Pepe Di'Iasio highlights the sense of unease across the education sector as it faces a period of uncertainty with key developments expected to take shape in the months ahead.

Where will the chips fall?

It was only a year ago that Rishi Sunak stood in the rain in Downing Street to make the surprise announcement of a July General Election Yet, his government already seems a distant memory.

It was an administration that – to put it mildly – had run out of steam and ideas. One of its last-gasp policies was its madcap plan for an Advanced British Standard to replace not only A levels but the T levels it had only just introduced. 

The newly elected government, in contrast, came charging into office – agreeing a pay award of 5.5% for school teachers in England, £1.2 billion in additional funding, and scrapping single-word Ofsted judgements. Since then, however, the initial burst of optimism inspired by a new administration has given way to an all-too familiar feeling of frustration on a series of policy fronts. 

As I write this article in May, there is a feeling of an education sector that is in limbo as we await to see how the chips will fall on a number of important and long-standing issues. 

Funding 

The first of these is probably the single biggest problem facing schools and colleges – funding. The Sutton Trust’s annual survey (tinyurl.com/2euwmnzp) in April found that more school leaders are cutting back on teaching staff, teaching assistants, and support staff, compared to last year, due to a squeeze on their finances. 

An increased number have had to reduce choices at GCSE and A level, spending on trips and outings, sports and other extracurricular activities, and on IT equipment. 

The likelihood is that the situation will worsen following an announcement in May of only partially funded pay awards for 2025–26 on top of shortfalls in grants to cover increased national insurance costs. 

At the time of writing, there is much still to be settled on what lays ahead beyond that – with the government’s multi-year spending review due on 11 June – but the direction of travel feels depressingly predictable. 

With national finances so tight, our expectations clearly have to be realistic. But to see a Labour government, which pledged to break down the barriers to opportunity, talking about filling funding gaps with “improved productivity and smarter spending” is – to say the least – a major let down. 

You deserve better. Children and young people deserve better. And we’ll never stop making that point. 

Accountability 

Hot on the heels of funding is another perennial problem – the accountability system. 

For a brief, glorious moment, it looked as though we may be heading towards a more enlightened regime. Single-word judgements were consigned to history, and we were promised a new era of inspections based on report cards. 

It wasn’t long, however, before the return of the same bullish approach that has long been the hallmark of the accountability system. 

The five-point grading scale across multiple areas of inspection is obvious nonsense. It just won’t be possible for inspectors to reach so many judgements in a single inspection in a way that is reliable and consistent. 

And, in the process, it will further crush the morale of a profession that is already on its knees – exhausted by far too many pressures, expectations, and lack of resources. 

As I write, Ofsted’s consultation has closed, and we expect a report on the outcome in the summer with the new system due to be implemented in the autumn. 

There is still time then for Ofsted and the government to reconsider and we will, of course, continue to urge them to do that. We wait to see whether they will pull back from the brink. 

Curriculum and assessment 

Also in limbo is the future of curriculum and assessment – and here, the news is better. The review team led by Professor Becky Francis – who writes elsewhere in this edition of Leader – published an interim report in March that seems pretty sensible. 

ASCL has long argued that – while the system works well for most pupils – it does not do so for a significant minority, who we refer to as ‘the forgotten third’. 

The curriculum and assessment review team comes to a similar conclusion and echoes specific concerns that we have highlighted: the impact of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) on the choices of students, the volume of Key Stage 4 assessments, the need for post-16 pathways for learners who do not study A levels or T levels, and how we best support students who struggle with English and maths. 

The review will publish its final report in the autumn, and we look forward to its recommendations. It is rightly taking an ‘evolution not revolution’ approach to its work. That too is sensible given the workloads on leaders and teachers. 

However, we would urge the team to be bold where this is necessary, particularly in the areas identified above. It is a difficult balance to strike but this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring about the change needed by that forgotten third. 

Recruitment and retention 

There is one other perennial issue that also hangs in the balance – teacher recruitment and retention – which has been in a chronic state of crisis for so long. 

And here too the news is better, or at least less gloomy than it has been in the past. 

Recent data published by the Department for Education (DfE) shows accepted applications to secondary initial teacher training are up 12% on last year. 

The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) forecasts (tinyurl.com/3jy7j72x) that primary, maths, English and science could all meet their targets, with secondary recruitment getting to 86% of target. 

Jack Worth, School Workforce Lead at the NFER, writes: “As expected, falling primary pupil numbers and a slowdown in secondary pupil number growth have fed into a reducing need for new teachers. 

“Interest in teacher training is also up, probably due to the wider labour market cooling and last summer’s above-inflation teacher pay rise.” 

It is early days, of course, and he warns that we need to keep up the momentum. “Further investment in improving the financial attractiveness of teaching, sustained effort to reduce workload and more opportunities for teachers to work flexibly could help,” he says. 

Making a real impact 

However, I am going to end on this positive note, as it illustrates that evidence-based policymaking – in this case last year’s pay review body recommendation and government decision to implement it with additional funding – can and does have a real impact. Funding and accountability may, in particular, seem like intractable challenges that never get properly resolved. But they can be – all it takes is good politics.

Pepe Di’Iasio
ASCL General Secretary
@pepediiasio.bsky.social

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