curriculum, are expected to offer all pupils a broad curriculum that should be similar in breadth and ambition to the NC; it remains, therefore, the Gold Standard. This is probably appropriate for most, if not all, youngsters up to the end of Key Stage 3 (11-14) but not beyond it. Crucially, the current curriculum also appears not to support the economic needs of the country in the 21st century.

“EngineeringUK has been tracking the annual demand for engineers and technicians needed to just keep pace with infrastructure and other engineering projects. They estimate 203,000 roles are required annually, made up of 124,000 engineers and technicians with core engineering skills, plus 79,000 related roles requiring a mix of engineering knowledge and other skill sets like project management.” “The lack of young people entering the sector is an area where something can and (in some cases) is being done.” Despite the prioritising of STEM in many schools, and 201 being denoted the “Year of Engineering” in the UK, almost half of those between 11 and 19 said they “know little or nothing about what engineers do”.

See “Overcoming the Shortage of Engineers”, Riad Mannan, 2021, NewEngineer

The National Curriculum continues to be the basic diet for most pupils, again emphasising traditional

At the time of the Brexit debate, one senior NHS figure said that leaving the EU would leave the UK short of both nurses and doctors. If we, as a country, produced enough academic doctors but not enough vocational nurses, or vice versa, enough nurses but not enough doctors, one would feel our education system was skewed but successful; not to produce enough of either, however, leaves us with the question, precisely what does our education system produce? [2 in 5 GPs are born outside the UK, as are 47.5% of specialist doctors. Richard Meddings, Chairman of NHS England,

quoted in the Daily Telegraph, March 2023.] It is essential that all youngsters are literate, numerate and have a sound, knowledge-rich understanding of the country and world in which they live. The consequences of the current system, however, are that teachers are faced with trying to motivate youngsters who see little point in preparing for exams which they will fail, and know they will fail. This is not a call for “prizes for all”, but a recognition of the need to prepare all young people for a successful future and active participation in society.

Recommendations

• To introduce additional worthwhile, meaningful and high-quality technical, professional and vocational courses, which are fully validated and have parity of esteem, at Key Stage 4 (14 to 16 years of age).

• These courses should be delivered on-site at school so that any absence of local relevant work placements does not prevent the courses from running successfully. Additional literacy and numeracy should be key components, as should, wherever possible, meaningful work experience (which should be a part of the experience of all pupils, regardless of their curriculum route).

Teaching professionals

Teaching is a profession but, unlike most other professions, has seen various specific professional strategies dictated from on high by politicians, Ofsted, civil servants and policy advisors. Nothing angers teachers more than being told how to do their jobs by people who, very often, have never stood in front of 30 difficult teenagers on a wet Friday afternoon.

This is not to argue that politicians – not least because of the significant spending of taxpayers’ money on education [£72,981 million in 2021/22, second only to Health and Social Care] - and people in other walks of life (from business, industry, health etc) should not contribute to education policy, but no Minister or civil servant would tell a doctor what medicine to prescribe nor a dentist how best to extract a tooth.

How to teach requires specific knowledge, skills and experience which grow over time. Methodologies must be continuously reviewed to develop the best approaches, but the great teacher is the one who has the ability to adapt what is taught and how it is taught to each pupil in each class.

Over the past 30 years, thinking on pedagogy has changed – child-centred learning was all the rage, only to be replaced by more traditional, teacher-led techniques; group work and cooperative learning were popular, only for more didactic methods to become the norm, again; “differentiation” was previously expected by Ofsted, only now to be criticised and to be superseded by “adaptive” teaching.

Similarly, at primary level, teachers have been encouraged to use phonics in the teaching of reading; most would agree that phonics is, very often, highly effective, but it does not work in all situations or with all pupils. [The latest Progress International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) placed

England a very impressive fourth in the world, although this was primarily because of the relative drop in standards in competitor countries; most worryingly, the study also revealed that there has been a significant decline in the number of English pupils who enjoy reading. May 2023]

The mark of a good teacher is the ability to adapt what they do depending on individual pupils, classes, topics, time of day and whether it is raining or snowing – one size does not and cannot fit all. Ofsted has at least accepted this and since 2017 has stated it, “does not advocate any particular approach to planning, teaching, or assessment”.

