Education Committee
Oral evidence: ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ White Paper, HC 430
15 September 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 15 September 2026.
Members present: Helen Hayes (Chair); Jess Asato; Mrs Sureena Brackenridge; Jodie Gosling; Darren Paffey; Manuela Perteghella; Peter Swallow; Caroline Voaden.
Questions 34 - 90
Witnesses
I: Councillor Natalie Oliver, Chair of Children, Young People and Families Committee, Local Government Association (LGA); and Leora Cruddas CBE, Chief Executive, Confederation of School Trusts (CST).
II: Geoff Barton, former General Secretary, ASCL, and Chair, Oracy Commission; Dr Ian Thompson, Co-Principal Investigator, Belonging in Education Research Network, University of Oxford; and Sam Henson, Deputy Chief Executive, National Governance Association.
Witnesses: Councillor Natalie Oliver and Leora Cruddas CBE.
Q34 Chair: Welcome to this oral evidence session of the Education Committee, which is part of our inquiry on the Schools White Paper, “Every child achieving and thriving.” Can I first invite any members of the Committee who would like to make declarations of interest to do so?
Mrs Brackenridge: I was previously a member of ASCL.
Chair: Anybody else? No. In which case, I will go to our witnesses to introduce themselves to the Committee.
Leora Cruddas: I am the chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, which is the national organisation and sector body representing academy trusts in England.
Councillor Oliver: Good morning. I am the lead member for Lincolnshire county council, but today I am here as chair of the LGA’s Children, Young People and Families Committee.
Q35 Chair: Thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning. I will begin our questioning. We have heard concerns from teaching unions about overburdened schools being asked to take on new commitments, such as responsibility for enrichment and belonging, alongside curriculum reforms and the new Ofsted inspection framework. There is a lot coming at our schools, teachers and school leaders at the moment. How should the Government make the implementation of all this change manageable for schools? What should be prioritised?
Leora Cruddas: I would say that I recognise that as a problem in the system. The Schools White Paper alone has 102 separate policy commitments. We have been working hard with the Department since the publication of the White Paper to talk about the importance of sequencing, implementation and rigour, so that we do not overburden the school system. There is also the delicate issue of funding. If we are going to pursue this important reform agenda, then that needs to come with funding and a strong implementation plan.
Councillor Oliver: Yes, the LGA’s position would agree very much with Leora’s. I would just add that local authorities also have huge amounts of capacity when we look at the reforms that are falling on that area. In terms of schools’ capacity, local authorities can support. When we think about enrichment, the culture and leisure services within local authorities and the delivery of the HAF programme, they can help support those areas within the curriculum, but it comes down to allowing flexibility. Local authorities and schools understand their children, their communities and their local areas, so the fact that a lot of the requirements are non-statutory is important. It is important to allow them to implement within their own timescales and deliver the priorities that they see fit for their areas.
Q36 Chair: Leora, what would you see as the biggest risks in the implementation of the proposals in the White Paper for schools?
Leora Cruddas: It is the number of separate policy commitments and the burden on the school system, but I would say to the Committee that there is also a risk in doing nothing. The SEND reforms are probably this generation’s most important education reforms. Together, we need to lean in and co-construct those reforms so that we create better outcomes for our children and young people with special educational needs.
Councillor Oliver: I would add that it is how we look at supporting our small schools, our rural schools. Funding needs to follow. When we think about capacity, it is far easier for schools that are larger and part of those larger multi-academy trusts. The White Paper needs to consider our small schools and have a strategy for those.
Q37 Caroline Voaden: Under Andy Burnham, the new Government have announced new technical pathways for education. I was wondering if you could talk a little about how you think these proposals will be implemented in schools, how you think this legislation will affect schools, and what you think the impact is of introducing this policy at this point in the policy cycle? I will start with you, Natalie.
Councillor Oliver: Obviously it is welcome news. That would be our position at the LGA. We understand that we have a huge issue with young people and employment. The policy, as a stand-alone policy, will struggle to achieve that because we have to look at the opportunities and the ability for them to move into the workforce once they have followed those pathways. Economic stagnation and the rise of employers’ national insurance have had a huge impact on that. This needs to work in unison. It cannot literally be a stand-alone policy. It has to follow through and have those opportunities at the end of those pathways.
Q38 Caroline Voaden: Do you feel that it is deliverable in schools in terms of a teaching workforce?
Councillor Oliver: It is. It will take schools possibly rethinking how they deliver the curriculum. However, it is definitely a shift that we need to make in order to divert children into routes where they will be able to achieve success within their lives and be sustainable, moving forward as adults.
Leora Cruddas: We recently published a paper in response to the Government’s proposals on technical education. The first thing we said in the paper is that there is a problem for us to solve, so the Government are right to shine a light on this. Technical awards at age 16 do not have the same rigour, they are not underpinned by national standards, they do not have nationally determined content, and they are not regulated in the same way as GCSEs. There is a problem to be solved. That problem was actually identified through the curriculum and assessment review.
Our position is that the Government could bring forward the review of those technical awards by a year and start work now on applying the same rigour to them. There is a problem to be solved, and the Government are right to look at it, but I would concur with Councillor Oliver that perhaps the bigger problem is that, in local economies, what we have seen for a number of years is that entry points into local labour markets are closing down, not opening up. There is a really important opportunity for local authorities and strategic authorities to work with local employers to make sure there are sufficient high-quality entry points into local labour markets. Both things need to be true.
I should also have said that there is opportunity for those tech awards at age 16 to align with the post-16 reforms: vocational and technical qualifications post-16 and higher technical qualifications within the HE landscape. There is a lot of work for us to do together on this agenda. The Government were right to open up a conversation about it, but we need to do it at a careful pace with care and rigour.
Q39 Caroline Voaden: Do you both foresee any issues with implementing this in rural areas such as mine in South Devon? We do not have large employers, we have far fewer further education colleges, we have fewer local industries for people to go into for work placements, work experience or after leaving school, and less expertise to teach these technical subjects just because of the population demographic. Any comments on that?
Councillor Oliver: Yes, obviously that is a huge consideration. I also come from a rural area, Lincolnshire, so we would have exactly the same constraints. Relationship building will be far greater. We have large employers and there is the ability to do so, but there will definitely be far greater obstacles in delivering this in more rural areas. That needs to be a consideration from the Government.
Leora Cruddas: I would add that this comes to a really important point, which is that with this policy we must not inadvertently start a process that selects young people at age 14 for pathways that lock them in, for exactly the reason that you have just said. One of the ways in which we open the horizons for our children and young people is to keep the breadth of education at least until the age of 16, which then allows young people to make choices that are not just immediately tied to local economies but open horizons more broadly.
Q40 Caroline Voaden: There should be a movement between technical and academic pathways for as long as possible?
Leora Cruddas: We do not like the language of “pathways” because the pathway sets an expectation that young people are potentially locked in. We prefer to talk about qualifications and the way that young people can switch between technical and academic qualifications, or choose a combination of both, and are not tied to a particular pathway.
Q41 Chair: Can I just ask about the Government’s focus, which goes along with the introduction of new technical routes in schools around devolution, and what you think the implications of that will be from the perspective of local government? How does a new devolved responsibility for education pan out for local authorities and for the different tiers of government, but also from the perspective of large multi-academy trusts that are not accountable at the moment to anybody apart from the Secretary of State? What does more devolution in the education sector look like from your perspective?
Councillor Oliver: The LGA’s position would be that it is welcome news that there will be devolution when it comes to dealing with the increase in NEETs within the landscape. However, it raises questions. For those areas that do not yet have a mayor, what happens there? Do we end up with a postcode lottery? Do those areas then not have access to the same funding and opportunities to deliver those programmes? How does it work when you have a relatively new authority, as we have in Lincolnshire?
We need to think about how the responsibility works with the local authority in being able to deliver the infrastructure, for that new strategic authority to be able to deliver on this proposal. Something we have been working very much on is a “birth to workplace” transitional strategy, which follows the child all the way through and works very closely on those transitions. It already incorporates different partners in order to make that journey a success. We need to build a panel of the right partners to make sure that those transitions are successful and we end up dealing with the crisis we are currently seeing.
Leora Cruddas: I will speak to the point about multi-academy trusts and pick up the point that Councillor Oliver made on the importance of partnership. Since our inception eight years ago, we have been talking about the academy trust as a new form of civic structure. It is in fact already a devolved structure, if you like. We have published a lot on the role of the academy trust as a civic structure and the role of the leadership of academy trusts as civic leaders, acting with other civic leaders to create a wider common good for children and young people.
In relation to devolution, it creates an opportunity for us to lean in to the problems of place and to collectively solve the problems of place through collective acts of leadership. We welcome the devolution agenda from that point. You made the point about larger trusts that are not necessarily located in a place. Almost all the large national trusts have some form of local organisation that reflects the place in which they are based. I do not see that as a particular barrier to having the kind of place-based and civic leadership we now need to solve the problems of place.
