12 questions for the new Labour government on education

There are several important questions that the new Labour government has yet to answer when it comes to education.

These questions encompass how the party’s manifesto pledges will be fulfilled and what it will do to address many of the crises facing the sector - including issues around funding, recruitment and special educational needs.

Below, we take a look at 12 key queries for the new government to address.

1. When will a decision on the 2024-25 teacher pay award be made?

The most pressing issue for the incoming Labour government will be deciding on teacher pay for the next academic year, with trusts and schools awaiting news of whether they will have to rip up budget forecasts and planning.

The independent pay review body submitted its recommendations for teacher pay to the government before the general election was called. However, former education secretary Gillian Keegan confirmed that the government would not publish a response until after the election.

Last year, the government accepted the pay body’s recommendation that teachers receive a 6.5 per cent pay rise from September 2023. The deal came after a long-running dispute over pay and months of strike action by teachers.

While any increase in teacher pay would be welcomed by the sector, school and trust leaders have been clear that any uptick would need to be fully funded.

Labour has so far pledged to reinstate the School Support Staff Negotiating Body to address the “acute” support staff recruitment and retention crisis.

It may also need to look at how support staff pay awards are funded, after the Commons Education Select Committee said earlier this year that the Department for Education should ensure support staff pay rises are factored in and funded in school budgets.

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2. What will Labour do on core school funding?

Labour has yet to say anything about its plans for core school funding. It remains to be seen whether the new government will maintain current per-pupil funding levels or the total current amount of core funding.

It has also not addressed whether it will provide any targeted funding for disadvantaged pupils’ progress. There have been calls for the pupil premium to be increased in line with inflation, which the party has not addressed.

Funding for the National Tutoring Programme aimed at helping pupils catch up on learning lost during the Covid-19 pandemic is set to come to a halt at the end of the current school year. Many schools have warned that this could cause the attainment gap to widen even further.

Bridget Phillipson previously said she would like to turn around the tutoring “disaster” rolled out by the last government, but Labour has not made any commitments to subsidising tutoring or any other specific catch-up funding.

3. How will Labour manage multi-academy trusts?

The new government has said it will introduce Ofsted inspections of multi-academy trusts and new Regional Improvement Teams, which it says will “enhance school-to-school support and spread best practice”. But how both of these will work has yet to be fleshed out.

Labour has also said it will appoint former education recovery commissioner Sir Kevan Collins as an expert adviser on higher standards in schools - a position some trust leaders think could be used to hold underperforming trusts to account.

Speaking in a personal capacity at a Tes event earlier this week, Sir Kevan said he is “agnostic” about school structures, but addressing MAT leaders, he asked: “Are we all truly accountable?”

Questions remain over whether Labour will look to make changes to the regional “layer” of the schools system, something that education secretary Bridget Phillipson has previously said lacks transparency and accountability.

4. How will VAT on private school fees be applied?

One of Labour’s most high-profile education policies has been its plan to apply VAT to private school fees and business rates.

However, questions remain about how this policy would be applied. For instance, it is unclear if the tax “loophole” on fees would be closed for military families who use Continuity of Education Allowance (CEA) towards boarding school costs.

It is also unclear whether the new government will protect pupils with scholarships. And although Labour confirmed that the fees for pupils with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) will be exempt from VAT, they have not explicitly confirmed what will happen with fees for students with special educational needs but who do not have an EHCP.

The new chancellor has also not given an indication of how the VAT will be imposed - will it be phased in or will it come all at once?

5. What will Labour’s recruitment and retention plan be?

While Labour has pledged to tackle the teacher supply crisis in part by recruiting 6,500 new expert teachers, questions remain over a wider recruitment and retention strategy - as well as how the new government will look to reduce workload for staff.

We also don’t know if the pledge is a promise to hire an extra 6,500 teachers per year or overall.

Tes revealed in September that the DfE was set to refresh its 2019 recruitment and retention strategy. However, no update was published before the general election.

The last government was also set to publish recommendations from its workload task force this summer. Both pieces of work were paused after the general election was announced.

Will a Labour government continue this work or look elsewhere for solutions? It has so far said it will review the way bursaries are allocated and the “structure of retention payments”, alongside a new “teacher training entitlement” to ensure teachers stay up to date with continuing professional development.

6. What will Labour do about the SEND crisis?

Labour is inheriting a crisis in special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in terms of both funding and provision.

Its manifesto acknowledged that, too often, pupils with SEND are not having their needs met. However, there are major questions facing the new government about how it will address this.

