This week I report on the publication of the Labour Party’s five national missions (focusing on the education mission), the announcement of free flu vaccinations for secondary school pupils next academic year and DfE guidance on the new SENCO qualification which will begin to be taught in the autumn of 2024.

Labour Party’s national education mission
Yesterday the Leader of the Labour Party set out five national missions that his Party will build its manifesto around and, if elected, drive everything they do in government. It’s fifth mission is to break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage for every child, by reforming the childcare and education systems, raising standards everywhere, and preparing young people for work and life. Their plan to achieve this mission sets three long-term, measurable goals that they will work towards and be held accountable for and I have briefly summarised their key actions around those goals below:

• To boost child development with half a million more children hitting the early learning goals by 2030 – that means 90% of children hitting this metric by 2030 and every school given funding to deliver evidence-based early language interventions. Tackling the availability of childcare through an increase in the number of places and workforce reform and improving coordination between education, social care and the wider services that support families by piloting the expansion of a children’s number (like the NHS number) that stays with children for their whole childhoods, ensuring that their needs are better met, and any issues are addressed early.
• To see a sustained rise in young people’s school outcomes over the next decade, building young people’s life skills – carrying out a Curriculum and Assessment Review and ensuring a broad and balanced curriculum through one of the non-EBacc subjects included in pupil’s Progress and Attainment 8 being a creative or vocational subject. Improving oracy skills. Replacing headline Ofsted grades with a new system of school report cards and establishing a new set of regional improvement teams, to work as partners with schools in responding to areas of weakness identified in the new Ofsted school report cards. Introducing a new annual review of safeguarding, health and safety, attendance and off-rolling.
• To expand high quality education, employment and training routes so more people than ever are on pathways with good prospects by 2035 – establishing Skills England, bringing together central and local government, businesses, training providers and unions to meet the skills needs of the next decade across all regions. Turning the Apprenticeships Levy into a Growth and Skills Levy so it can be used on the greater range of training courses that businesses say they need so that adults can gain new skills and businesses can grow. Combining and devolving adult education budgets to current and future Mayors and combined authorities and reforming Jobcentre Plus ensuring greater local involvement in the delivery and design of Jobcentre arranged employment support, coaching and training.

Free flu vaccination for secondary school pupils
This week the DfE has confirmed that next academic year all secondary school pupils will be eligible for a free flu vaccine in line with a long-standing recommendation from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.

Pupils will be offered the vaccine as a nasal spray through the schools vaccination programme during the autumn term. Consent letters will be sent to parents and guardians before vaccines are administered and for those not attending school, such as home schooled children, parents and young people can book their vaccine with their GP or a community clinic.

DfE guidance on the new SENCO qualification
A national professional qualification for SENCOs is replacing the existing qualification, as announced in March under the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan. Teaching of the new qualification will begin in autumn 2024 and the requirement to complete training within 3 years of appointment will continue to apply. More information about this and the requirements that SENCOs must meet is available in the DfE’s ‘Transition to national professional qualification for SENCOs’ guidance.

This week I highlight publication of the Education Select Committee’s Report on CEIAG, revised statutory guidance on home to school travel and the risk of further strike action.

Publication of Education Select Committee’s Report on CEIAG
Yesterday the Parliamentary Education Select Committee’s Report on Careers Education,
Information, Advice and Guidance (CEIAG) was published. It follows the Committee’s inquiry into the quality of CEIAG delivered in schools and colleges and makes some key recommendations as follows:

• Develop and publish an updated Careers Strategy in consultation with other Departments and relevant stakeholders by the end of 2024. This should include clear, measurable outcomes and dates by which these should be achieved, including targets for increasing the number of schools achieving the Gatsby benchmarks in full.
• Ofsted must have a strong focus on CEIAG provision when inspecting schools, in particular looking at schools’ achievement of the Gatsby benchmarks.
• All schools and colleges should be part of Careers Hubs by the end of 2024 and the DfE must provide the Careers and Enterprise Company (CEC) with the appropriate resources and funding to achieve this.
• DfE statutory guidance should be updated to suggest an appropriate proportion of time that Careers Leaders should be given to fulfil their role and should require schools to publish information on the time they have allocated to the role on their website.
• Pilot a programme of funding careers advisers directly through the CEC, rather than requiring schools and colleges to buy in this support from their existing budgets.
• Make one-off developmental funding available to schools and colleges who have the lowest record of achieving the Gatsby benchmarks to support them to improve their CEIAG provision, setting out clear objectives and conditions of receiving this funding.
• Make the National Careers Service appropriate for under-18s or provide an alternative.
• Evaluate the current primary school career pilot after one year and extend it across England if successful.
• Develop tailored benchmarks for careers education in primary schools and provide guidance and resources to support schools to meet them.