Q42 Chair: Just a final point from me, and then we will move on to Jess and work experience. The LGA in particular has said that the Schools White Paper’s goal of two weeks of work experience for every child is ambitious and that more resources are needed to strengthen local employer engagement. Do you want to comment further on that, Councillor Oliver?
Councillor Oliver: Yes. You have confirmed the position of the LGA, and I can confirm that that has not changed. We like ambitious; we need to continue following that. However, we need to look at funding. It also touches back on the point that Caroline raised in terms of how it looks in rural areas and how we deal with those situations. There are more questions to be asked in terms of delivery, funding and capacity.
Q43 Jess Asato: Leora, the Government have said that they want all schools either to join or form high-quality school trusts to “Put collaboration at the heart of the system,” but a criticism we have heard is that there is mixed evidence on trusts being a route to improvement. For example, there are lots of issues with retention of staff in academies compared with maintained schools. What is your answer to this?
Leora Cruddas: Thank you so much for that question. We published some really important research yesterday—two research papers, actually. One is our research at CST called, “Advancing education” and the other is the research of a partner organisation, ImpactEd, which looked at the effect of trusts over time. Both those research papers look at the impact of multi-academy trusts on school improvement and pupil outcomes over a long time. We now have nearly 20 years’ worth of data. When we look at the points at which schools converted—particularly the so-called sponsored academies, where a school was required to join a trust—there are very significant and sustained impacts on their improvement over time.
We can now say that. That feels really important to be able to say. Why is this? What we cannot yet claim is a causal link, but we at CST will be doing more work on it. We have already done quite a lot of work on what the conditions are. What are the active ingredients in a group of schools working together in deep and purposeful collaboration, and with a strong improvement model? What are the active ingredients that help schools to move forward in their improvement journey together?
We have seen the biggest impact in schools in the most disadvantaged areas, which is a really good thing. That is what you would want to see, and it was the original spirit of the academy movement. It was to say that we will go into areas of economic disadvantage, we will go to the schools where the quality of education is not yet good enough, and we will make sure that we make those schools into places that local communities are proud to send their children. On the whole, our research shows that we have done that. Obviously, it is not completely consistent. There is some variability within multi-academy trusts, and we are certainly not claiming that there is not that variability.
Your other question related to workforce and retention within academy trusts. The data on that is a little mixed because the DfE data tracks movement only when a teacher leaves a school, not when a teacher moves from one school to another within the same group. The data is a little contested on that. I would be happy to write to you with more evidence on that, if it would be helpful to you.
Q44 Jess Asato: That would be helpful, thank you. We have also heard concerns, for example, from academics and teaching unions about equivalence in pay and conditions between academies and local authorities, as well as transparency of decisions about finances and governance. For example, if you are a maintained school, you have to make your agendas and minutes available for public scrutiny and your governors need to be contactable and visible. In trust schools this is often not the case, and essentially the governance is not something that parents or the local community can engage with. There is also the question of whether trusts improve relative to local authority schools. How would you respond to some observations about governance and accountability, particularly financial accountability?
Leora Cruddas: The first point I would make on financial accountability is that trusts actually have increased burdens of financial accountability. For example, they are required to publish their accounts annually. They are very heavily scrutinised by the regulator. They are audited annually externally and independently, as well as having a programme of internal audits. There is a very high degree of regulation and scrutiny in relation to financial governance. There is not the same level of scrutiny on maintained schools, in fact. The regimes of financial accountability within the trust sector are actually greater.
In relation to governance, trusts have to publish on their websites and make available all their governance structures and who their trustees are. That is actually a legal requirement in company law and charity law. All that is open to scrutiny and entirely transparent, in the same way that it is for maintained schools.
I wonder if there is something at the heart of your question about the fact that some larger trusts can perhaps appear to be slightly more distant from a parent body. This means that local governance within the trust sector is really important. That stronger local governance for every academy school or small group of schools becomes very important as a point of contact for parents and the local community. I do not recognise that this is a problem in the academy trust sector. Perhaps it is rather a misunderstanding of what academy governance is—financial governance and actual governance.
Q45 Jess Asato: Many of the contacts I receive from parents as a local MP—we have a number of schools in my area that are part of academy trusts—are to do with the fact that, once they have had their interaction with the local school headteacher and processes, there is nowhere else to go. There is no accountability for the wider processes. There is definitely something out there from the parent and community perspective.
Similarly, if you have a number of schools that are parts of different academy chains, many of them do not necessarily talk to each other. They will not come to local school forums, they will not talk about the wider community. You mentioned place, which is very important, and how you want to see trusts playing a much bigger role in place. At the moment, it is very difficult to see that happening in practice.
Leora Cruddas: As I said earlier, the work we have done about trusts as civic institutions is really important here, as is their work as anchor institutions: anchoring their schools more deeply in place. It is hard for me to comment on information that you have—
Jess Asato: Yes, I am not expecting you to. I am sure colleagues have other examples of this across the country.
Q46 Chair: Saying that something is a misunderstanding rather puts the onus on the parents to somehow do better at understanding. The experience of probably every member of the Committee, and across the House of Commons, is that the misunderstanding comes only when parents have a real need to engage, and then their experience is poor. That is quite a widespread perception, which is a different perception of academy trusts and the relationship that parents and local communities have with schools and the wider structures that govern schools, and local authority schools, where the perception is that contact and the relationship is much more direct.
I do not know if you want to respond further to that, but I would really caution against a narrative of, “This is a misunderstanding on the part of parents” because parents do not have an abstract relationship with their school that is about an academic understanding of the structures. They have a relationship with their schools, and they tell us all in various different scenarios in various different parts of the country that sometimes it does not work very well.
Leora Cruddas: Apologies. I was not saying that it is a misunderstanding of parents. I was saying it is a misunderstanding of the structures that govern academy governance and academy finances, just to be clear. I would not say it is a misunderstanding on parents’ behalf. Collectively, we have quite a serious problem with the huge rise of parental complaints. That is across different types of schools and structures.
We are seeing many more parental complaints across the entire school estate. Working to understand that better and helping parents to feel more engaged with schooling—all types of schools, the school that they choose to send their child to—is a challenge for us all. It is a challenge that we in the trust sector want to lean into, and as I am sure Councillor Oliver would say, we want to lean into it in the maintained sector. It is a shared problem. This is not peculiarly a trust problem.
Councillor Oliver: I can understand Jess’s and Helen’s remarks. I also receive a lot of emails in my lead member role from parents who feel more disconnected once they reach a school that is part of a multi-academy trust. There is probably also something in the transition from primary to secondary and how that changes as a feel for parents. Naturally you feel more disconnected with that transition anyway.
There is work for trusts. Not all trusts, as it will obviously differ depending on which trust we are talking about, but there probably is some work to do. I agree with you that there probably is some work to do within the maintained landscape as well. I am not saying that it works perfectly over there. However, if parents are making sounds that they feel disconnected, then there is definitely work to do in that area.
Going back to transparency, inspection could assist with that. At the moment, multi-academy trusts are inspected by ESFA, which is the Education and Skills Funding Agency, and the DfE. The Ofsted inspection, which overarches the whole trust instead of just individual schools, could potentially aid the situation, because it could make multi-academy trusts adhere to a greater level of transparency, whether that is financial or information. It looks better to parents when they are regulated in the same way as a stand-alone school, and it potentially takes more onus away from looking at it as an entirety rather than individually. Potentially that could be something that would assist the process.
Leora Cruddas: Your point about the transition from primary to secondary is pertinent. Most secondary schools in England are now academy schools. That is an important and significant point to make. My substantive point was that the rise in parental complaints is something we see across schools of all types of structures, not something that is peculiar to the academy school.
Q47 Manuela Perteghella: My question is to Councillor Oliver. The Schools White Paper also said it would allow local authorities to form their own trusts. Do you expect that LGA members would be interested in forming their own trusts and, if so, what support would they need from Government to do this?
Councillor Oliver: That is a really good question. Again, it is dependent on the area where those local authorities are. I do not want to completely form an opinion based on just rurality. For some local authorities, it is an attractive concept and it is probably something that is very deliverable. However, when you look at your more rural county councils in comparison with your London boroughs, there are an awful lot of small schools, little faith schools, that currently have not been picked up by multi-academy trusts. There is a reason, and that is financial viability.
It is a bit of a red herring, because local authorities have not run schools for years. Actually, when we look at their success rate, 90% of maintained schools are rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. Forcing local authorities to form their own trusts is a position that the LGA would not want to take. It should not be compulsory. We should not be forcing that, because not only are we potentially creating a situation of financial vulnerability for local authorities in picking up those smaller schools, but there are potentially also conflicts of interest. Depending on where those children are placed, if local authorities are there, there are potentially some conflicts within governance. Potentially, do we need to be forcing a route of full academisation, which would include local authorities? No. That would also be the opinion of the LGA.
