This week I report on the announcement that funding will be provided to support primary schools with wraparound childcare from 2026, confirmation of the safety valve agreement between the DfE and North Tyneside Council and proposals under a Labour government to replace Ofsted grades with a report card.

Spring Budget includes plans to fund more wraparound care at primary schools
Whilst the Chancellor’s Spring Budget Announcement didn’t include further funding to relieve schools budget pressures, Jeremy Hunt did announce £289 million of “start-up” funding to support primary schools with the provision of childcare to pupils between the hours of 8am and 6pm from 2026.

It is not yet clear whether this would be compulsory for schools, but the Treasury has confirmed that from 2026, most schools would be expected to provide childcare “self-sufficiently” through means such as charging parents.

Confirmation of North Tyneside Council’s Dedicated Schools Grant ‘Safety Valve’ Agreement with the DfE
This week the DfE published its latest agreements with local authorities setting out the high needs reforms and savings targets they must follow to eliminate their historic deficits and function sustainably in future. North Tyneside is one of those local authorities and the agreement sets out the actions the Council will take over the next 5 years as follows:

• Co-production of the authority’s graduated offer, supported by the development of a range of Additional Resourced Provisions (ARPs); increasing mainstream school capacity for children and young people with Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs, Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN), and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD);
• Development of an Early Years Hub, through which every child who has or may have Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) in North Tyneside will be known to the Local Authority (LA), and which will act as a single point of access for requests for support across the SEND partnership;
• Rolling out Mental Health Support Teams across schools who will address the early identification of Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing (MH&EW) needs, provide brief interventions, consultation and signposting, and support with a whole school approach to MH&EW;
• Strengthening the outreach offer into schools by expanding and developing a multi-agency School Support Team, providing a targeted offer to all schools for children and young people through graduation, who are presenting with SEMH, demonstrate behaviours which are challenging to others, or who are Emotionally Based School Non-Attenders (EBSNA);
• Piloting and introducing an Inclusion Fund, providing schools with funding for children and young people at Special Educational Need (SEN) Support where this will strengthen education, learning and outcomes, and prevent needs from escalating;
• Conducting a review of commissioned services and developing a SEND Centre of Excellence, to build capacity and expertise across the system, creating a single front door for services to schools, to allow children and young people to access the support they need, when they need it;
• Strengthening the coordinated review of children and young people’s Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) 14-25 years of age with the establishment of a SEND Preparation for Adulthood Team, to support the wider aspirations of young people in the borough;
• Establishing an understanding of the strength of SEND strategic planning and the quality of the graduated response in each of our mainstream and maintained special schools, through a universal offer of a whole school SEND audit. The intention is to improve graduation and SEND strategic planning within the borough, resulting in improved quality first teaching and SEND leadership.

Proposals announced for education under a Labour government
Speaking at the recent ASCL annual conference Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced a Labour government would consult on replacing current Ofsted grades with a “report card” for schools.

Phillipson said it would offer parents more information on school performance but gave little further detail on how this would look. It will also propose annual school safeguarding reviews.