The previous government was in the middle of two major programmes. Firstly, it was seeking to reduce deficits in council spending and had agreed bail-out deals with almost 40 councils that were in the deepest financial trouble.

Will the new government continue with this Safety Valve programme, which sees councils receive funding to bring down deficits while agreeing to bring down their spending?

The new government will also face calls from local councils to write off the deficits that local authorities have built up.

At present there is a statutory override, which means that these deficits do not sit on the council’s books until 2026. If Labour doesn’t agree to scrap high-needs deficits, will it extend them further?

The previous government had also introduced a SEND and alternative provision improvement plan, and was in the process of testing reforms - including creating a national template for digital health and care plans and creating new national standards in SEND. Will Labour continue with this or will it wish to carry out its own review?

The Labour manifesto says the party will improve inclusivity in mainstream schools and ensure schools co-operate with councils on SEND inclusion. However, questions remain about what changes to inspection or school accountability systems are needed to achieve this.

Along with a crisis in SEND, those working in alternative provision (AP) report increased pressure for places and struggles to reintegrate pupils back into mainstream. The Labour manifesto does not mention AP or pupil-referral units directly, but the new government will need to address these challenges.

7. How extensive will the exams and curriculum review remit be and what will Labour do about the Progress 8 pause?

Labour has committed to launching an “expert-led review” of the curriculum that considers the balance of assessment methods. We don’t yet know the detailed remit of this review or what Labour expects to do with its results.

The sector will be keen to see to what extent this review considers the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on coursework and homework. Experts have previously said the rise of AI presents a significant burden for teachers.

One of the main Conservative Party policies was to reform post-16 assessment and bring in the Advanced British Standard (ABS), which would see all students take some form of maths and English up to the age of 18. Labour has yet to communicate whether it plans to keep post-16 assessment as it is or to instigate reform.

Labour also has two years of key stage 4 results coming up with no Progress 8 data, as the 2024-25 and 2025-26 GCSE cohorts did not take SATs owing to pandemic disruption.

While the decision by the previous government not to replace P8 was welcomed, unions had said some schools would feel hard done by if they were judged purely on attainment without context. Labour will have to decide whether it will introduce an alternative progress measure for these cohorts.

8. Will school building repairs and rebuilds be fully funded?

After the crisis involving reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) earlier this year, calls have been repeatedly made for uplifted capital funding for schools to help with major works and maintenance.

Labour has made no commitment on how much capital funding it will provide to schools. The former government had 500 schools scheduled for major rebuilding work in the School Rebuilding Programme, including many schools with RAAC.

Labour has not said whether it will maintain the programme as is, increase the number of schools, or otherwise.

9. What will the Ofsted ‘scorecard’ look like?

Another high-profile Labour policy plan is to consult on scrapping single-word judgements for schools and introducing report cards, but questions remain about exactly what the scorecard would contain.

The Association of School and College Leaders suggested in a recent discussion paper that the scorecard should be “flexible” and based on a “set of slim standards” for all schools, encouraging “collaboration” over “competition”.

Academisation and government intervention in schools have been triggered by Ofsted judgements of “inadequate” or, more recently, when schools get two consecutive judgements of less than “good”. If Ofsted grades go, the new government will need to establish how this changes its approach to intervening in schools deemed to be underperforming.

10. How will Labour tackle attendance challenges?

Lower pupil attendance in schools has become a major crisis facing the sector since the Covid pandemic, sparking a high-profile campaign and investment in measures such as attendance hubs to address the issue under the last government.

Bridget Phillipson said in January that she would use AI to help spot absence trends and link schools with local partners to help tackle the issue. However, this is not included in the Labour manifesto, while attendance is only mentioned twice.

The party plans to introduce an annual review of safeguarding, attendance and off-rolling in schools. It has also suggested that its plan to introduce funded breakfast clubs to every primary school in England will improve attendance.

Will this be the limit of their intervention on attendance?

11. How will using school space for nursery provision be rolled out?

On Labour’s plans for using school space for nursery provision, questions remain on where the workforce will come from and whether school staff will get early years training.

Sector leaders have also said that more details are needed on the logistics of converting and refurbishing classrooms to make them suitable for nursery children.

There are also queries over how nursery provision in schools is governed. Is Labour proposing to change the age at which children can be on the school roll, or will nursery provision for younger children require schools to set up governor-led provision?

12. Which part of the government will be responsible for rolling out the single identification number?

Labour has said that “too often, we see families falling through the cracks of public services”. To address this, it has said it will improve data sharing across services, with a single unique identifier.

However, it has not provided further details on this - and it is unclear which government department will be responsible for it.

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