Q48 Manuela Perteghella: From my former roles as a councillor and a school governor, I know that schools are often the first port of call for families facing the threat of homelessness, dealing with financial poverty or dealing with issues of home-to-school transport, for example. What do you make of the Government’s proposals in the White Paper for improving home-to-school partnerships? What is needed from the perspective of schools and your local government colleagues, whether it is a county, district or unitary council, to ensure that all the stakeholders and partnerships work effectively so that children can learn and teachers can teach?
Councillor Oliver: Again, partnership working is imperative in all areas of children’s services. Without good, strong partnership working, we cannot achieve what we want to achieve, which is children getting the best start and best education in life. I am really pleased that you mentioned home-to-school transport, because it is a massive gap in this White Paper. The detail surrounding it is very much missed. I would suggest that rurality comes into play with home-to-school transport but, equally, London boroughs have their own issues, especially when we look at SEND transport, which has an overarching financial impact on all local authorities.
The Government would need to provide more detail. I would assume the position they would take at this point is that the SEND reforms should help to ease home-to-school transport, but what do we do in the interim? That is a huge gap in this White Paper.
Chair: Just to be clear, the Government are not suggesting that any local authority would be forced to set up a trust. They are making the option available to them to set up a trust, rather than having their schools join another trust, which may or may not have any direct relationship to the local area.
Councillor Oliver: That is refreshing to hear.
Chair: We should just be clear about what the proposal actually is.
Q49 Darren Paffey: The Government’s White Paper proposes changes around admissions codes: fair access protocols, banding, in-year admissions and so on. To what extent do you support those or feel that there are other measures they could be taking?
Leora Cruddas: Some legislation has just gone through Parliament in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 relating to admissions. For example, strengthening the role of the adjudicator in setting pupil admission numbers. We have yet to see the regulation supporting that particular provision. We are talking to the Department at the moment about how to do it in a way that removes any particular conflict of interest while actively supporting the strengthening of admissions, so that children get a school place as quickly as they can. Our guiding principle must be that we admit children as quickly as we can, so that no child is left without a school place for a length of time.
Councillor Oliver: I totally agree with Leora on that. I would add that there is going to be a consultation on the fair access protocol, which is great. It is a difficult situation when local authorities are trying to place children. Schools have the ability to appeal and push back on PAN. Potentially there is weight in looking at the PAN affecting not just the entry year but also how that works throughout the school, so for mid-entry, irrespective of the age of the child and which year they are trying to access, that follows through throughout the whole school and is not constrained just to that entry year.
Q50 Darren Paffey: The wider question may be, what would you see as the appropriate balance between local authorities and individual schools and trusts on school admissions? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Councillor Oliver: It comes down to working together, does it not? As a local authority, we very much look at the placement we are trying to achieve, the relationship with the school and the reason why the school is potentially pushing back on that placement. Local authorities already have a growth fund to support schools if they are genuinely concerned about capacity and being able to take on those extra placements. Equally, if we establish that that is not the case and, actually, they can take that placement, there needs to be a strengthened offer to give the local authority more powers to place children. Inevitably, this is about children. The faster and more efficiently we can place the children, the better it is for their outcomes.
Leora Cruddas: I would concur. This is all about working together to make sure that we deliver the best outcomes for children, always.
Q51 Darren Paffey: In the particular context that we know is already hitting but is certainly going to escalate, which is falling school rolls, do you think there need to be any further changes to admissions policies or to wider governance policy in the light of those falling school rolls?
Councillor Oliver: Obviously, the falling birth rate has massive implications for the rolls that we are seeing within our schools. I know that we have a watchlist in Lincolnshire where we have little schools with just 21 pupils on roll. Again, it comes down to developing partnerships and merging those schools together. We have other options; it is not necessarily just a trust model. We have federations that work really well together. That is what we are already doing. Those schools that are seeing issues with small roll numbers are working together with partnership schools or nearby schools to achieve that, to ensure that we do not end up having to close those schools. Schools are the heart of our communities. School closure is very much the last option, and we avoid it at all costs.
There are other areas that we tend to look at, such as the incorporation of SEND hubs, alternative provision and early years provision. There are many different options we can look at to keep schools open while we are seeing these falling roll numbers. We have a small schools strategy within our local authority, and it is very important that we roll that out nationally to prevent our communities from losing that heart.
Leora Cruddas: Local authorities are obviously under a statutory duty to ensure the sufficiency of school places in a local area. It is absolutely right that local authorities hold that responsibility because they hold all the data on birth rates, for example. As Councillor Oliver said, the solution to the falling rolls issue is one of partnership. We must work together in partnership, with strong strategic intent, to look at the pattern of school places and provision across a local area and then make good decisions. Some solutions that Councillor Oliver has alluded to, such as units on school sites, require partnership working. Local authorities are best placed, because they are the authorities in an area, to convene those partnership conversations and help determine the strategy.
Q52 Chair: That makes a very strong assumption that everybody is working in partnership with the same intent. As an example, in my constituency in London, we are very severely affected by the issue of falling school rolls and falling numbers of children. We have seen schools academise in order to take themselves out of the local authority pupil place planning rationalisation process. That is not partnership working. That is individual organisations working in their own best interests, directly counter to the interests of sufficiency across the wider area and how we plan effectively for the school places we need in the future in the context of these very significant challenges.
You obviously have the ability as local authorities to determine what happens with maintained schools, but you do not have the ability to determine what happens with schools that are not maintained schools because they are part of academy trusts. Darren’s question is really trying to get to the heart of this very challenging situation where, right across the country, the numbers of children are falling. That is creating intense pressures on the viability of many different schools. It is creating the need for strategic thinking about what is in the best interests of an area and how that area’s education needs are met for every single child.
Do local authorities need more powers? Are the changes to powers proposed in the White Paper the right changes? I am sorry to push back, but we cannot just say, “We all work in partnership and that will be fine” because it is clearly not. There is a lot of evidence that the current arrangements are not working as these pressures are bearing down on our education system.
Councillor Oliver: No, I would agree with you there. This comes down to strengthening the admissions code. Also, when we think about being able to deliver the SEND reforms, those backstop powers have to be with local authorities to ensure that, regardless of whether it is a maintained school or a multi-academy trust, the right placements are being created in order to meet need across our local areas. I would agree with you on that.
Inevitably, we are going to be the ones responsible for delivering that, obviously in partnership with schools. However, it should be irrespective of what the school situation looks like. There should be a responsibility to deliver it in line with our landscape and the geographic and population needs of our local area.
Q53 Chair: Of course, the other thing that happens at the moment is that, when a school academises, it leaves its deficit behind with the local authority. That is not partnership working. That is bits of the system working in their own best interests.
Leora Cruddas: All the problems that face us within schooling and education at the moment, some of which are very significant—the problems we have with school attendance, the disadvantage gap, young people not in education, employment or training, and falling rolls—require a partnership mindset. We are not going to solve these problems on our own. We really need to lean in.
As I mentioned, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act gives new powers to the adjudicator, particularly in relation to pupil admission numbers. There is now a way that local authorities can make representation to the adjudicator, but I would always see that as the end point and not as what should happen first. I would genuinely hope that, as a school community, we could work together to solve the problems that face us.
Q54 Jodie Gosling: Leora, your written submission was quite critical of the Government’s proposals for regional improvement for standards and excellence teams. I would really like to explore what changes you think are needed to make RISE work effectively for schools, especially those that need support.
Leora Cruddas: It is fair to say that, in its early days, there were some quite significant operational issues with the RISE programme. The new director general has done a lot to smooth those operational issues and difficulties, and the RISE programme is now functioning in a much more optimal way. We are working very closely with the Department to iron out any residual issues, but from the point in time when we submitted the written evidence to now, there have been quite significant changes to those operational issues that we were experiencing in the early days of RISE. Under the leadership of the new director general, the Department has a grip on some issues.
Q55 Jodie Gosling: Could you outline or be more explicit about what you think those key changes were?
Leora Cruddas: In the early days, when RISE was first launched, the matching process between the supporting organisation and the school needed a little more structure and rigour. Sometimes the matching process did not work as well as it might, just as an example. The matching process is now much stronger and more rigorous. There is much more thought behind getting the right supporting organisation for the school than perhaps there was in those early days. In the early days, that generated quite a lot of friction, concern and anxiety, but now there is much less of that in the system.
