Highlights of the week ending 14 July
With the summer break almost upon us, it has been a very busy week with announcements, research, and negotiations galore. Perhaps the biggest news was the Government’s acceptance of the recommendations of the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB), giving teachers in England a pay award of 6.5%. Education unions will now put the offer to their members, with the recommendation that they accept the award and call off strike action. How this and the other public sector pay deals will be funded will remain an issue as departments have to pay a significant proportion from existing budgets. Earlier in the week, members of the NASUWT had voted for strike action. And NEFR and Gatsby put out research relating to pay and incentives.
The Education Select Committee held its second evidence session for its teacher recruitment, training and retention inquiry, which included contributions from Teach First and The National Institute for Teaching. While in the Lords, Schools Minister Nick Gibb and DfE officials provided evidence to the Education for 11–16 Year Olds Committee.
The DfE published provisional KS2 assessment results, with similar results to last year – though they are yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. DfE also set out an updated version of the reading framework, which provides guidance for primary and secondary schools to meeting expectations for teaching reading. In addition to this, Nick Gibb announced the Government’s intention to launch an evidence review of best practice in the teaching of writing, to look at how best to improve attainment.
Ofsted published new subject reports for mathematics and history as part of its series examining the quality of teaching across different areas of the curriculum. Both subjects demonstrated improvements. And we saw calls from a diverse group, including former ministers, for tuition to be funded in to support the narrowing of the attainment gap, the IFS publish its findings into school finances – including the impact of Labour’s plan to remove tax exemptions from private school fees, and a thought-provoking collection of essays on HE policy to celebrate HEPI’s 20th anniversary.