Labour has set out plans to legislate on a raft of changes affecting schools, including on the curriculum, inspections and teacher qualifications.
Many of the plans fall under a Children’s Wellbeing Bill announced by King Charles at today’s state opening of Parliament to “raise standards in education and promote children’s wellbeing”.
King’s Speech: Labour’s education plans
Here are the plans included in today’s King’s Speech under the Children’s Wellbeing Bill:
- Free breakfast clubs in every primary school
- The strengthening of multi-agency child protection and safeguarding arrangements
- Limiting the number of branded items of uniform a school can require
- Creating a duty for registers of children not in school
- Requiring all schools to teach the national curriculum - after a curriculum and assessment review is conducted
- Bringing multi-academy trusts into the inspection system - the policy paper on the speech says there is “considerable variation in trust level performance”
- Making changes to legislation around inspecting independent schools
- Ensuring all new teachers have or are working towards qualified teacher status (QTS) and giving support staff a voice in setting pay and conditions
- Making changes to enable serious teacher misconduct to be investigated
- Requiring all schools to cooperate with the local authority on admissions, inclusion and place planning
Furthermore, under the Employment Rights Bill, the School Support Staff Negotiating Body will be reinstated to “establish national terms and conditions, career progression routes and fair pay rates”.
The bill also states it will update trade union legislation to remove unnecessary restrictions - “including the previous government’s approach to minimum service levels”.
The speech also announced the Better Buses Bill to give local leaders new powers to reform bus networks. The speech document notes that buses provide access to education and, according to the 2022 National Travel Survey, 25 per cent of bus journeys outside of London were to get to school.
Register of children not in school
Today’s speech sets out plans to create a national register of children not in school.
Local authorities would have a new legal duty to keep this register. It would be up to parents to let councils know if their children are home-schooled.
Such a register was included in the ill-fated Schools Bill, which was dropped by the previous government after a backlash over proposals that it was feared would curb academy freedoms.
Breakfast clubs in primary schools
The bill also includes Labour’s plan to make it mandatory for every primary school to offer a free breakfast club to help tackle absence.
However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies previously warned that the clubs were “unlikely” to reduce absence and could present additional challenges for schools struggling with covering the cost of staff pay, workload and recruitment pressures.
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said it is “vitally important” that the breakfast club policy is properly funded and resourced.
According to polling by Teacher Tapp, 79 per cent of primary schools already had a breakfast club as of September 2023.
Of these, 44 per cent provided free food for pupils on free school meals, and 17 per cent provided a free breakfast club for everyone.
National curriculum to become mandatory
Under the changes announced today, the national curriculum would be made mandatory for all schools.
Academies are currently not required to teach the national curriculum. In September 2023, nearly half of secondary teachers at schools in MATs (48 per cent) told Teacher Tapp that their school deviated from the national curriculum.
During the recent general election campaign, Labour pledged to bring in “a broader and richer curriculum” and to review how this was assessed.
Mr Di’Iasio said the review would need “careful handling” to ensure that the resulting curriculum is right and that schools have time to adapt to the changes.
Limits to branded school uniform
The King’s Speech also contained a plan for a limit on the number of branded items of uniform that a school can have.
The majority of teachers in a survey told Teacher Tapp that their school has at least one branded item - only 16 per cent said their school’s uniform included no branded items.
VAT on private schools
The King’s Speech formally announced Labour’s policy to end VAT exemptions for private schools.
The policy has attracted criticism - including claims that it would be undermined by legal loopholes - but it was vigorously defended by Labour during the general election campaign.
Mr Di’Iasio said ASCL welcomed the measures outlined by the new government but warned there was “a vital missing ingredient”.
“That is the question of ensuring that schools and colleges are sufficiently funded not only to deal with the current huge financial pressures they are facing but also to be sustainable in the future,” he added.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, welcomed the measures set out in the Children’s Wellbeing Bill. He said requiring QTS for teachers “will put an end to the degradation of the profession that happened under the last administration”.
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the NEU teaching union, also welcomed this, though he said that the bill “only covers part of what the new government can do to respond to the big challenges”.
He added that alongside the new QTS policy, the government must address teacher pay and workload, as well giving a fully funded above-inflation pay rise for support staff.
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, said she welcomed the “energy and ambition” for education in the King’s Speech. But she added: “There is a lot of detail to work through, and we will be speaking with government and school trusts over the coming months to understand how the proposals set out will work in practice.”
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson told school leaders and teachers last week that she needs their help to deliver on Labour’s education pledges.
She also stressed that Labour has already started work on its promise to recruit 6,500 new teachers, which will be funded by the cash raised by VAT on private schools.
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