Q56 Caroline Voaden: The previous Government published the enrichment framework in June and committed to additional funding, including the Every Child Can programme. The evidence we have received has emphasised the need for ringfenced funding to ensure that provision is inclusive and that there are discussions about the structure and length of the school day. What further measures do you think are needed to meet the Government’s ambitions so that every child can benefit from enrichment, regardless of disadvantage, rurality or what type of school they are in?
Councillor Oliver: Again, it predominantly comes down to funding and the ability of schools to be able to deliver the enrichment. However, I feel that as local authorities we can really support when it comes to enrichment. We have our culture portfolio, our libraries and leisure facilities, which will be there throughout the holidays as well as throughout the school week. It is something that we can really support with.
The LGA was incredibly relieved to hear about the extension of the HAF programme. We need to consider our vulnerable children and our children living in more deprived areas, and what the holidays actually look like for them. The HAF programme has been an overwhelming success in being able to give all children the experiences they need to widen their knowledge and experiences. We all know how valuable those sorts of activities are for children in expanding their capacity, when we think about forest schools and how good being outside is not only for their learning but also their mental health.
I would suggest that the HAF programme is fantastic. Personally, talking from experience in Lincolnshire, we are probably barely touching the sides in the sessions that we should be able to deliver. Always take an opportunity: more funding for the HAF programme would be fantastic so that we can support more of our vulnerable children and our children living in more deprived areas by really impacting on their curriculum and development. We know how well it works in terms of attendance and getting them back to school, especially after that long summer break. Coming back to partnership working, schools will need funding to be able to deliver the enrichment-added curriculum in a meaningful way, but we can also very much support as local authorities with the infrastructure that we already have in place.
Leora Cruddas: I will start by saying that enrichment is fundamentally important to the wider purposes of education. Education is about building human capacity, and enrichment is a key part of that. Enrichment can help children and young people find their sense of joy in school, feel a much greater sense of belonging to their school, and find what they are good at. It is brilliant. However, I would agree that the constraints in relation to the school environment are significant at the moment, particularly the funding constraints.
We started off our conversation with the burden of reform on our school system. It would be a terrible thing indeed if we lost the wonderful capacity for enrichment because of the burden of reform and because there is insufficient funding within our schools to deliver that. There is a collective will to make this work. Nobody who works in education is not 100% committed to those wider purposes of education and making schools joyful places where all children feel like they belong.
Q57 Caroline Voaden: I would also like to talk about the length of the school day. In 2021, the Centre for Social Justice advocated for a longer school day. An evaluation of 1,500 schools with extended school days showed that 69% said it had at least some influence in raising attainment, and 71% reported it helped them engage disadvantaged families. Do either of you have a view on whether there should be a conversation around the length of the school day and whether that would help?
We know that the curriculum is absolutely packed already, which makes it difficult to start trying to add back all the things that we used to enjoy at school, such as art, music, drama and PE, which seem to have fallen out of the curriculum. Do you have a view on whether that would be one way of addressing it? Obviously, there would be workforce issues.
Leora Cruddas: Yes, there would be workforce issues. Context matters hugely here, and place matters. A CST member trust in Bedfordshire, for example, has many parents who work beyond school hours. It has extended its school day very deliberately to support parents in that community, including by having children do their homework during the extended school day, so that they have quality time when they go home to their parents. However, that is responding to a particular parental need. I am not sure that we mandate this from the centre. We look at the way that we serve our communities, and we plan our school day and school provision to optimally benefit children, young people and the communities we serve.
Councillor Oliver: It is a huge conversation, and Leora is absolutely right. There is so much more to think about when we think about extending the school day, in terms of the impact on transport and the wraparound care industry. The LGA does not have an official position at this point on extending the school day, so I would probably leave it there.
Q58 Chair: We have had a lot of evidence, including in previous evidence sessions, about the how and the where of enrichment. Do the Government need to be clearer about what their ask and expectation is in terms of what enrichment should happen within schools, within the curtilage of the school day and ancillary to the school day, such as breakfast clubs and after school? What should happen within the wider community to give children that option of access to enrichment everywhere in the country? Just very quickly, do you think the White Paper is clear enough about what the expectations are on the different bits of the system to deliver the important aspiration of enrichment for every child?
Leora Cruddas: Yes. Whitehall should not be determining those sorts of things. That is about place and about making partners in place work to deliver against a broad enrichment framework. That is absolutely the right approach. We do not need to see more compulsion or prescription from central Government. What would be nice from central Government would be more funding to make this work.
Councillor Oliver: I would agree with that. Other policies and strategies are coming through that could well help to support enrichment. When we think about the youth strategy and how that looks, we very much incorporate the community and the voluntary sector in being able to help deliver enrichment. That is also really good for helping our disadvantaged children to access it. With that, there are some questions in terms of the youth hubs. Again, it could work well for London boroughs or city areas where things are far more accessible, but we need to think about rurality and how that looks when you think about transport. There are several areas that can support the delivery of enrichment, but it comes down to sufficiency and funding to be able to provide that, especially for the smaller or more rural schools that do not necessarily have the ability.
Leora Cruddas: We really need to understand the particular constraints on special schools in relation to the expectations on enrichment. Of course, children with special educational needs in special schools have the same entitlement to a brilliant enrichment programme as those in other types of schools, but the constraints are more difficult to manage, particularly with school transport. We need to lean into looking at the logistics of getting this right across our different types of schools. Rurality is a particular issue, but special schools create another set of issues for us to acknowledge.
Q59 Peter Swallow: On the topic of expanding the curriculum or having a broad curriculum, the Government have proposed changes to school accountability measures such as Progress 8, which would cover English, maths, two sciences, two breadth subjects and two choices. Do you support these changes, Leora?
Leora Cruddas: We have not yet had the Government’s response to the consultation. Since we now have a different Government, I believe that there is further consideration being given to the proposals in the accountability consultation—
Q60 Peter Swallow: Perhaps I should rephrase my question. What do you think would be the correct outcome of that process? What would you like to see Progress 8 look like and be, or would you like to see it scrapped altogether?
Leora Cruddas: No, I would not like to see it scrapped altogether. It is a really important measure. There are a number of technical considerations to Progress 8. Essentially, if you put one thing in, you have to take another thing out. That is quite a fine balance. It is really important that we have a breadth bucket, but it is equally important that we maintain high academic standards by having English, maths and science in there. The balance of Progress 8 right now and the way that it has been constructed is maximally efficient, but some things that were considered through the curriculum and assessment review are really important considerations. I look forward to understanding what this Government intend to do with Progress 8.
Q61 Peter Swallow: Sorry, I do not mean to push on this. You say that the current Progress 8 is maximally efficient, but that you are excited to see the changes.
Leora Cruddas: I look forward to seeing them.
Q62 Peter Swallow: You look forward to seeing them, so you are sceptical but open to persuasion?
Leora Cruddas: With respect, I do not know yet what the changes might or might not be, so it is hard for me to comment, but I would say that no measure is perfect. No measure is ever perfect, but Progress 8 has some very important elements of accountability. There are complex arguments about taking things out and then what goes back in, and that can shift and shape the pattern of education differently. I want to see what is being proposed before I comment on it.
Councillor Oliver: I would suggest that the LGA does not have an official position at this point until we see the results of the consultation, but it is definitely going to be a balancing act. We do not want to impact education attainment, but we are also very much on the drive for inclusion. It is how it all pans out, I would suggest.
Q63 Peter Swallow: We have also mentioned funding quite a few times today. The White Paper committed to a new model for targeting disadvantage through the national funding formula. We have heard concerns about the current formula being too complex. What could a new model look like? For example, should it look at replacing free school meal eligibility with family income? Should a wider definition of disadvantage be used? Should there be bolder and wider reforms proposed?
Councillor Oliver: I would suggest that the LGA has always been opposed to direct national funding. It is important that the flexibility is maintained. At the end of the day, local authorities and schools understand their children and communities and how they work, so to maintain flexibility within how the funding works would be preferable.
Q64 Peter Swallow: What does that mean in practice?
Councillor Oliver: Schools being able to ensure that the funding is utilised and diverted into the right space. It is important that the funding is utilised to create an environment that can meet need for all the children they have on roll. In line with the SEND reforms, it is important that funding can be utilised to upskill and give schools the capacity to deliver.
Q65 Peter Swallow: You are proposing moving away from a system where funding is targeted at students with the most disadvantage, to one where there is more flexibility to do that if schools feel it is appropriate, or not, as the case may be?
Councillor Oliver: No, the funding to disadvantage needs to be maintained. Obviously, that is done throughout the funding formula, but it is maintaining the flexibility rather than that decision being made in Whitehall.
Leora Cruddas: I do not have much to add at the level of principle. Again, this is quite a technical debate. We have published quite extensively on funding futures, and I make the same offer that I made to Jess. We would be happy to put forward a written submission to you that summarises our position on funding, if that is helpful.
Peter Swallow: We love technical, so I am sure a written submission would be very welcome.