Revised statutory guidance on home-to-school travel
In July 2019, the DfE launched a consultation on home-to-school travel and transport for pupils. The consultation’s outcome has been published this week, alongside revised statutory guidance on the topic. The new guidance includes improvements on considering if a parent can be expected to accompany their child; encouraging independence for children with disabilities and managing children’s medical needs.

Risks of further strike action
Media reports are claiming that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is set to reject the School Teacher Review Body’s (STRB) recommendation for a 6.5% increase for teachers’ pay in 2023/24. Leaders of the NEU, NAHT, ASCL and the NASUWT have all condemned the report and warned of its future consequences for industrial relations.

This week I report on the publication of a CYPMHC report exploring the links between behaviour and mental health, confirmation that free NHS eye tests will be available in special schools settings from April next year, two new DfE consultations on safeguarding and the Royal Meteorological Society’s call for guidance and resources for schools to deliver climate change education.

Behaviour and mental health in schools report released
Last week, the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition released a report to explore the links between behaviour and mental health, to look at the impact of school behavioural policies on children and young people, and to understand what can be done to improve the approach to behaviour and mental health in schools. The findings are due to be presented to parliament.

Free NHS eye tests to be made available to special schools
From April next year, free NHS eye tests will be made available to all special schools via a government scheme pledging £10 million. It was announced on Monday that the NHS and the government will work together to make sight tests available to all pupils in special schools, citing that children with learning disabilities are 28 times more likely to have serious sight issues.

‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ consultation opens
The DfE has opened a consultation on this statutory guidance citing that updating this guidance now is central to delivering the first phase of its ambitious plans to transform Children’s Social Care. The DfE is seeking views on how best to strengthen multi-agency help, support, safeguarding, and child protection across the whole system.

The DfE has also opened a consultation on a revision to non-statutory advice to support practitioners in their duties and the decisions they make when sharing information relating to safeguarding. The consultation seeks to gather views on how information sharing advice can provide more clarity, be easily understood and instil confidence to share information appropriately.

The Royal Meteorological Society calls for guidance and resources to deliver climate change education
The Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) has released a report highlighting opportunities for climate change education. This comes following the DfE’s publication of its ‘Sustainability leadership and climate action plans in education’ which stipulates that all schools should have nominated a sustainability lead and developed a Climate Action Plan by 2025.

RMetS has called on the DfE, subject associations, exam boards and curriculum development bodies to support teachers to make use of its findings through the development of teacher training and other support materials, high quality sample schemes of work, data sets and sample exam questions.

This week I report on the launch of an Ofsted consultation on changes to post-inspection arrangements as well as the Education Committee launching an inquiry into Ofsted’s work; the introduction of Valuation Office Agency visits to all secondary and special schools to ensure accurate information on pupil capacity is available for each school; a free video produced by a specialist safeguarding consultant on the changes to KCSIE for September and the launch of an Ofqual consultation on implementing a British sign language GCSE.

Ofsted consultation on changes to post-inspection arrangements
Earlier this week Ofsted launched a consultation on proposed changes including:

• Introducing new arrangements for considering formal challenges to inspection outcomes and replacing the current internal review process with a direct escalation to the Independent Complaints Adjudication Service for Ofsted (ICASO).
• Changes to the complaints system, aimed at resolving complaints made by schools more quickly through improved dialogue and transparency, and the administrative burden on those making a complaint will be reduced.
• Changes to how Ofsted inspects safeguarding – at the moment, even when schools are rated mostly as Good, if the school is rated as Inadequate on safeguarding, the school will receive an Inadequate rating overall. This is due to the importance of keeping children safe. But, in very rare cases where a school fails because of safeguarding issues alone, Ofsted will now follow-up with a monitoring visit within three months to provide an opportunity for regrading. If the school has been able to resolve the safeguarding concerns, it is likely to see its overall grade improve. Ofsted will also make safeguarding requirements as clear as possible for schools and parents.
• Clarity around confidentiality policies – to reduce pressure on headteachers, Ofsted will make it clear that they are allowed to share the provisional outcomes of inspections privately with colleagues and get support from them before the report is finalised and shared with parents. Ofsted reports will also talk about what the school needs to do, to reduce public focus on individuals, including headteachers.
• Support for schools between inspections – Ofsted is giving schools more information about the timing of their next inspection. Schools will still get one day’s notice, but they will have more clarity about the year they are likely to be inspected. This will be particularly helpful for schools that have been exempt from inspection for many years. Outstanding schools are inspected less frequently than those with lower ratings. Outstanding schools that were last inspected before September 2015 are already receiving face-to-face seminars, to support them when the time comes for a new inspection.

