Blog: Latest Educational News - October 2024
Recent UK education news has focused on key developments and reforms that parents should consider when choosing a high school for their children. It’s important to reflect on how the new government proposes to reform education and the schools ability to thrive through change over the next 3-5 years. Perhaps these are key questions to think of when attending Open Days.
Utilise the free element of schoolratings.co.uk to understand individual school performance for a range of KPIs, or for a small fee, get unlimited and life time access to schools data in the UK, in an easy to read format.
Curriculum Changes
Labour plans to make the national curriculum mandatory for all schools, including academies. This aims to standardize education and ensure all students have access to a "broader and richer" curriculum. Schools deviating from this will need to adapt, potentially impacting subject offerings and teaching approaches.
Our view is that the risk is really standardisation vs flexibility, and loss of autonomy. Clearly the government think there is an issue with curriculum, however through my experience schools are so under-funded there are more fundamental elements to fix first.
Funding and Staffing Concerns
Teacher shortages and the push to recruit more qualified educators remain significant challenges. Labour’s initiatives to improve teacher pay and workload are expected to address these issues but may not resolve them quickly. Staff availability can affect class sizes, extracurricular offerings, and individual attention, which are important considerations when choosing a school.
Breakfast Clubs and Attendance
To combat absenteeism, Labour proposes mandatory breakfast clubs in primary schools, although some experts argue this may not be a comprehensive solution. For high schools, attendance remains a critical issue, with many institutions struggling to maintain high engagement. Understanding a school's approach to addressing attendance problems and student well-being can be vital.
Research states that attendance less than 95% can have a significant impact to a student’s educational experience. Both our children had a couple of days off for illness and we did take them out of school for a holiday in academic year 23/24. This meant we were fined considerably and this fine would increase based on the new rules being rolled out in September. As parents, we do take education seriously, and have not seen any adverse effects to either child’s attainment for missing school during that period. Personally, I feel a one-size fits all approach to fines does not make sense, and there needs to be an alternative system to combat persistent absenteeism due to parent neglect and focus on more supportive interventions to address the cause of absenteeism.
VAT on Private Schools
Labour’s decision to end VAT exemptions for private schools could make them less accessible, potentially leading to a shift in demand for state schools. This could affect admission competitiveness and resource allocation at top-performing state schools.
Personally, this makes my decision to send my children to a private school extremely difficult as we don’t appreciate the incremental 20% uplift in value for money compared to before. But, the results speak for themselves and there only a few state schools in the country who content with private school results/grades.
School Selection Factors
Parents should consider several aspects when choosing a high school, such as curriculum breadth, teacher quality, and school facilities. Exam performance and extracurricular opportunities are also important, as they can influence a child’s academic and social development.
Sources of information and further reading
Here are the sources used for the information on the latest education news in the UK: