CJO - Social Policy Digest

Social Policy Digest

Subject:	Education
Topic:	Education policy
Year:	2014 \| 2013 \| 2012 \| 2011 \| 2010 \| 2009 \| 2008 \| 2007 \| 2006 \| 2005 \| 2004 \| 2003 \| 2002

Children's Plan launched

The government announced a comprehensive Children's Plan, designed to improve pupils' educational attainment, health, and happiness. The Plan set targets for 2020 for improving the skills children had at the start of both primary and secondary school, reducing obesity, eradicating child poverty, and 'significantly reducing' the number of children convicted of criminal offences. By 2020, schools would be expected to have 90 per cent of children 'developing well' across all areas of the early years foundation stage by age 5, and reading at or above expected levels in English and maths by age 11. £225 million would be provided to build or upgrade 3,500 playgrounds and set up 30 new supervised adventure playgrounds. The plan outlined a series of reviews and consultations, including: a review of the impact of the commercial world on children's well-being; a review of sex and relationship education; an action plan in 2008 to tackle housing overcrowding; a youth alcohol action plan and drugs strategy in spring 2008; and a children's workforce action plan early in 2008.

Source: The Children's Plan: Building brighter futures, Cm 7280, Department for Children, Schools and Families, TSO (0870 600 5522)

Date: 2007-Dec

End of 11-plus in Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland Executive announced that the 11-plus exam was to be scrapped. From 2010 secondary school selection would no longer be based on academic ability.

Source: Press release 4 December 2007, Northern Ireland Executive (028 9052 0500)

Date: 2007-Dec

Liberal education policy

A think-tank report set out a vision of a 'liberal' education policy – one which harnessed the power of individual and community activism to the cause of social justice. This meant taking the existing centrally planned, bureaucratically controlled system and turning it on its head, so that parental choice rather than ministerial diktat became the driver of policy, combined with a more progressive funding settlement to ensure that it was not just the most affluent and active parents who benefited.

Source: Julian Astle, A Liberal Education Policy, CentreForum (020 7340 1160)

Links: Report | CentreForum press release

Date: 2007-Dec

Education and Skills Bill

The government announced (in the Queen's Speech) a Bill to raise the compulsory education participation age in England to 17 by 2013 and 18 by 2015, and a Bill was published. It also set out a new strategy to tackle the problem of the estimated 10 per cent of young people categorized at any one time as 'not in education, employment or training' ('Neets'): young people aged under 18 who spent more than six months as 'Neets' would have to actively look for work when they turned 18, instead of being automatically eligible for jobseeker's allowance. The government also announced an additional 90,000 apprenticeships for young people by 2013 (a 60 per cent increase on the existing number).

Source: Education and Skills Bill, Department for Children, Schools and Families, TSO (0870 600 5522)

Date: 2007-Nov

Tory schools plan

The opposition Conservative Party set out plans to tackle educational under-achievement through policies such as more teaching by ability and giving teachers more power. It also proposed an increase in the number of good school places through a long-term programme that: allowed educational charities, co-operatives, and parents to set up new schools; diverted more resources to pupils who came from disadvantaged backgrounds; and removed obstacles which prevented new schools being established.

Source: Raising the Bar, Closing the Gap, Conservative Party (020 7222 9000)

Date: 2007-Nov

Teachers' union manifesto for schools

The main teachers' union said that all schools should be returned to local authority control, with powers to determine school admissions policies. It called for a review of the 'structural incoherence' of the existing school system. The barriers of social class in education needed to be tackled by a programme of increased support for schools in the most disadvantaged areas.

Source: A Good Local School for Every Child and for Every Community, National Union of Teachers (020 7388 6191)

Links: Manifesto | Guardian report

Date: 2007-Nov

New models of schooling

A think-tank report examined the need to develop new approaches to learning and education, in order to prepare children for the new world of work in which the demands for skills were constantly changing.

Source: Martin Yarnit (ed.), Advancing Opportunity: New Models of Schooling, Smith Institute (020 7592 3618)

Links: Report

Date: 2007-Nov

Call to slow pace of education reform

A study called for an end to 'target-driven, initiative-led' reforms in the education system. The pace of government-led innovation had outstripped the capacity of schools to respond.

Source: Frank Coffield et al., Public Sector Reform: Principles for improving the education system, Institute of Education/University of London (020 7612 6050)

Links: IOE press release

Date: 2007-Oct

Raising education standards – PM speech

The Prime Minister said that minimum standards in England's schools would be raised, with all schools needing to have 30 per cent of their pupils achieving 5 good GCSEs by 2012-13 including English and maths. Schools which failed to meet that target could face being taken over by interim management boards, or by other successful schools including independent schools, or being turned into academies. He also announced plans to overhaul the apprenticeship system, to make training more widely available.