Q66 Chair: Councillor, is it an LGA position that disadvantage funding should not be allocated on a national formula but left at the discretion of local authorities?
Councillor Oliver: No, I would not say that is a formal LGA position. I will get the office to write to you with the official position on that funding. That would be best.
Q67 Mrs Brackenridge: The Schools White Paper makes several announcements around attendance, behaviour and belonging. How far is tackling poor attendance and poor behaviour a responsibility for schools, and how far does it need to be a joined-up, integrated approach with local government and other public services?
Councillor Oliver: Attendance is certainly something where we need to have a focus. Again, it comes down to partnership working. It is how we encourage attendance and how that looks. The DfE is going to be supporting schools with attendance. The question would be how those attendance advisers are going to be rolled out, what that looks like and when that will be happening in terms of areas.
As a local authority, we maintain really good relationships with our schools. We will assist them as much as possible. That is regardless of whether they are maintained or part of a multi-academy trust. My assistant director for education works incredibly closely with whichever school it is on whatever support it needs. I would suggest that it is the responsibility of us all. We can come back to talking about enrichment, the HAF programme and our disadvantaged children, and how that can support attendance and staying within a routine so that they are school-ready when they need to go back. It also helps to support parents with that.
The other implicating factor will of course be the SEND reforms. Making our schools more inclusive and better able to meet need within a mainstream setting will help with attendance because parents will feel comfortable that their children’s need is being met within school. Therefore, attendance will hopefully improve when that is able to be delivered within our mainstream settings.
Q68 Mrs Brackenridge: How can we make this consistent? You have shared some good practice in your local setting, but the key is how can we ensure, through the Schools White Paper, that this is consistently good across the country?
Councillor Oliver: Again, it comes down to ensuring that all schools are implementing the reforms appropriately. It comes down to inspection. We know that the Ofsted framework is changing to ensure that schools are serious about inclusion. That would be the best way for us to realise that schools are implementing the reforms accordingly. As I mentioned earlier, local authorities having those backstop powers is important, so that when we deem that schools are not being serious and are not implementing the reforms to the level that we would expect, we have some ability to hold them to account for that.
Leora Cruddas: The issue that we face with school attendance is a complex social issue. It is not just an issue for the school system. However, I would like to commend successive Governments for the work that has been done on attendance. Daily attendance data collection and feeding that data back into the system is something to be really proud of. We have done that well in England. Other countries and jurisdictions look at that and wish they had something similar. That creates a very good platform for us to be granular and rigorous about daily attendance data and monitoring. There is always more to be done. There is an issue here for us to address, but that very good basis of understanding those patterns in attendance that we can now see through daily attendance data collections is a very good thing that we have done together.
Q69 Mrs Brackenridge: Do you have a position on schools fining parents and carers for lack of attendance?
Leora Cruddas: We do not have a published policy position on that at CST. There have been some credible recent reports that have queried its efficacy. There are certainly different views in CST membership about the efficacy of fines, but everybody would agree that fines really are a last resort. Understanding the issues around poor attendance would be the first thing we seek to do.
Councillor Oliver: Yes, I would very much agree with that. It is important that we look at the why. Why are these children not making it into school? If we can deal with that, then potentially there are two strands to this. You may have parents who will take children out to take them on holiday because it is cheaper to do so. That is one scenario, but then you could have a scenario where there is a really difficult circumstance going on at home, so just to issue a fine could accentuate those circumstances. It comes down to those unique circumstances and understanding why that child is not in school.
Chair: Can I thank you both very much for being with us this morning and for answering our questions? You both indicated that you would write to the Committee with some follow-up information. If there is anything else that you want to mention that we did not have time to get to today, please feel free to include it as well. Thank you very much.
Witnesses: Geoff Barton, Dr Ian Thompson and Sam Henson.
Q70 Chair: Welcome to the second panel of this oral evidence session of the Education Committee. I welcome our three witnesses. Would you mind introducing yourselves to the Committee?
Geoff Barton: I am a grizzled old English teacher. I was the headteacher of a comprehensive school for 15 years, and then a trade union baron—as the Daily Mail called me—when I looked after the Association of School and College Leaders. It is important to say that I have stepped down from that. Whereas in the past I would be representing 25,000 people, I am now representing myself and you are going to get the grizzled old English teacher’s opinions. I am very pleased to be here.
Dr Thompson: I am a professor of inclusive education at the University of Oxford, where I am currently the interim director of the Rees Centre, which researches children’s social care and education. I am here as the co-chair of the Belonging in Education Network. I am also a grizzled old English teacher.
Geoff Barton: It is not a competition.
Sam Henson: I am deputy chief executive of the National Governance Association, and I am not grizzled.
Q71 Chair: I am going to begin with a question to Ian Thompson. The Belonging in Education Network’s statement expressed concerns about the state of English schools. Can you outline the role of belonging in improving the situation in our school system, and how that can be achieved?
Dr Thompson: The network is a loose assembly of people, so I am not speaking totally on their behalf, though as co-chair I have canvassed opinion. Belonging is at the heart of education. There is a lot of research evidence to show that if young people feel they belong in school, they are more likely to feel happy, more likely to achieve and more likely to have their needs met. I welcome the White Paper’s emphasis on engagement and belonging, because we feel that the two go together. Belonging needs to be at the heart of education; it should not be an additional add-on. Looking at yesterday’s evidence, I can see that union leaders worry about the extra workload on teaching staff, but if belonging is at the heart of education, it will reduce workload and make schools safer places both for young people and staff. It needs to be at the core; additional policies will not make that change. It is about the daily practice of schools.
Q72 Chair: What are the key components? What makes for good belonging in schools?
Dr Thompson: The key component is that everyone feels they belong. That means that everyone’s individuality is understood and welcomed, everyone’s needs are identified and met at the point of need, and school is a place that is welcoming not only for the children and adults in it, but for those who engage with it, particularly parents and carers who work with young people.
In our network, we talk a lot about transition. Many of the most disadvantaged young people face multiple transitions. Schools are safe places for them, but they need to go into a school that helps them feel that they belong. That needs to be at the core of the daily business of the school.
Q73 Chair: You have described how a school should feel when there is a good sense of belonging, how important that is, and how it should be a whole school ethos. Just to drill down into that, is it about trusted relationships within a school? Is it about a clear articulation of the ethos of the place? Is it about what goes on in terms of the curriculum? We know that some schools are good at this and some schools are not. The question is, how do you get more schools to be good at it? In order to answer that question, you have to really drill down into what it is and how you deliver it.
Dr Thompson: As you mentioned, relationships are key. We have worked with universities on school exclusions, and we found that England excludes and suspends far greater numbers of students in far greater proportions than the other UK jurisdictions. Scotland in particular talks about relationships in all its paperwork, whereas in this country we tend to talk about behaviour. If looking at behaviour and behavioural problems is where you start, it is very difficult to get to the root of why people are behaving the way they are and why they do not feel that they belong.
Relationships are key—not just relationships between adults and young people, but relationships that can be fostered between young people. Schools should be allowed to be in a position where need is both met and understood; it is not something that is portioned off and done down the corridor, but integral to what the school is doing.
Q74 Chair: I will bring all three of you in for the next part. The Government have proposed a school engagement framework. What should it include?
Geoff Barton: Now that I am looking in on education from the margins, I often hear about schools that are celebrated for being militaristic, having silent corridors and so on. My experience, and Ian says the same, is that you would want your own children to go to a school where relationships matter, where talking about belonging is seen as the opposite of soppy. It is about having expectations that you need to be in school, “It is really important that you are in school. We will teach you and re-teach you if there is something you do not understand.” That is where the teacher’s skill is so important, rather than the idea that children are passive recipients.
I recently chaired a commission on oracy—the ability to speak, listen and communicate, of which Robin Alexander is the guru. When you ask experts what oracy brings for children and young people, they say the one thing it brings is agency. The notion of having a sense of agency is good for young people, good for teachers who are going to see young people motivated by the subject, and good for society. If young people are going to get the vote at the age of 16, that is all the more reason why we need them to learn to disagree agreeably.
That probably does not answer the question about what an engagement framework looks like, but there are schools doing extraordinary work that is not soppy and sentimental and that is giving young people a sense of agency. That narrative is something we need to promote more fully.
Dr Thompson: Engagement needs to be seen. It needs to be something you experience when you go into a classroom or walk around a school, but it also needs to be fostered. Engagement is not just about performing, either in terms of examination results or by conforming to school rules that from the outside—from my perspective—can look draconian. A school where you cannot speak in the corridor is not a school I would want to work in, but it is also not the way that children learn. They learn in the classroom, but they also learn in the corridor, they learn outside school, and part of that learning is about the ability to engage with each other in constructive and collaborative ways, rather than resorting to hostility on the first possible occasion.