Recommendations

• To support continued research into the most effective pedagogical styles and approaches

• To accept that politicians and Ofsted should concentrate on standards and outcomes rather than on specific classroom practices.

• To develop a national DfE strategy for high-quality continuing professional development for all school staff.

• To establish a new professional body to bring together the teaching profession with politicians and civil servants. It should be government funded, but not an instrument of the government. Nor should it be overly bureaucratic such as the earlier NCSL and NCTL: it should be an effective and respected professional forum whereby teachers, politicians and civil servants can engage in positive and regular dialogue. This National Schools’ Council would comprise ministers and civil servants as well as elected representatives from all areas of the school system

(including Heads, classroom teachers and representatives from recognised bodies such as the National Institute of Teaching, The Chartered College of Teaching, The Education Endowment Foundation) and would have the remit to discuss pedagogy, workload, discipline, curriculum, inspection, recruitment and retention and all other aspects of schooling. It is not a trade union and, therefore, should not be responsible for dispute resolution or pay bargaining, although a healthy relationship between all parties may help to prevent issues from arising. The ultimate aim is for all parties to work together for the benefit of our schools by enabling policymakers and practitioners to work together in a formal, professional and nonconfrontational setting.

LEAs, MATS and standalone academies

The 2022 Schools White Paper, which has been subsequently dropped by Gillian Keegan, called for “the move to a fully trust-led system by 2030”, meaning that there would be no Local Authority schools and all schools would be a part of a MAT, or in the process of joining one. [Approximately 40% of primary schools and 80% of secondaries are academies.] This would result in changes to some high-performing schools which are currently either LA schools or standalone academies.

Where schools are failing, forcing them to join a MAT and receive additional support makes sense, but why change those schools that are performing well, just to have a more unified system? Is it, not, the whole rationale of the original academy philosophy, to encourage independence and originality? The White Paper suggested that where trusts run more than 10 schools, they develop economies of scale and greater opportunities for sharing good practices and for staff development. This is all to be applauded, but what of those schools which are performing successfully partly because they concentrate on just one school and do not want to dilute what they do well?

Sharing good practice is essential, as are economies of scale – so much money has been spent since academisation on each individual school employing a Finance Manager and HR staff, jobs that were previously undertaken by County or City Hall. But why change what is working? By forcing all schools into MATS there is a real danger of “reorganisation masquerading as improvement”. The move to a complete trust-led system would also involve further bureaucratic reorganisation: the plan was for the appointment of nine Regional Directors supported by eight-member Advisory Boards, plus the resulting costs - £86 million in the Trust Capacity Fund to support the expansion of Trusts.

Recommendations

• To only force schools that are underperforming to join a MAT. Where LEA schools or standalone academies are performing well, they should be celebrated and supported.

• To encourage successful stand-alone academies to work together in loose partnerships/federations, to disseminate good practice and to economise by sharing backroom costs but without being forced to lose their identity or autonomy

Maths for all post-16s

The Prime Minister’s call for all to study maths until 18 has caused much debate. There is no doubt that mathematical literacy is of crucial importance, especially if Britain wants to be a leader in engineering, science, technology, electronics and AI etc. The proposal, however, raises several key issues, not least, who is going to teach the additional maths lessons? In 2018, David Laws, Chairman of EPI, stated that “as little as half GCSE maths teachers have a maths or sciences degree” and since then, the recruitment of maths teachers has declined.

We must also be clear about what we want to achieve, not least since about one-quarter of 16-year-olds currently fail to “pass” GCSE maths. The fundamental question is what is meant by “maths”: is it arithmetic and numeracy, which we all use in our everyday lives, or is it academic mathematics above and beyond GCSE level (e.g. calculus or kinematics), which, while further developing mathematical skill and understanding, is something very few of us will ever actually use? Furthermore, if students spend more time studying maths, will this impact negatively on other crucial subjects?

What we should also consider, at the same time, is raising the profile of problem-solving, enterprise and entrepreneurship across the curriculum. The Entrepreneurs Network (TEN) recently (7 July 2022) wrote an open letter calling for entrepreneurship to be, “Integrated into existing subjects such as maths, English, and design” because “Young people are entering a world of work that is changing at breakneck speed. Many of the jobs that schoolleavers expect to do today didn’t exist 15 years ago, and the same is likely to be true in the next 15 years.” These approaches, however, can be adopted in almost every subject, by requiring students to analyse problems, apply knowledge and supply reasoned and evidence-based answers. For most teachers, this is simply good teaching.