Source: Speech by Gordon Brown MP (Prime Minister), 31 October 2007

Date: 2007-Oct

Schools policy – lessons from Sweden

A think-tank report examined the education system in Sweden and drew lessons for the United Kingdom. It advocated a policy of 'open access' under which parents would be allowed to send their children to the school of their choice (on a first-come-first-served basis). It should be made easier to establish new schools: the government should approve the establishment of any new school, provided it met basic requirements. The national curriculum should be simplified and freed from central controls.

Source: Marek Hlavac, Open Access: What Britain can learn from Swedish education reform, Adam Smith Institute (020 7222 4995)

Links: Report

Date: 2007-Oct

School system 'failing' large number of children

A think-tank report said that the existing school system was failing a large number of children in England. The inequity of the grammar school system had been replaced by a school system that still failed to give a good education to the majority of children. The grammar school/secondary modern divide had been replaced by a divide between (on the one hand) private schools, grammar schools, and a few high-achieving comprehensives, and (on the other hand) the rest of the maintained school system.

Source: Martin Stephen, Standards and Structures: Improving the quality of teaching in English schools, Reform (020 7799 6699)

Links: Report

Date: 2007-Sep

Delivering public services through choice and competition – new book

A new book said that the solution for low-quality delivery in healthcare and education was to offer choice to users and to encourage competition among providers.

Source: Julian Le Grand, The Other Invisible Hand: Delivering public services through choice and competition, Princeton University Press (01993 814500)

Links: Summary

Date: 2007-Sep

Government plans Education and Skills Bill

The government announced that it planned to introduce an Education and Skills Bill (applying to England and Wales). The Bill would be designed to raise the minimum school leaving age to 18; and to bring into force the key findings of the Leitch Review, which recommended that training or education should be compulsory for all young people under 18, and that 95 per cent of adults should have basic numeracy and literacy skills. There would be a new legal right for adults to get free training in basic literacy and numeracy, and duties on employers to release young people for education or training.

Source: The Governance of Britain: The Government?s Draft Legislative Programme, Cm 7175, Leader of the House of Commons, TSO (0870 600 5522)

Links: Statement | Hansard | BBC report

Date: 2007-Jul

Priorities in education policy

A report by a group of educationists put forward a set of priorities in education policy. It said that the government's focus on school structure issues had been ineffective and wasteful. The most important question was how to break the 'chronically repeating cycle of disadvantage', and to mitigate the undesirable effects of the market in schooling. Collaboration across local communities was likely to be a better driver of improvement than competition within it, at an institutional level. League tables and excessive testing had proved to be perverse incentives, narrowing both children's learning and (for some) their opportunities. There was a need to achieve the right balance between accountability and compliance, and local decision-making and central direction.

Source: Education Priorities for a Passionate PM, New Vision Group

Links: Guardian report (1) | Guardian report (2)

Date: 2007-Jul

Priorities for DCSF

The government set out the priorities of the newly created Department for Children, Schools and Families. It called for a greater emphasis on 'personalized learning', in which the progress of individual pupils was monitored and supported by one-to-one tuition – with an additional £150 million in funding. It was abolishing the requirement for universities and high-performing schools and colleges to provide £2 million before they could sponsor an academy: it said that it wanted every university actively to engage with academies. Priority would be given to improving maths in primary schools. The need was emphasized for improved behaviour in the classroom: the school inspectorate would issue 'strong new guidance' on unacceptable behaviour by pupils. There would be an additional £265 million for extended schools to provide after-school services, particularly for less well-off families. A new National Council for Educational Excellence would drive forward the government's long-term aspirations for children's and young people's education.

Source: House of Commons Hansard, Debate 10 July 2007, columns 1319-1339, TSO (0870 600 5522)

Date: 2007-Jul

Department for Education and Skills disbanded

The new Prime Minster (Gordon Brown MP) announced that the Department for Education and Skills would be disbanded. Its responsibilities for schools would be transferred to a new Department for Children, Schools and Families. Its responsibilities for further and higher education would be transferred to a new Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills, which would also deal with science policy. Funding for training and education at ages 16-19 would in future be distributed by local education authorities.

Source: House of Commons Hansard, Written Ministerial Statement 28 June 2007, columns 36-40WS, TSO (0870 600 5522)

Date: 2007-Jun

Impact of school choice - economic evidence

An article examined the government's policy of extending school choice. Increasing school choice would create losers as well as winners; flexibility in the supply of school places was crucial to the success of the policy; and the role of peer groups partly determined the effects of school choice.

