8 May, 2026

Top education news stories

Explore this week’s news roundup to uncover the key challenges and priorities for schools across the country.

6 min read

1. Trusts ease expansion to become ‘professionally generous’

‘Time for optimism’, says regions boss, as trusts turn to ‘giving something back to the system’, writes Tes.

Long-running academy trusts have shed the desire to “grow, grow, grow” and are instead “reaching out” to help colleagues, a senior government mandarin has said.

Tim Coulson, the head of the Department for Education’s regional teams, told the Schools and Academies Show on Thursday there was less of a sense of growth for a trust’s own sake, but a willingness to reach out and help colleagues.

“We would love to see that sense of a system of professional generosity. Many of you will have both given professional generosity over the years and experienced it.”

Coulson said it was a “time for optimism”.

Pointing to the government’s ambition for all schools to be in a trust, he said academy chains would be “expected” to have “inclusive support”. There would also be a “greater focus on geographic coherence”.

“For trusts that have 10 years under their belts, I think we’re now beginning to see not a sector where ‘I’ve just got to grow, grow, grow’ but ‘I’ve reached a stage where… I’ve got something to offer the system.”

Coulson added that over the next few months his teams would be encouraging “conversations” over what geographical coherence “means for the area you live”.

Source: Trusts ease expansion to become ‘professionally generous’ (schoolsweek.co.uk)

2. Heads pave way for industrial action over new Ofsted framework

High-stakes accountability ‘just doesn’t work’, says Sinéad Mc Brearty, who chairs the NAHT advisory panel on the Ofsted framework, writes Tes.

Delegates at the NAHT school leaders’ union annual conference in Belfast at the start of May unanimously backed a set of motions seeking to escalate its campaign against the watchdog.

One motion, put forward by the West Midlands region, called on NAHT to “explore legal, industrial and campaigning strategies” to challenge the new framework, which was launched in November.

The NAHT previously sought a judicial review of Ofsted’s new school inspections, but the High Court rejected it.

The motion stated that feedback from members had highlighted “increased stress, heightened workload and a deepening sense of fear among school leaders”.

The framework represented “a real threat to the wellbeing, livelihoods and, in some tragic cases, the lives of education professionals”.

A delegate from Leeds said heads had reported feeling “numb” and “dead” following inspections, adding that “it takes them a while to recover”.

Furthermore, leaders voted for the union to campaign for the government to introduce national standards for SEND training for staff in resourced provisions and SEN units. Delegates also called for the union to campaign for the introduction of a mandatory national training programme for new school leaders, to improve recruitment and retention.

Source: Heads pave way for industrial action over new Ofsted framework (tes.com)

3. SEN and disadvantaged students four times more likely to be suspended

Suspensions are on the rise, with disadvantaged students and those with special needs more than four times more likely to be suspended, writes Sec-Ed.

A total of 312,562 students were suspended from school during the spring term 2024/25 – a year-on-year increase of around 17,000.

New figures from the DfE show that the suspension rate during this period was 3.72% – an increase year-on-year.

The figures show that students with SEN are significantly more likely to be suspended. While the suspension rate for students without SEN is 2.35%, this rises to 9.79% for children on SEN Support and 8.83% for those with an Education, Health and Care Plan.

Furthermore, among students on free school meals, the suspension rate is 8.73% to just 1.99% for those not eligible for FSMs.

It means that while children with SEN make up around 20% of the school population, they accounted for nearly half of the suspensions (49%). Likewise, while FSM children make up 26% of the student population, they accounted for 60% of all suspensions.

Boys also remain significantly more likely to be suspended than girls (4.58% vs 2.83%), while Gypsy/Roma and Traveller children have the highest suspensions rates when it comes to ethnicity (more than 10%), followed by white and black Caribbean children (6.84%).

Source: SEN and disadvantaged students four times more likely to be suspended (sec-ed.co.uk)