Engagement has to be worked at. It is the school’s responsibility, but it is also the Government’s responsibility to place engagement at the core, so that schools are judged on whether they are safe, belonging institutions that engage and therefore do well in terms of attainment.
Sam Henson: I agree with everything my colleagues have said. What engagement does not look like is another form of performance table, or a stick to beat schools with. We have to be really cautious of that. The one thing that is key is how pupil voice feeds into that process. If we are genuinely talking about something that makes children and young people feel a sense of ownership and membership—that is a good word to use—their voice has to be instrumental in forming it. I am not sure if that has developed within these conversations yet, but it is early days.
Q75 Mrs Brackenridge: There remains much concern regarding school attendance. Things have improved since the covid low point, but one in five young people are still persistently absent; it is a very stubborn dial to shift. The Government have announced specific attendance targets for each school based on its context. What further measures are needed to ensure that we get children back to school?
Geoff Barton: There is one very difficult issue in all this, which was hinted at by Leora in the previous session. It was best articulated by Amanda Spielman when she was the chief inspector. One of the things that happened from covid is that the social contract between parents and schools changed. This is a terrible oversimplification, and I am inevitably walking into controversy, but if your child was at school pre-covid and then was at home with you and could have a pretty comfortable time, and it was nice for you and nice for the child, something has shifted for some parents—not all parents—about your child saying on a Friday, “I don’t feel very well,” or, “I’m going to have five supply teachers today. I don’t want to go to school.” Without rebuilding a sense of the relationship between schools and parents, attendance is going to be problematic.
Again, we are seeing the people I used to represent—school and college leaders, proud members of ASCL—being subjected to a barrage of complaints. Leora hinted at this also. It is legitimate to have a complaint about a school—just as I might have a complaint about Marks and Spencer—but there are ways in which you should do that. We should be rebuilding the sense of how the school is working for you, giving parents a voice, giving young people a sense of agency, and getting back to that civilised responsibility for you as a parent to have your child in school. We need to keep articulating that and celebrating those schools that, often in places of adversity, appear to be getting it absolutely right. How are they doing that? Can the behaviour hubs, for example, help to illuminate precisely what they are doing? I am not sure if it will be a mechanism; it will be a relationship issue.
Dr Thompson: I agree with Geoff. I would add that the relationship side of keeping children in school—the reason why they want to go to school—has to be at the forefront of our thoughts. In the last session, someone said that we have to look at the reasons why 20% of young people—a significant number—are not attending school regularly. It may be about their health. Often, it is fear of school; they feel completely estranged and that they do not belong. Tragically, some find life more exciting outside school, and that leads to safeguarding dangers and so on.
How do we make school a belonging place so that they will turn up? That is what we need to focus on. The narrative of blaming parents really worries me. Some parents think their child is going to school, but the child does not actually reach school or leaves school early. Other parents feel powerless because of what is going on in their life and their child’s life. Fining parents is not the answer; we should be finding ways to make schools more inviting places for those young people. That may be about inviting parents and carers in on a more regular basis.
Q76 Mrs Brackenridge: Would you support the Schools White Paper’s stance of providing support before penalising?
Dr Thompson: I would definitely be in support of that. Penalising will affect those who can least afford it. Historically, that is what penalties have done.
Q77 Mrs Brackenridge: Sam, will assigning a target to a school drive improvement or will there be unintended, perverse consequences?
Sam Henson: That is a good question. It will drive unintended consequences that are hard to row back from. There is evidence that this is already happening under the new Ofsted framework, where attendance and behaviour have become joined at the hip. The issue is that some schools have done amazing work on attendance, but it is not recognised because that cohort of children come with additional behaviour needs. That is an indicator that a blunt tool can sometimes create a problem.
Nationally, at times the wider narrative around attendance has been problematic. You turn on the news, and you are told that all the attendance issues are to do with parents taking their children to some sunny country abroad. That is not how it is. Parents and children have been alienated from the conversation, and that is part of the challenge here.
Mrs Brackenridge: I would dig deeper, but that would take up part of my colleague’s question.
Q78 Caroline Voaden: I would like to talk about behaviour, which we know is an issue in the classroom. I recently surveyed over 900 teachers nationwide, and round 50% were considering leaving the profession, citing pupil behaviour as the reason. It is obviously having a real impact on the workforce.
The White Paper says, “The expectation of high standards of behaviour should be the same for all children”, while also stating that schools should have inclusive policies that get to the root cause of poor behaviour. What support, guidance or resources do you think are needed to resolve the behaviour issues that we are seeing in schools at the moment?
Geoff Barton: I know from my days as a headteacher that there were certain points in the year when, if you asked members of staff how things were, behaviour would always be the issue. If you are a teacher with a class of 28 young people, that is a tough gig—it always has been—and it becomes harder at certain points in the year. Something has happened with young people, though. Partly it is because the role models they see publicly are perhaps not what they were in the past. We all feel the tendency of people to be cross about everything all the time.
What we are seeing in the best schools is not that militaristic regime I talked about—“be passive and listen to what I say, because I matter more than you”—but modelling what good behaviour looks like. At King Edward, we felt that one of the most important things we as staff could do was not just what we did in the classroom; it was what we did around the school, modelling having conversations with young people, eating together, all those things. We should not just talk about the standards agenda, but about the way behaviour feeds into the standards agenda and what good behaviour looks like in schools. Often, that does not get much attention, and it seems to me that it would be a really important way of starting to re-empower those schools that are doing really important work but do not get noticed for it.
Part of the issue is around the curriculum. If we are going to get a revised national curriculum that includes what I am interested in—oracy—young people will feel more engaged. Whether they are studying simultaneous equations or “The Tempest”, they will feel that it matters to them, they are enjoying it and they are being given a voice and a sense of agency. All that is likely to lead to better behaviour in school and better behaviour when they later become citizens in the world.
Dr Thompson: One of the issues is what we describe as poor behaviour. As an ex-teacher, poor behaviour for me would often be that they were not listening to my wonderful anecdote. What I failed to see was that I was not engaging them. It is about staff thinking about how they engage all the young people, but also giving staff the resource to do that. There is a lot of research evidence showing that programmes focusing on attachment awareness, trauma-informed practices and relational practices really help in terms of understanding.
Your question was whether all children should behave the same in every classroom; they will not. For whatever reason, they are not always able to do that. Teachers need to be empowered to feel that it is okay, they can make it work as long as the behaviour does not become dangerous to anyone else, or impact learning in the classroom to a point where it is not manageable. It is about helping staff, training staff, and an awareness of what difference is. I really baulk at strict, draconian behaviour policies that mean that some children with particular needs will simply never be able to manage. We particularly noticed that after covid, when children were going back into necessarily constrained classrooms. You could see that kids with social, emotional and mental health problems in particular were always going to fail under that system. The danger is that, once they fall out of the system, they are the children who do not attend anymore.
Q79 Caroline Voaden: It is interesting that you talk about trauma-informed practice. Do teachers get enough training, particularly in their initial training, on how to recognise the signs of early life trauma in the way children are behaving?
Dr Thompson: As someone who has worked in initial teacher education a lot, I would say that they do not get enough. Courses will touch on it, but there is pressure on initial teacher education courses to teach to a fairly standard curriculum and to a fairly standard set of practices. It would be really helpful if far more attention was given to recognising need, and to working collaboratively to meet that need. That would allow children who do not have those needs to learn in safer and calmer environments.
Caroline Voaden: In the end, that is good for them all.
Sam Henson: I agree with what has already been said, but I would add that we have seen alarming evidence in terms of the practices operated in some places. Silent corridors and those sorts of things have been widely covered, but it goes further than that. I do not want to get too far into the structural issues here, but we have seen examples of that in some trusts in particular—obviously it has been covered by the press—and I do not think it has done any good in terms of bringing children and young people along on that engagement journey. Uniforms are another example. We have a very long-standing approach to certain rules and policies that, in some situations, have overstepped the mark and created barriers that lead to behavioural issues that might not have been there otherwise.
Caroline Voaden: It is interesting that, apart from Parliament, men are not usually required to wear a collar and tie to work anymore, but we still expect kids to wear them to school. It is quite bizarre.
Q80 Jess Asato: Sam, you welcomed the White Paper’s focus on place. Would you like to see the new Administration go further? If so, what additional measures should this involve?
Sam Henson: We are really excited by the narrative that is emerging on place. We have always spoken to our members about their needs, and the vast majority of those are local needs. Those needs are difficult to look at through a national lens; our members tell us about all sorts of things that are very hard to relate to on the national stage. What we have seen, particularly with the accountability system in this country, is that we have not developed a contextually aware approach and that has hindered some schools and trusts.
