17 February, 2025

3 top education stories

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

1. Procurement Act: impact on schools and trusts

The way in which the education sector purchases goods, works and services will be transformed from Monday 24 February, writes Tes.

The Procurement Act 2023 takes effect on 24 February, bringing major changes to how schools and trusts purchase goods and services. The purpose of the Act is to ensure contracting authorities deliver value for money, maximise public benefit, act with integrity throughout a procurement exercise and continue to ensure equal treatment of bidders.

The entire procurement process, from selecting a supplier to managing the contract and eventually closing it, will now be regulated under the Procurement Act 2023.

Meaning, if a school or trust signs a contract worth over £5 million, they must now publicly share the contract and at least 3 key performance indicators to ensure accountability and allow stakeholders to see how public funds are spent.

Furthermore, trusts must assess the supplier’s performance every year based on the agreed KPIs and if a supplier repeatedly fails to meet its KPIs, they could be excluded from future contracts.

This shift makes procurement more strategic and ensures schools get real value for money over the life of a contract.

Source: Procurement Act: what it is and how it will impact schools and trusts (Tes.com)

2. NFER: Curriculum review should look at employment skills

NFER study says schools need support to promote the development of skills such as communication, organisation and problem-solving, writes Schools Week.

According to research published by NFER, inequalities in cognitive and behavioural outcomes in young children “become more entrenched and harder to impact as they get older”.

The report urged the government to “incentivise and support schools to develop the six essential employment skills” (EES) – communication, collaboration, problem-solving, organising, planning and prioritising work, creative thinking and information literacy.

A previous NFER study predicted workers would need to use EES “more intensively in jobs by 2035″. But up to seven million workers “could lack the required level of EES to carry out these roles”.

The new report asks the government to use the curriculum review to “explore whether and how more emphasis could be placed on the development of EES.”

Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the ASCL leaders’ union, hopes the ongoing curriculum and assessment review “will better balance the previous government’s excessive focus on a small number of academic subjects with more room for vocational, digital and creative subjects – which nurture many of the skills sought by employers”.

Source: Curriculum review should ‘incentivise’ schools to teach ’employment skills’ (schoolsweek.co.uk)

3. MATs ‘need guidance’ on investments as returns soar

The DfE said it’s engaging with the sector to help raise awareness of how schools can earn more from their money, writes Tes.

Increasingly, trusts are depositing their extra cash through online platforms that allow them to use multiple savings accounts and get better interest returns.

But while some MATs made millions through investing their funds last year, there are fears that others are missing out entirely, particularly smaller trusts.

Analysis Bishop Fleming shows that large trusts made an average 3.2% return on their cash investments last year, while the average for both single-academy trusts and medium-sized trusts was 1.9%.

A DfE spokesperson said: “We provide guidance to trusts on how to manage their investments within the Academy Trust Handbook and we encourage all schools to speak to their current or alternative banks to understand if banking efficiencies can be made and more suitable products are available to them.”

Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the CST, said the organisation would consider looking into trusts’ successes in increasing investment income to see if there were lessons for the wider sector.

Source: MATs ‘need guidance’ on investments as returns soar (Tes.com)