Many of these changes, such as increased clarity about the timing of the next inspection (use this link to an Ofsted blog with rough timetables for schools based on when they were last inspected) and seminars for schools between inspections, will take effect immediately or are already being implemented. The rest introduced will be introduced from September 2023.

Also this week the Education Committee launched an inquiry into Ofsted’s work with schools, with the aim to assess how effectively Ofsted is fulfilling its role in inspecting schools and the impact of Ofsted judgements, amongst other areas. The committee has asked to hear people’s views on Ofsted and welcomes answers to the questions set out in its call for evidence. The deadline for evidence submissions is on Thursday 20 July 2023.

Valuation Office Agency (VOA) visits to secondary schools
As part of the DfE’s Net Capacity Assessment (NCA) programme, the VOA will visit every state-funded secondary school and special school in England. The programme aims to ensure accurate and up-to-date information on pupil capacity is available for each school. The VOA will measure rooms, record room types, and calculate the number of children each school can accommodate. Visits will start from July this year and conclude by August 2025.

Keeping Children Safe in Education from September 2023
Andrew Hall, a specialist safeguarding consultant, has produced a video explaining all the changes to KCSIE for September 2023. The online presentation is free to access immediately and you can register by using this link.

Consultation launched on teaching British sign language in schools
Ofqual has launched a 12 week consultation on the implementation of a British sign language GCSE. The consultation focusses on the qualification’s subject content and method of assessment and runs until 11:45pm on 7 September 2023.

This week I report on the DfE releasing KCSIE 2023 which will come into force on 1 September, a consultation on proposed changes in the EYFS and information on the review of the RSHE curriculum and statutory guidance.

KCSIE 2023 released
The DfE has released KCSIE 2023 which will come into force on 1 September 2023. Until then, schools must continue to ensure they comply with the 2022 version.

The DfE had already confirmed that no significant changes would be made. Minor changes include new information to say that staff training should cover understanding roles and responsibilities in online filtering and monitoring systems, and providing clarification on the difference between children missing education and children absent from education.

Consultation on proposed changes in the EYFS
The DfE has opened a consultation on changes to the EYFS to make it more practical for different types of EYFS providers, and to offer more flexibility and reduce burdens. Changes proposed include amending staff:child ratio requirements to allow staff to supervise more children and putting information for childminders into its own separate framework. The consultation closes on 26 July 2023.

Independent panel to advise on age appropriateness within RSHE
The independent panel will inform the government’s review of the RSHE curriculum and statutory guidance and is set to conclude by September 2023. Its term of reference can be accessed using this link.

The review will consider whether the guidance covers the right topics and offers teachers clarity on how to teach sensitive subjects and engage parents positively, and if new or additional content on mental health, suicide prevention, vaping and tackling violence against girls is needed. The review will be completed by the end of the year, following a consultation in the Autumn.

In addition to the above development, the Prime Minister has said that pupils will be taught about the health risks of vaping in RSHE lessons. A resource pack for schools on vaping aimed at pupils aged 11-13 is to be released by the government in July.

This week I highlight updated statutory suspension and exclusion guidance which comes into effect from September, media reporting on the School Teachers’ Review Body recommending a 6.5% pay rise for teachers next academic year and confirmation from the DfE it’s providing a 50% subsidy rate for the National Tutoring programme next academic year.

Updated statutory suspension and exclusion guidance from September 2023
Today the DfE published updated guidance which will come into effect on 1 September 2023. Changes include making certain responsibilities around cancelling exclusions statutory, and adding guidance on conducting governing board reinstatement, and independent review panels via remote access.

A guide to help parents and carers understand the suspension and permanent exclusion system in schools in England was also published.

School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) reportedly recommends a 6.5% rise for teachers
Last weekend the Sunday Times reported that the STRB has recommended a 6.5% pay increase for teachers in 2023/24 – this recommendation has not been confirmed as the STRB’s report has not yet been published. Unions are now calling on the DfE to publish the report.

DfE increases the subsidy rate for the National Tutoring programme next year
The DfE has always been clear that the subsidy rate for the National Tutoring programme will be tapered each year to support schools to embed tutoring long-term, moving from 75% in 2021/22 to a planned 25% in 2023/24. Following feedback from school leaders, the Government has now agreed a subsidy rate of 50% next year, to support schools to deliver the tutoring their pupils need.