Encouraging students to apply knowledge, think critically and for themselves. Although not specifically mathematical, the ability to critically analyse, reason and come to logical conclusions, supported by relevant and objective knowledge/ evidence, is surely a prime aim of education in a liberal democracy, as well as being crucial in all aspects of national life and employment.

Recommendations

• To produce a precise definition of what is meant by “maths for all” post 16. The DfE must decide if it means numeracy or more academic maths; if it is to be aimed primarily at those who fail GCSE maths; if it is ultimately leading to a broaderbased baccalaureat at post-16 and away from the traditional three A Levels.

• To successfully recruit more qualified and welltrained maths teachers. This may require the offer of specific financial incentives and bursaries although this could be counterproductive in terms of wider recruitment bearing in mind the shortages in most subject areas; it must also be remembered that retention is equally as important as recruitment.

• To increase the requirements for critical thinking and problem-solving in the National Curriculum and examination specifications.

• To undertake a detailed national skills audit amongst employers, businesses and industry to identify precisely what skills they require and expect from young people.

Trans, LGBTQIA and gender issues: legal protection

In March 2023, calls for an enquiry into the teaching of Relationships, Sex and Health Education (compulsory since 2020) were raised at PMQs following allegations that some schools were teaching about anal sex, masturbation and the existence of more than 100 genders. Union leaders immediately replied that only a tiny minority of schools were not following current guidelines and that the issue was being used for political purposes.

Despite this criticism of schools, politicians should remember that current statutory guidance instructs schools that, “all pupils understand the importance of equality”, that “sexual orientation and gender reassignment are amongst the protected characteristics [of the Equality Act 2010]” and that “we expect all pupils to have been taught LGBTQIA content at a timely point” [Sections 36 and 37, Statutory Guidance]. The Guidance recognises that we live in an, “increasingly complex world”. Schools are also required by the Ofsted Framework to prepare pupils for, “Life in 21st century Britain”, but what precisely does that mean? Are young people to be prepared for life in a gender-neutral society? This is certainly not a decision to be taken by individual schools, but a decision for our elected representatives and society as a whole.

Is this representative of 21st-century Britain?

In 2021, a non-binary passenger on an LNER train complained to the company because a conductor had welcomed passengers on board with the greeting, “Ladies and gentlemen”. LNER apologised to the complainant, stating

that its staff, “Should not be using language like this”. TfL staff were told to stop using “ladies and gentlemen” in favour of, “Good morning everyone”, as early as 2017.

So where do schools stand? Is it only a matter of time before a teacher is prosecuted on the grounds of discrimination for saying “boys and girls”?

The Statutory Guidance on RSHE is quite good, although it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather loose and permissive. Although I should always argue for the professionalism of teachers to be respected, if clearer guidance is needed on the teaching of RSHE, then so be it. It is essential that teachers have clarity on such controversial topics and feel legally and professionally protected. Schools require immediate support with catering for trans pupils.

Advice on issues such as uniforms, pronouns and toilets was promised in the spring of 2022 by the then Secretary of State, but it is still to be published. And this is important – it is precisely this sort of issue, in the hands of a litigious parent, that could land a school in court as the Head is still awaiting the relevant guidance.

Some schools have argued that since young people cannot legally change sex until they are 18, pupils should be treated as girls or boys, according to what is on their birth certificate. Is this a sensible and workable approach or does it show a lack of compassion and is it legally discriminatory, contrary to the Equality Act and the Human Rights Act? These are immediate decisions for politicians, not teachers.

Recommendations

• To provide immediate advice to schools on catering for trans pupils, including on uniforms, names, toilets and pronouns.

• To provide absolute clarity on the terms “sex” and “gender” and on the precise legal requirements by which schools must abide.

• To give greater clarity as to what is expected in the RSHE curriculum. [On the issue of informing parents about issues of sex, gender, contraception etc, schools must always put the safety and welfare of the pupil first, especially when the child is deemed Gillick Competent. Legislation must not be so prescriptive as to restrict this essential freedom of professional judgement.]

• To urgently agree on a definition of what is meant by “Britain in the 21st century” – is it non-binary? – and the role schools should play in preparing young people for living in it.

