New Tory pledges: school admissions review, lower EBacc target and student loan relief for teachers

Key new schools policies in the Tory manifesto
18th May 2017, 12:34pm

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New Tory pledges: school admissions review, lower EBacc target and student loan relief for teachers

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/new-tory-pledges-school-admissions-review-lower-ebacc-target-and-student-loan-relief
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Today’s Conservative manifesto sets out fresh Tory policy on a range of schools issues. Here are the key new pledges: 

  • To help new teachers: “forgiveness on student loan repayments while they are teaching” and dedicated support throughout their careers.
     
  • A review of school admissions policy, with compulsory lotteries ruled  out. “We will be clear at the outset that we will never introduce a mandatory lottery-based school admissions policy.”
     
  • To “improve schools’ accountability at key stage 3.”
     
  • EBacc target watered down from 90 per cent of pupils entering by 2020 to 75 per cent by “by the end of the next Parliament”, with 90 per cent of pupils by 2025.
     
  • “A curriculum fund to encourage Britain’s leading cultural and scientific institutions, like the British Museum and others, to help develop knowledge-rich materials for our schools”
     
  • “We will work with the Independent Schools Council to ensure that at least 100 leading independent schools become involved in academy sponsorship or the founding of free schools in the state system, keeping open the option of changing the tax status of independent schools if progress is not made.”
     

And some of the policies we already knew about before today’s launch:

  • More grammar schools: “We will lift the ban on the establishment of selective schools, subject to conditions, such as allowing pupils to join at other ages as well as eleven.”

  • Building at least 100 new free schools a year, with councils prohibited from creating any new places in schools that have been rated either ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted

  • Every 11-year-old to know their times tables off by heart
     

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