The White Paper is very encouraging when it talks about community anchors and anchoring schools within the community. Governance is a ready-made resource for that, particularly at a local level. Our one concern is that there are some trusts that do not have local governance in a way that people want to be a part of anymore; we have been urging the Department to look at that, and it is going to consult on what local governance will look like. We think governance needs to come with real agency at local level, and if it does not, you can expect local volunteers to disappear. That would be a real problem.
Q81 Manuela Perteghella: What lessons would the panel draw from the recently published PISA 2025 results? Do those results strengthen or weaken the case for the direction set out in the White Paper?
Dr Thompson: PISA is a focus for many countries around the world, but it would not be my focus. It is a particular form of examination that certain groups of children are schooled for, so it is a very imperfect measure. Attainment is important—particularly with literacy levels and numeracy levels, understanding scientific needs and so on—but I would not focus on PISA, and I think it is a mistake to do so. We need to focus on schools that are doing things right. As academics, we often get accused of talking in blanket ways about schools—I catch myself doing it sometimes. Not all schools in England are doing poorly in terms of behaviour, attendance or relationships; we need to focus on schools where relationships are at the core. When you go into those schools, you can see them doing circle time; some would say that takes time out of the curriculum, but those young people are far more likely to be open and honest with each other. They are far more likely to feel safe in school, and to feel that they belong. Those schools do extremely well in attainment. There is a danger with league tables; they carry perverse incentives implicitly within them, meaning some schools will feel constrained to play a game to fit the league table.
Geoff Barton: There was a very good editorial yesterday by Jon Severs, editor of the Times Educational Supplement, on the publication of the PISA results last week. He said that people essentially saw what they wanted to see in it. The trad right brigade said, “This shows England’s doing better than the rest of the UK.” Other people you might label as being on the left—they might just have a different view—were saying that it was because progress had stalled in other countries.
There is this idea that you can compare culturally different young people. My school had a partnership with a school in Shanghai, and we used to take children out there. On Saturday mornings in Shanghai, I would bump into the kids at that school. I would ask them where they were going; they were going to their extra physics lessons and so on. Education is part of their DNA.
I am a bit sceptical about what PISA might tell us, except for one thing: it is a missed opportunity by the Government. This year—as in last year, the year before and the year before that—a third of young people got a grade 3, a grade 2 or a grade 1 in GCSE English. I asked Minister Gibb, “If you call grade 4 a standard pass, what do you call grade 3?” He said, “Presumably, it is a good fail.” We have to do better than that. We have to give that third of young people—the forgotten third—the dignity of saying, “Here is what I can do,” instead of rubbing their noses in it. Before we all gloat too much about what PISA told us about reading skills and so on, we ought to be sorting out that GCSE qualification so that those young people have the dignity of achievement and can move on with a sense of self-respect. That, for me, would be the real big win. The curriculum review did nothing about that, and I am not sure that this White Paper does enough about it either.
Sam Henson: My response would be very similar, although I would not articulate it as well as Geoff has. The PISA results have already been politically weaponised; I understand why, but as a result it is hard to know how helpful they are. What they do not show—the conversation has not really focused on this enough—is the cost of getting there. The Select Committee had an inquiry into Ofsted a couple of years ago: at the moment, the situation is pretty catastrophic for many headteachers and teachers. We need to look deeper into how we got here and what the cost has been.
Q82 Peter Swallow: A huge amount of stuff has come out in this space, from the Schools White Paper to the curriculum and assessment review. We have had Alan Milburn’s interim report on NEETs and are waiting for the final report. A lot of this is looking at how we can make sure our young people are empowered with the skills they need for employment and for their future lives. What do you think the steps should be to get us to a place where our young people are empowered with the skills they need?
Sam Henson: First, there is still a lot of thinking to be done, both by the Government and by organisations such as ours. It is very much an emerging conversation. I will refer to my earlier point: within that scoping and exploration exercise, we need to make sure that we are genuinely listening to what children, young people and their parents are saying, and not alienating them from the conversation. For me, that is the key thing.
Dr Thompson: Children who miss education are most likely to be NEET. That seems an obvious thing to say, but we need to start with the process of finding out why so many children are missing so many days of school and what effect that has on their future life outcomes. Research evidence is very strong on that. I welcome the proposals to strengthen different forms of education, but they need to be given status. I am old enough to have been through quite a few reviews that have argued the same thing; each time, we have been promised that vocational awards would have the same status. They simply have not. They have not been seen that way by schools, and often not by employers either. That is what we need to get right. We need to get to a place where schools, employers and, where appropriate, higher education believe in these qualifications, rather than seeing them as just another route for children who are not doing particularly well. That is what the experience has been.
Q83 Peter Swallow: As a grizzled old English teacher, what is your view on the balance between so-called academic subjects and vocational subjects in terms of the skills they produce? Is there a hierarchy here, or should we be looking at how all subjects develop young people’s skills?
Dr Thompson: We should look at all subjects, but as a grizzled old English teacher, I could talk a lot about the importance of literacy across the curriculum. It is still there. Most teachers will say that it is an important thing but we need to do far more of it. We talk about oracy, which is an integral part of all subjects. It is also particular to each subject, whether it is vocational or scientific, or whether you are studying Shakespeare. You need to develop a language that is subject-specific but also uses the rules of evidence within that discipline. That is as equally true if you are doing DT or art as it is if you are studying quantum physics.
Q84 Peter Swallow: Geoff, we may have stolen your thunder, but what would you add?
Geoff Barton: I would add that the White Paper tries to do too much. It adds, I think, 104 new requirements on schools and colleges. If we are not careful, we are going to flog the system to death. The starting point should be that we have a good education system in England. What three things would be the game changers? Transition from primary to secondary appears to be where a lot of things such as attendance and behaviour start to unravel. To its credit, by setting up a key stage 3 taskforce, the Government have now brought in people with real insight to say what we need to do around key stage 3. That should be one priority.
On the previous point about the GCSE and the forgotten third, why do we not sort that out?
On the specific point about vocational pathways, you would think from some narratives that have been playing out that we are saying all working-class kids are going to become carpenters and are not going to be expected to do English and maths. That is absolute nonsense. In my case, because we sent 20 young people to the college next door for two days a week, they did better in their English and maths GCSE, they were more engaged, their behaviour was better and they had a sense of pride in what they were doing. Opening up that space and getting away from the snobbery of vocational or technical versus academic would be a game changer, but there is too much in the White Paper, and the people I used to represent will feel that they have to jump through too many hoops. We have an opportunity with a new Education Secretary and a new Prime Minister to look back at that document and say, “What are the key elements and what is the timeline? What should we be expecting people to do?” That would start to take the profession along with us on the reform agenda.
Q85 Peter Swallow: It is a fair critique that there is too much in there, but it is a difficult one to balance. In the last panel, we were hearing about how important it is to improve enrichment in schools, and we would all agree with that. You have obviously spoken at great length about the importance of putting more oracy into the curriculum. How do we get this balance between the things that we all rightly want to add in and what we might need to take out? You have said there is too much in there; how do we work out what should not go forward?
Geoff Barton: There is some stuff in there that is pretty managerial. As a headteacher in Suffolk, it seemed to me that people in Westminster thought they knew how to run schools better than we did. There is some stuff around behaviour and attendance; yes, you can set realistic, challenging targets, but trust the profession to do that.
There is a need to strip back some of this. We should have a curriculum that works. The trouble with the curriculum is that “Twelfth Night” is “Twelfth Night”. In the hands of Teacher A, it is inspiring and wonderful. In the hands of Teacher B, it is abysmal and I never want to see Shakespeare again, thank you very much. That comes down to pedagogy. Thinking about the curriculum, how do we develop our teachers so that they can give young people agency? How can we have pathways so that young people feel a sense of achievement? How do we get the special needs agenda right for young people? I have listed four things there which would be my priorities, and that the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister could look back on and think, “We have started on the road to taking a good education system and making it work for those 30% for whom it is not working at the moment.” That needs bold leadership.
Q86 Jodie Gosling: The Schools White Paper proposes a move towards a trust-based system for all schools, including permitting local authorities to form their own trusts. Is that the right path for the Government to advocate for the school system?
Sam Henson: Part of the issue is that, for a long time, we have had a disjointed sector. We need to work towards a system that works better across the piece. As to whether every school should be in a trust, it feels as if we are moving past the question we need to ask: what is the value of a trust? That should be answered before we get more schools into trusts. What value will that trust add to that school? If we have a trust for every school that adds value, fair enough. At the moment, part of the issue is that too many schools out there say, “I can’t find a trust that is going to add real value.” There are other schools that have been in a trust, it is not what they expected it to be, and they almost wish they had never done it in the first place. These are really big problems that have not been solved yet. There is still a lack of evidence for lots of schools out there that have not made that move. Until the evidence is there and given in a way that is truly accepted by every school, it is really difficult to give a robust answer to that question.