Source: Simon Burgess, Carol Propper and Deborah Wilson, 'The impact of school choice in England: implications from the economic evidence', Policy Studies, Volume 28 Number 2

Links: Abstract

Date: 2007-Jun

Purpose of schools should be to develop happy people

An article said that a major purpose of schools should be to help develop good and happy people. There was a need to create a profession of fully trained teachers of personal, social and health education, providing evidence-based teaching that changed lives. The government should commit to producing a major specialism in this area within the postgraduate certificate of education.

Source: Richard Layard, 'Happiness and the teaching of values', CentrePiece, Summer 2007

Links: Article | FT report | Guardian report

Date: 2007-Jun

Call to 'localize' education policies

A think-tank report said that central government should cease to dictate administration and teaching policies to local schools. Parents of school-aged children should be given a legal right to take their 'custom' to schools not controlled by the state, carrying with them the money that would have been spent on their children by the local education authority.

Source: Neighbourhood Education, Centre for Policy Studies (020 7222 4488)

Links: Report

Date: 2007-Jun

Education policy - discussion paper

A discussion paper said that middle-class parents would abandon the state education system if all that was on offer was schools they considered inadequate.

Source: Charles Seaford, Education: A Model for Public Service Reform, Compass (020 7463 0633)

Links: Paper

Date: 2007-May

Tories ditch grammar school policy

The opposition Conservative Party announced that (if elected to government) it would seek to boost social mobility by expanding the academy schools programme, rather than by expanding the number of grammar schools.

Source: Press release 16 May 2007, Conservative Party (020 7222 9000)

Date: 2007-May

DfES annual report for 2006-07

The Department for Education and Skills published its annual report for 2006-07, showing its performance against public service agreement targets.

Source: Departmental Report 2007, Cm 7092, Department for Education and Skills TSO (0870 600 5522)

Links: Report

Date: 2007-May

Raising education/training age - Green Paper

The government published a Green Paper on proposals that from 2015 all young people would remain in some form of education or training until their 18th birthday. A national registration system would keep track of all young people aged 16-18 to check they were fulfilling their legal requirements of either studying full time if they did not have a job, or part time if they worked more than 20 hours a week. Employers of staff who had left school at 16 would be obliged to either offer them fully accredited training or send them to outside providers for one day a week.

Source: Raising Expectations: Staying in education and training post-16, Cm 7065, Department for Education and Skills, TSO (0870 600 5522)

Date: 2007-Mar

Raising school standards - new book

A new book said that raising standards across the whole range of schools required a move from individual school improvement efforts and short-term objectives to a sustainable system-wide response that sought to re-establish a balance between national prescription and schools leading reform.

Source: David Hopkins, Every School a Great School, Open University Press (01280 823388)

Links: Summary

Date: 2007-Feb

School-leaving age set to rise to 18 in England

The government reportedly confirmed plans to raise the school-leaving age to 18 in England by 2013. Young people would be required to stay in school, training, or workplace training.

Source: The Guardian, 13 January 2006

Date: 2007-Jan

Towards a personalized education system

A think-tank report said that achieving a fully personalized education system (designed around the needs, interests, and aspirations of each learner) involved challenging a number of fundamental assumptions which had historically underpinned the organization of education - including the assumption that expertise and knowledge resided only within the walls of educational institutions.

Source: Tim Rudd, Dan Sutch and Keri Facer, Towards New Learning Networks, Futurelab (0117 915 8200)

Links: Report | Summary

Date: 2007-Jan

Policy-making and policy learning in 14-19 education

A paper said that policy-makers in 14-19 education in England were failing to learn from previous experience and were repeating initiatives which had not worked.

Source: David Raffe and Ken Spours, Policy-making and Policy Learning in 14-19 Education, Bedford Way Paper 26, Institute of Education/University of London (020 7612 6050)

Links: Summary | IOE press release | Guardian report

Date: 2007-Jan

Call for return of grammar schools

A think tank published a report which said that non-selective schooling had not delivered the improvements in education standards or social equality that had been promised. The report called for the creation of a new generation of selective, academic, state-funded schools. The think tank also published polling evidence suggesting that 76 per cent of people were in favour of streaming children according to their academic strengths; and that of these, 36 per cent were in favour of using separate schools altogether.

Source: Norman Blackwell, Three Cheers for Selection: How grammar schools help the poor, Centre for Policy Studies (020 7222 4488)

Links: Report | Polling evidence | BBC report | Guardian report

Date: 2007-Jan