Highlights of week ending 21 May 2021
We saw the Skills and Post-16 Bill begin its passage through Parliament, starting life in the House of Lords. The aim of the Bill is to bring greater parity between further and higher education and deliver the Prime Minister’s Lifetime Skills Guarantee set out earlier this year.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published new analysis that suggests that 30% of COVID related spending on education is due to come from existing budgets. Author of the analysis Dr Luke Sibieta stated that the real terms figure in additional spending is “likely to be insufficient to meet the scale of the challenge.”
A survey carried out by the Early Years Alliance has found that nearly half of early years providers believe there has been a widening in the attainment gap between disadvantaged young children and their peers since the start of the pandemic.
Ofqual has published its latest literature review on discrepancies between academic results from teacher and test-based assessments, finding that teacher assessments are often biased against disadvantaged and special educational needs (SEN) students, raising concerns about their use in this summer’s awarding of grades.