Tes editor Jon Severs writes a weekly briefing for school staff every Monday in term time. It is usually exclusive to the Tes Daily newsletter, which you can sign up to for free here, but we have published the first one of the term below.
I attempted to take a short break from education this summer, but schools minister Nick Gibb kept popping into view. On my social media feeds and in my newspapers, there he was talking about what he sees as the successes of 13 years of Conservative-led education.
He focused on those areas in which he feels most secure: reading and the impact on standards of his push on curriculum and pedagogical thinking.
And his decision to go on “broadcast mode” is likely down to a hope that if he can steer the pre-election debate within those parameters, he will make it as difficult as possible for a future government to change course on the aspects he feels are most important.
In my first briefing of the year, I’d like to push those parameters much wider. We have a fantastic education system already, but it is the following questions that I feel should be front and centre of the election debate to help us make it even better.
Election 2024: education key points
First, are we now at a point at which the term “special educational needs” has lost its utility - and if so, what does that mean for the educational system?
Around 17 per cent of the pupil population now has an education, health and care plan (EHCP) or is receiving SEND support, and that figure is rising.
That’s too big a cohort to group under one term if we are to have a realistic chance of well-targeted interventions, funding or training. And it is too big a cohort for causation not to be properly interrogated.
Most crucially, we need to ask: are more children really in need of support and if so, is that because of growing SEND or an approach to education that is inaccessible to increasing numbers of children?
Second, we have a persistent and growing recruitment and retention problem and the level of salary increase deemed politically possible for the profession is not going to fix the issue. This government has fiddled at the edges of workload reduction and flexible working initiatives to little effect.
So, as we hit yet another crisis point this year, do we have to concede we don’t actually know what is driving the workforce problems or, if it is workload and flexibility of work, why are current efforts in these areas failing?
Education system change
Third, MAT growth and expansion is going to rapidly increase, particularly as the primary sector - through momentum and/or financial necessity - increasingly embraces the trust system.
The DfE process for MAT growth and expansion is widely thought to be unfit for purpose, and it remains too opaque (despite some welcome changes at the end of last year).
As the structure of the system influences so much, how is a future government going to tackle this? Schools are owned by their communities, and we need to ensure those communities have a say in the direction of travel.
And my last big question is related to this: for an uncomfortably large section of society, how do we re-establish the social contract between them and their schools?
Attendance and behaviour challenges are symptoms that show, for too many families, school is not somewhere they see as important or that can truly be transformational. And the link between this and the collapse of social and health services has consistently been ignored by politicians.
Schools will do their very best for pupils this year despite these challenges, as they always do. But these issues do need to be front and centre, rather than us getting bogged down in yet another debate about knowledge versus skills.
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