This week I highlight the expansion of the sector-led Attendance Hubs programme to get more children into school, the call for evidence on children missing education and publication of new non statutory sustainability guidance.

Attendance programmes expanded to get more children into school
New plans to support pupils to drive up attendance rates in schools to improve pupils’ attainment and welfare were announced by the Government yesterday.

The plans included the expansion of the sector-led Attendance Hubs programme with nine new lead hub schools sharing effective practice and practical resources. Alongside the expansion of Attendance Mentors in areas of the country with the highest levels of pupil absence (across Knowsley, Doncaster, Stoke-on-Trent and Salford) to understand and overcome the barriers to attendance and support pupils back into school.

Call for evidence on children missing education
Yesterday the government published a call for evidence on children missing from education (CME) i.e. children of compulsory school age who are not registered pupils at a school and are not receiving suitable education otherwise than at a school.

Receiving evidence from local authorities, schools and other agencies on what works to support children missing education and the challenges they face, will play a vital role in allowing the DfE to identify existing best practice and inform future policy. The call for evidence is open until 20 July.

New non-statutory sustainability guidance released
The DfE has published follow-up guidance to its strategy for sustainability and climate change for Education settings, which was released in April 2022. The new guidance expands on two aspects of the original strategy; setting up a sustainability leadership team and drawing up an effective climate action plan. The guidance also lays out further support that will be rolled out from December 2023.

This week I highlight new guidance on looking after children during heatwaves and a consultation that has been launched on the qualifications system.

Advice published for teachers during heatwaves
The UKHSA has published guidance for teachers in schools and early years settings on looking after children during heatwaves. It provides steps to take to protect children indoors and outdoors during hot weather. The guidance also recommends schools have a sun safety policy in place and advice on developing a policy is available from Cancer Research UK.

Consultation launched on the qualifications system
Ofqual and the DfE have opened a consultation on ‘Ensuring the resilience of the qualifications system’ to ensure effective contingency arrangements are in place in the event of disruption. Ofqual proposes requiring all awarding organisations to consider whether it is necessary to have resilience arrangements in place for their particular qualifications, including, where necessary, providing guidance to schools and colleges on collecting evidence of student performance. The consultation closes on 2 August 2023.

This week I highlight a DfE webinar on pupil mental health and notification that all primary schools will receive wildflower seeds to mark the coronation of King Charles III.

DfE webinar on pupil mental health
On 10 May from 4-5.15pm the DfE is providing a webinar which will allow attendees to ask questions, to support the publication of its ‘Summary of responsibilities where a mental health issue is affecting attendance’ guidance. Register your attendance here.

Primary schools to receive packets of wildflower seeds
To mark the coronation of King Charles III, the DfE and Nick Gibb, the Minister of State for Schools, will be sending all state-funded primary schools packets of wildflower seeds, inspired by King Charles’ love of nature. The gift aims to encourage children to learn about and improve the biodiversity of school’s green spaces.

This week I report on a DfE webinar held on school funding including teachers’ pay, the DfE’s response to consultation on implementing the direct national funding formula and publication of the Government’s Education Committee report on the future of post-16 qualifications.

DfE hosts webinar on school funding including teachers’ pay
On Wednesday, the DfE hosted a webinar on the funding cycle for schools and teachers’ pay and said a 4% pay rise for teachers and leaders in 2023/24 will be affordable from within the existing schools budget. This was due to a £2 billion increase in funding that was promised during the Autumn Budget statement. Following the webinar, the DfE released a series of posts on social media and a blog regarding funding and pay.

DfE responds to consultation on implementing the direct national funding formula (NFF)
Between June and September last year, the DfE ran a consultation seeking views on its approach to implementing the direct NFF for schools. The DfE published its response to the consultation yesterday.

Publication of the Education Committee’s report on the future of post-16 qualifications
Today the Government’s Education Committee report on the future of post-16 qualifications was published. It warned that plans to withdraw older vocational courses (known collectively as applied general qualifications such as BTECs) before new T-levels were ready to relace them could mean young people missed out on suitable vocational courses after their GCSEs.

The report also raised concerns about insufficient T-level placements, regional differences in T-level awareness with big disparities between London and northern areas, accessibility for students with SEND or low academic attainment and the status of T-levels as a university qualification, with many courses being highly specialised.

The DfE said it welcomed the report and would consider its recommendations.