The Labour Party will open its annual conference this weekend, following the Conservative and Liberal Democrat conferences earlier this month.
Party members will be meeting in Liverpool from Sunday 8 October to Wednesday 11 October, where leader Sir Keir Starmer will set the agenda for the party going into a general election year.
In July Labour set out its missions for education, which included policy announcements such as scrapping the Ofsted grading system, reviewing the curriculum and increasing the number of children achieving Early Learning Goals.
Here is a summary of the main education policy issues facing the party ahead of its conference.
Key education questions for Labour
Business rates for private schools
Sir Keir voiced his commitment to taxing independent schools last week, attracting criticism from leading figures in the sector who believe he should work with both state and private schools to improve the education sector, rather than dividing them.
Labour plans to scrap the 20 per cent VAT tax relief that is currently applied to fees and end the business rates relief from which independent schools currently benefit.
While he insisted that it was not an “attack” on the sector, Julie Robinson, chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, said she feared that this could set a “worrying precedent” for any charity that is viewed as “not reflecting the political ideology of the day”.
The party has backed away from a plan to remove charitable status from private schools.
Teacher recruitment and retention
One of the main criticisms of the government’s new plan for post-16 education is the fact that there are not enough teachers to deliver it. And it is to be expected that Labour will highlight the recruitment and retention challenges facing the sector, and its plans to address them.
In its education missions published earlier this year, Labour said it would introduce a new retention payment when teachers complete the two-year Early Career Framework to reduce the number who leave before this point.
The party said that this payment will recognise the professional development that teachers have undertaken, and it plans to fund it through money raised by ending private schools’ VAT tax exemption.
Labour’s policy announcement followed Department for Education figures revealing that teachers were leaving at the highest rate in four years.
The party has also pledged to save billions of pounds paid by schools each year to teacher recruitment agencies through its plan to retain more teachers, and it has committed to recruiting 6,500 additional teachers.
Focus on oracy in schools
Earlier this year Sir Keir expressed his desire to “put confident speaking at the heart” of teaching in schools.
This focus on oracy has also been advocated for by other figures from the party.
Lord Blunkett’s 137-page learning and skills report last year urged an improved focus on oracy to help give students the “basic and essential skills needed” for success in education and work.
Early Learning Goals
Writing for Tes in July, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson set out Labour’s plans to see half a million more children reaching the Early Learning Goals (ELGs) by 2030. The party is yet to publish more details on the policy.
The importance of early years development has come under the spotlight after the pandemic, with Ofsted publishing a research review earlier this year.
The 17 ELGs were rolled out in 2019 and are designed to assess pupil achievements at the end of the Reception year - the last year of the Early Years Foundation Stage - covering areas such as being able to count to 20, read simple sentences and take turns when playing.
Data published last year showed that just under two-thirds (65.2 per cent) of pupils were considered to be at a good level of development at the end of EYFS.
Ofsted shake-up
If Labour comes into power at the next general election, the party has promised to consult on scrapping single-word Ofsted school inspection judgements and replacing them with a scorecard.
The party said it will instead “identify the most effective measures and information to include” in these scorecards.
Labour also plans to introduce a new annual review of school safeguarding and wants to bring in inspections of multi-academy trusts, which Ofsted currently does not have the power to carry out.
Curriculum overhaul?
If elected, the party also plans to urgently commission a full, expert-led review of curriculum and assessment, claiming that the Conservative government has “squeezed out” creative and vocational subjects.
The review would be focused on developing pupils’ knowledge and skills and look at both the accountability metrics and the exam and test system that schools currently face.
The party is also proposing an immediate change to Progress 8 and Attainment 8 to ensure that the measures always include a creative or vocational subject.
Labour could promote this idea further at its conference to demonstrate a longer-term vision for education in response to the Conservatives announcing post-16 reforms that would take a decade to implement.
And supervised teeth brushing?
Labour has also announced that supervised teethbrushing in schools would be introduced under plans to improve the nation’s oral health.
The party would seek to tackle preventable tooth decay in children with a programme to help three- to five-year-olds form healthy brushing habits, it said last night.
However, this has been criticised by headteachers’ leaders, with the NAHT school leaders’ union saying that it has ”serious reservations about how such a policy could even work”.
