In my final update of this academic year I report on key messages from the Education Secretary in her webinar held earlier this week, the introduction of a children’s wellbeing bill as outlined in the King’s Speech and a blog post from Ofsted outlining the changes to ungraded inspections from September.

Takeaways from the Education Secretary’s Webinar
On Tuesday in a webinar attended by 14,000 people, the new Education Secretary advised that a decision on teacher pay awards would not be published this week and indicative school funding allocations wouldn’t be published to the usual timescales. The report of the School Teachers’ Review Body, along with the Government’s response and decision, is usually published in mid to late July each year.

Whilst not proposing any wholesale structural change to schools, meaning the current dual system of academies and maintained schools will remain, Ms Phillipson confirmed that Academy Trusts will be brought into the framework of Ofsted inspection.

A review of the curriculum and assessment was announced with the Education Endowment Foundation’s Chief Executive, Professor Becky Francis, leading the review as its chair. A call for evidence will launch in September along with national roadshows to ensure the voice of staff working in schools is considered. The results will published in 2025 so any major curriculum changes might not be introduced until as late as September 2026.

The review will cover KS1 to KS5 and the Government has said it wants a curriculum that “delivers excellent foundations in reading, writing and maths, and ensures every young person gets the opportunity to develop creative, digital, and speaking and listening skills particularly prized by employers”. It will also look at the key challenges to attainment and the barriers that hold children back, in particular those who are socio-economically disadvantaged and those with special educational needs. Views will also be sought on whether the current assessment system can be improved for both young people and staff, while protecting the important role of examinations.

Acknowledging there was a range of opinion on how behaviour should be managed Ms Phillipson did not say the Government’s approach to tackling behaviour in schools would change.

The King’s Speech 2024 and the impact for the education sector
On Wednesday the King’s Speech confirmed that the Government will introduce a children’s wellbeing bill in the next year to legislate for a raft of its education policies. The aim is to raise standards in education and promote children’s wellbeing. There are also proposed laws that will likely affect schools in the proposed employment rights bill and equality bill. A summary has been provided as follows:

Children’s wellbeing bill

• Strengthen multi-agency child protection and safeguarding arrangements
• Require free breakfast clubs in every primary school
• Limit the number of branded items of uniform and PE kits that a school can require
• Create a duty on councils to have and maintain children not in school registers and provide support to home-educating parents
• Provide Ofsted with stronger powers to investigate the offence of operating an unregistered independent school
• Enable serious teacher misconduct to be investigated, regardless of when the misconduct occurred, the setting the teacher is employed in, and how the misconduct is uncovered
• Require all schools to cooperate with the local authority on school admissions, SEND inclusion, and place planning, by giving local authorities greater powers to help them deliver their functions on school admissions and ensure admissions decisions account for the needs for communities
• Require all schools to teach the national curriculum. This measure will be commenced after the review of curriculum and assessment is concluded and is reflected in programmes of study. The review will set the foundations to equip every child with the essential knowledge and skills for the future
• Ensure any new teacher entering the classroom has, or is working towards, Qualified Teacher Status (QTS).
• Bring multi-academy trusts into the inspection system and enable direct intervention when schools and trusts are not performing to the highest standards

Employment rights bill

• Reinstate the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, to establish national terms and conditions, career progression routes, and fair pay rates for support staff
• Update trade union legislation so it is fit for a modern economy, removing unnecessary restrictions on trade union activity – including the previous government’s approach to minimum service levels – and ensuring industrial relations are based around good faith negotiation and bargaining

Equality (race and disability) bill
Introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for larger employers (those with 250+ employees) to help close the ethnicity and disability pay gaps

Ungraded Ofsted inspections from September
In a blog post on Wednesday, Ofsted’s National Director, Lee Owston outlined the changes to ungraded inspections from September.

Key areas of focus will be agreed in advance with the Lead Inspector and the Headteacher in the phone call the day before the inspection. They will discuss the school’s context, what it does well and where it has improved and anything leaders still need to tackle to make the school the best it can be.

Inspectors won’t focus on one subject and there won’t be deep dives. Instead, they will look at a group of subjects together, for example in a primary school they might look at early English and maths together, or they might look at a group of subjects from the wider curriculum. In a secondary school, there could be a focus on the core subjects and another on, for example, vocational subjects. These inspections will focus more on a dialogue between headteachers and their senior leaders, so while conversations with subject leads will still take place they won’t be as intensive.

New inspection handbooks will be published in September alongside some webinars and more details about these webinars will be made available in due course.