Dr Thompson: If I think back to the local authority relationship with schools before trusts, it worked well where local authorities were able to offer challenge but with support. It is the latter that is most important in terms of supporting schools to do challenging things. It could mean having an economy of scale to meet special educational needs; in those systems, educational psychologists, for example, are far easier to access. Some multi-academy trusts do that well. I have seen examples where that happens. Others do not do it well at all. In fact, they make it difficult for those children to remain within their system. There are still local authorities that work well with schools, but other local authorities feel they have had resource taken away to the point where they do very little else but special educational needs. It needs a real rethink. I do not think we need to be pro or anti-trust; we need to think, “What should a trust be, and what should a local authority be?” They need to be able to challenge and support the needs of all young people within their schools.
Geoff Barton: We have an over-complicated education system, which in terms of trusts is an unfinished job. When I became general secretary in 2017, a headteacher in London came up to me just after her open evening and said that a parent had brought along a child with mild anxiety. They had been to a previous open evening at a rival school and been told, “We do not really do special needs at our school. You would be better off going to the other school.” At that moment, it was in that school’s interest not to accept certain children and for those children to go to another school.
This comes down to the question of how we get a genuine sense that we are measured by the child who is in my school or your school or your special school or your pupil referral unit. How do we have collective accountability for all those children so that they are not falling through the cracks? To their credit, the Government are taking that on, and it needs to be taken on. Whether that means we are working in a partnership called a trust, or working in a partnership called something else, we really need to incentivise what we see in the main: people working together on behalf of those children and young people. The accountability system needs to make sure that none of those children are disappearing. That is what I am interested in, and we were always advocating for that in our schools.
Q87 Chair: Can I follow up on your point about schools that join trusts and then maybe regret it? Accepting that it is Government policy now, how do we make sure that every school is in the right trust? Do you think there is a need for a change in the rules about how schools make trust-based decisions? For example, in my constituency, we have a school that is still part of a trust based a very long way away and with no geographical locus at all. For a time the school was desperate to join a locally based trust. Under the current rules, that can only happen if the school is effectively released by its current trust: it was not willing to do that, so it could not be resolved. I wonder whether you could see a case for the Government joining up their agenda on place with practical decision-making arrangements and rules on the membership of different trusts?
Sam Henson: In terms of what our position should be as an organisation, we have debated this point a lot. It is really tricky. Just for context, we have an equal number of members on either side, those in trusts and those in maintained schools or single-academy trusts. In an ideal world, we should have exactly what you describe, but there is a real challenge at the moment in unpicking the empire building that happened five or 10 years ago. The reality is that a lot of trust growth in the past was based on competition. To Geoff’s point, the accountability system in this country perpetuates competition rather than genuine collaboration, so sometimes trusts have taken on schools to increase their school count rather than necessarily because the school fits their local agenda. My answer is yes, but that is not the official NGA position at this point in time.
At some point—I do not know how we will get there—the sector needs to be mature enough for some trusts to say, “Yes, I can see that you would be much better in a trust with local positioning around where you are.” We know some trusts have done that and have even asked for schools to be released to those trusts, but they have met barriers, and that is a problem.
Q88 Darren Paffey: Ministers have made narrowing the disadvantage gap one of their central objectives, and we all know that there are multiple challenges to that. There is the problem of identifying disadvantage in the first place; there is the problem of targeting resources effectively; there is the issue of all the factors outside the home that have an impact on a child’s disadvantage within school. In your view, which of those is the bigger problem, and what are the measures that are needed in order to achieve those outcomes?
Geoff Barton: That is a very big question, and it is an issue that has bedevilled the education system across the UK, including England. For me, the issue is how we incentivise leaders to go into those most disadvantaged communities, and how we incentivise teachers and teaching assistants to go and work there. At the moment, as we were saying, it can seem to be in my interest for some young people to go to your school and not to mine. It is definitely in my interest not to go into certain communities. We have seen all kinds of attempts to try to incentivise that, partly through pay.
I come back to the accountability measures: too often—there are some very well-known examples—it feels that if you get a bad Ofsted report, you will pay the price for it. I used to run a trade union. We were supporting people at first hand when their governors had suddenly lost confidence in them because of an Ofsted report. This is not to point the finger of blame only at Ofsted, which would be over-simplistic, but how do we give leaders—who know that it is going to take time to improve the school—a sense of long-term commitment? Part of what we need is to have teachers who are going to stay with us on that journey. Again, there are examples around the country. Perhaps the White Paper talking about its coastal mission, its mission north-east and so on can shine a light on how we get great people to go to the communities that are most in need of great teachers and great leaders.
Dr Thompson: Disadvantage is a big question, but it is the right question to ask, and it is the right question to try to pinpoint. Geoff is right, there are schools in particular parts of the country—particularly those with high poverty rates, but also with other social issues—where the teaching workforce is struggling. People do not see them as a place to go to. We have also seen the opposite, where schools are thriving in similarly challenging areas. There is a different feel to those schools. People feel they belong, the staff feel proud to be there and proud to work in those communities. Sometimes they are very close to those communities. When you hear teaching staff and, in particular, support staff, you can tell by their accents that they have often come through those communities with a keen sense that, “These are our children and our responsibility.”
It is important to identify disadvantage. That can seem difficult because people do not like to label or be labelled, but if I come from a privileged background, I will have an easier life than if I do not come from that privileged background. My need will therefore be greater and provision must be made for that need; that may mean schools getting extra funding. There is a lot of talk about the way that schools are funded; in the past, some funding decisions actually moved money away from inner-city schools to areas that also have disadvantage. I heard a lot in the previous session about rural schools, and it is true that poverty exists in all pockets of the country. Resources need to be there at the right time, and help needs to be there at the right time, and needs should be identified as early as possible.
Sam Henson: I completely agree with both Ian and Geoff. I would add that one thing the White Paper is doing well is opening up a conversation that in lots of ways has not been accessible. The time has come, not just to look at how we fund disadvantage through the funding mechanism—as the White Paper is doing—but to look holistically at how we define disadvantage in its entirety. We have had quite a narrow focus. One of the NGA’s pieces of work is in broadening the definition of disadvantage: I will be sure to send that afterward. Without wanting to sound like a broken record, it really comes down to the accountability narrative. I do not like saying it, but we need to incentivise schools to take a risk and take a chance. That corresponds with the story Geoff shared, which was really powerful. We need to see more schools taking risks that they have not taken before on children and young people, and widening the definition of disadvantage would help.
Q89 Darren Paffey: I have a rapid-fire question to finish. Before Ministers take these proposals forward, what aspects of the White Paper do you think they most need to listen to the sector on?
Sam Henson: What does it mean to be a community anchor, and are you therefore listening to the right people? It is vital to include governance at a local level, local volunteers and people living in those communities who know their area.
Dr Thompson: They need to know that they are not going to be penalised for doing the right thing: looking at aspects of belonging and relational practice. It is hard work for schools to change cultures; typically it takes three years. They need to know that within that period they are not going to be pilloried for not toeing a particular line, whether that is with a multi-academy trust or their perception of what Ofsted is looking for: often it is not what it is looking for. They need to feel that they are supported.
Q90 Darren Paffey: Are you saying that in the context of accountability measures?
Dr Thompson: Yes, but when they need help—echoing both Sam and Geoff—collaboration is key. Collaboration between schools, local authorities and trusts is really important, so that we are sharing both best practice and resource where that is available. Educational psychologists, for example, are really hard to come by in some counties, and there needs to be a pool of some sort. I know the White Paper has elements that could address this, which would be a really important step forward.
Geoff Barton: I would tell Ministers what Winston Churchill said, “Headteachers have more power than the British Prime Minister.” Headteachers forget that they have more power than the Prime Minister. If Ministers think place matters, and I am a headteacher in this place, I am going to do what I believe is right for the young people in our community. You have given us 104 additional responsibilities. We are going to choose the things that we think will make a difference, and that means there will be some things in the White Paper that we will not be doing because we are going to focus on game changers, particularly for those children from disadvantaged backgrounds. I speak from experience as a trustee of the Royal Shakespeare Company, which goes into the most disadvantaged communities on a long-term, 10-year basis. I went up to Cumbria and watched seven and eight-year-old kids debating whether they preferred “Titus Andronicus” to “The Tempest.” It was extraordinary, and the sense of pride was extraordinary. We need to re-empower our leaders and our teachers. Yes, place matters, but we cannot do everything that you might try to mandate from the centre, so we will choose the things that will make the biggest difference. Hold us accountable for that.
Chair: Thank you so much. If there were any topics that we did not get to cover today, or if you have any further thoughts, please write to us afterward. We would really welcome that. Thank you, all three of you, for taking the time to be with us this morning to consider these important issues. That brings our evidence session to a close.