A school certificate at 16

As previously mentioned, a large number of 16-yearolds leave school having “failed” their GCSEs. What is there to encourage these youngsters to stay in education, to behave well, or to even attend school? Failure is a great demotivator. A broader curriculum will, hopefully, engage more youngsters, but what of those who work hard, behave well, contribute to the school community and then achieve very little in terms of academic results? These youngsters, pleasant, hard-working and trustworthy, can still play a positive role in the community and hold down a good job yet, in school terms, they are “failures”.

A non-academic school certificate should state factual information about the pupil – attendance, punctuality, attitude and behaviour. These are attributes which interest employers. During the 1990s and early 2000s, pupils had a Record of Achievement, a portfolio of documentation about academic and non-academic successes. Very few employers and practically no universities, however, took any notice of them, primarily because they contained no objective and quantifiable information. It is important to know if a youngster played in the football team or undertook the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, but it is also important to know whether the pupil was rude, defiant, continually late or frequently absent; such information was missing from the RoA.

In the past, many school reports have also been almost worthless because of the requirement to be “positive”. A national, standardised certificate could be easily completed by schools and could then be used for job/apprenticeship applications or admission to colleges and school sixth forms. (Currently, admissions law prevents schools from refusing to admit pupils into their sixth forms on any grounds other than failing to fulfil academic requirements, e.g. attaining a set number of GCSEs at certain grades. The fact a pupil has been

continually absent or disruptive for the previous five years cannot be held against the pupil, who has a ‘right’ of passage into the sixth form.) The idea of a non-academic certificate is nothing new and was recommended by the Newsom Report of 1963 which called for pupils’ wider qualities to be recognised including their, “patience and persistence….general attitudes to learning….honesty, cheerfulness, pleasant manners…and an ability to get on with people”. [S258]

Above all, this certificate could be a tremendous motivator: the pupils who are predicted to achieve little academically currently have little to encourage them, but knowing that their behaviour, attitude, attendance and work ethic will be recorded and presented to future employers could be a major incentive for many.

The suggestion is that data should only refer to pupils’ performance in Years 10 and 11 (i.e. it gives pupils time to develop and mature, not holding childish behaviour when younger against them) and should be compared against the individual school and national data. The document would also be an opportunity to explain any extenuating circumstances that may explain poor attendance. Education and successful schooling are about so much more than exam results, so let us reflect and celebrate achievement in all its forms, including reliability, perseverance, determination and punctuality.

Recommendations:

• To introduce a national, standardised nonacademic certificate at 16, recording individual attendance, punctuality and behaviour data against national and school averages, as well as all other non-classroom achievements (e.g. sport, music, drama, charity work).

• To design a programme of study requiring pupils, as part of the Certificate, to undertake courses in careers and “life skills”, covering basic topics such as personal finance [including taxationthis could also be a vehicle for improving pupils’ practical application of maths], how to apply for jobs/further/higher education and interview practice. Pupils should also complete a period of meaningful work experience to attain the Certificate.

• To provide additional support and where necessary, direct, ring-fenced funding, to enable all schools to run vibrant extra/co-curricular programmes, including sport, music, drama, debating, trips and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Currently, the quality and range of out-ofhours activities vary enormously.

Conclusion

Over the past 40 years, practically every aspect of schooling in England has changed - curriculum, examinations, inspections, funding, teaching methodology, governance, the organisation and legal status of schools and the role of local government - with one fundamental exception: the continued critical importance of the inspirational classroom teacher.

As much as ever, the influence of the great teacher remains transformative. Yet, in recent years, we have seen more and more experienced teachers leave the profession early and fewer and fewer people join. The purpose of this report is to offer practical, cost-effective solutions that will help to raise standards, encourage talented teachers to stay in teaching and attract more new entrants to a career that will change young lives for the better and contribute to the very future of this country.

About the author

Tim Clark was a secondary teacher for 32 years and a Head for 18 years, firstly at a selective grammar school which he led from “good” to “outstanding” and latterly at a difficult comprehensive academy, sited on one of the largest and most deprived council estates in east London, which he “transformed” (Ofsted 2017).

In 2019 he moved into education consultancy and professional development training, specialising in school improvement and leadership development.

He has supported schools in all sectors, primary and secondary, state and independent, both in this country and abroad, most recently in Spain and Nigeria. In 2020 he co-authored an influential report on Ofsted.