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13 January, 2025
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Read more1. Government will amend schools bill over academy teacher pay
Schools minister says amendment will make clear academies have to follow a salary floor, but need only show ‘due regard’ to other pay rules, writes Schools Week.
The government will amend its own schools bill to make clear that academies only have to adhere to a teacher pay ‘floor’, the schools minister has said.
This means academies will maintain their flexibility to provide better salaries and conditions, the schools minister Catherine McKinnell said in parliament last week.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson previously said the bill would create a pay “floor, but no ceiling” for schools, but the bill as written does not reflect that. Therefore, McKinnell announced last week that the government will table an amendment to change that.
She said the government had “heard the feedback from the sector” that “our ambition for teacher pay and conditions should be clearer”. The amendment will “set a floor on pay that requires all state schools to follow minimum pay bands”.
But it will also set out that academies only need to “have due regard to the rest of the terms and conditions in the school’s teacher pay and conditions document”.
Source: Government will amend schools bill over academy teacher pay (schoolsweek.co.uk)
2. Revealed: The experts appointed to SEND inclusion panels
The government has appointed a team of experts to evaluate how to make mainstream schools more inclusive, writes Schools Week.
Sector leaders have been appointed to two new expert panels tasked with advising the government on how to make mainstream schools more inclusive to fix the “broken” SEND system.
Tom Rees, CEO of Ormiston Academies Trust, was appointed chair of the government’s new expert advisory group on inclusion, which will oversee reforms aimed at making mainstream schools more inclusive.
It has now been revealed he will be joined on the panel by:
- Susan Douglas, CEO of Eden Academy Trust
- Annamarie Hassall, CEO of the National Association for Special Educational Needs
- Anne Heavey, director of insights for Ambition Institute
- Andrew O’Neill, headteacher of All Saints Catholic College
- Claire Jackson, principal educational psychologist at Salford City Council
- Heather Sandy, executive director of children’s services at Lincolnshire County Council
The advisory group will meet monthly to “look at how to improve mainstream education outcomes and experience for children and young people with SEND”.
Also announced on Thursday morning was membership of the government’s new neurodivergence task and finish group, chaired by Professor Karen Guldberg, head of the School of Education, and former Director of the Autism Centre for Education and Research (ACER) at the School of Education, University of Birmingham.
Source: The experts appointed to SEND inclusion panels (schoolsweek.co.uk)
3. Phillipson’s AI ‘revolution’
Mandatory teacher training on using assistive technology, a new tech purchasing platform and an edtech evidence board announced at BETT Show, writes Schools Week.
Speaking at the BETT Show, the education secretary announced teachers will receive mandatory training on using assistive technology to support children with special educational needs and disabilities.
In a speech outlining what the government has dubbed an “AI revolution”, Bridget Phillipson said the sessions will form part of national training for all new teachers from 2025 as a way to increase participation, confidence and engagement in school children.
Phillipson said her “vision for the future” was a “system in which each and every child gets a top class education, backed by evidence-based tech and nurtured by inspiring teachers”. “A system in which teachers are set free by AI and other technologies, less marking, less planning, less form filling.”
This comes after a trial by the NFER for the Education Endowment Foundation found teachers who use ChatGPT alongside a guide on using it effectively can reduce lesson planning time by 31%.
Phillipson told the conference the training sessions would “become part of national training for all new teachers in 2025”. The DfE had designed training materials previously to test their impact, but it will be down to training providers to decide which resources to use.
Source: Phillipson’s AI ‘revolution’: What schools need to know (schoolsweek.co.uk)
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4. Persistent absence is coming down
But the number of pupils absent in the first week of this term was greater than last year, raising concerns that parent fines do not have the desired effect, writes Tes.
Persistent absence has improved compared with last year, the latest government data reveals. The rate of persistent absence – pupils who miss 10% or more of their possible sessions – was 18.7% for the current academic year up to 10th January.
This represented a decrease in the persistent absence rate across the same time period for 2023-24, which was at 20.3%, according to the new DfE data.
Today’s figures are part of a recent trend of improvements in persistent absence, with the rate dropping between 2022-23 and 2023-24 (from 21.2% to 19.2%, respectively).
However, the rate remains high compared with before the Covid pandemic: 10.9% of children were persistently absent in 2018-19. Meanwhile, the number of pupils off school without permission at the start of this term had slightly risen compared with last year.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT, commented that fining parents is a “blunt tool” that does not get to the “root causes of non-attendance” or “shift the dial in any meaningful way”.
He said that the government must build on measures such as the register of children not in school by “investing more in services like social care and children’s mental health” and ensure that the Child Poverty Taskforce leads to “tangible action”.
5. Ofsted should inspect pupil wellbeing, says EPI
Education Policy Institute also updates its trust and council performance tracker tool, writes Schools Week.
Pupil wellbeing should be inspected as a category in Ofsted’s new report cards to provide parents with more nuanced information, a think tank has said.
The Education Policy Institute is calling for a ‘fairer and more holistic approach’ to measuring school effectiveness. In a report, published today, EPI said government should consider wellbeing as a data point for school performance and monitoring children’s mental health.
There are no current measures of pupil wellbeing available in government data.
EPI argues current performance measures by Ofsted provide a ‘disincentive’ to schools being inclusive for all pupils. Jon Andrews, EPI’s director for school system and performance, said: “The accountability system does not paint a fair picture of school effectiveness.
Source: Ofsted should inspect pupil wellbeing, says EPI (schoolsweek.co.uk)
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