No-one is surprised when a newly elected government decides to create new initiatives and new organisations to signify a change in direction and a break from the past.Skills England, a new agency within the Department for Education, was ...

The Curriculum and Assessment Review, which is being chaired by Professor Becky Francis, was commissioned by the Department for Education last summer and will not conclude its work until this autumn.Even so, the Review has attracted so m...

Those who work in and around the Higher Education, or HE sector, have been having a rough time if recent media headlines are anything to go by.Since the turn of the year, there has been what’s felt like a constant stream of stories about...

Seeing as the government is clearly short of spare cash, you would have thought the Department for Education investing in a new national programme to improve pupils’ outcomes would be well received.The Government recently announced over ...

Given the endless debates and disagreements about Ofsted, the school and college inspectorate in England, Ofsted’s proposed new framework for conducting inspections was never going to go unnoticed when it launched in early February to kick off ...

Shortly after the General Election in 2024, the newly elected Labour government announced a Children’s Wellbeing Bill – a new piece of legislation that set out a range of policies such as a register of children not in schools, restrictions on b...

Just before the end of 2024, the Government announced the outcome of their review of Level 3 vocational and technical qualifications, which are offered to 16 to 19-year-olds along with A-levels, apprenticeships and the new T-levels.The ...

Happy New Year and welcome back to Inside Your Ed.Regular listeners will know that this podcast usually focuses on the latest education news in England, but for my first episode of 2025 we are taking a quick trip over the Atlantic becau...

“Labour will establish a youth guarantee of access to training, an apprenticeship, or support to find work for all 18- to 21-year-olds, to bring down the number of young people who are not learning or earning.”So said the Labour Party e...

When it feels like every voter and politician has their own opinion on how to run the education system in England, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a credible, independent, evidence-led organisation that provided balanced information to politic...

Nuclear fusion offers the tantalising prospect of being a potentially limitless source of clean and self-sustaining energy, but, as the old joke goes, nuclear fusion is always 30 years away, and has been for decades.I’m starting to get ...

On November 4th, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson confirmed that, for the first time since 2017, university tuition fees in England will rise from £9,250 to £9,535 for full-time undergraduates. The maximum maintenance loan availab...

If you were asked to pick out a success story from the last 14 years of education policy, I’m sure some people would point to England’s rise in the international rankings for global tests such as PISA. In 2022, England came 11th for maths, up f...

The most significant education policy launched at last month’s Labour Party conference was the release of new details about the Growth and Skills Levy, which is set to replace the existing apprenticeship levy as a way of funding apprenticeships...

It is hard not to raise an eyebrow when a government policy is described by some as a ‘vital lifeline’ for students, while others describe the same policy as ‘demoralising’ and ‘soul destroying’.The GCSE resits policy, which has been in...

Although complaints from universities about a perceived lack of funding continue to attract plenty of media attention, some very interesting shifts in policy thinking that are potentially more significant than simple questions about money are a...

Although this year’s exam season has largely passed without incident or drama, many exams and assessments throughout our education system are potentially facing their greatest ever threat in the form of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence...

“Read my lips — I will bring immigration numbers down” said Keir Starmer during the recent General Election campaign.The Labour Party election manifesto also said that “Labour will act to create a secure future for higher education”.&nb...

Sometimes a UK General Election can be a tense and nervy affair with little indication of which party will prevail. The upcoming election on July 4th is not one of those situations, with the Labour Party miles ahead in the polls and set to form...

With a General Election just weeks away, people’s thoughts are quickly turning to which education policies the next government will try to implement. I think it’s fair to say that decisions made over the last 14 years have not alwa...

Since the National Tutoring Programme, or NTP, was launched in 2020 to help combat the effects of the pandemic on children’s academic progress, it has provided 5 million tutoring courses to pupils of various ages at a cost of over £1 billion.&n...

On the 16th of May, EDSK published a new report called ‘Evolution and revolution’, in which we set out a 10-year plan for reforming primary and secondary education in England...

Despite the endless debates and disagreements in education policy, there are some things that we can all agree on, such as the need for a fair education system.  However, a new report suggests that while we may agree on the need fo...

This time last year, we did a podcast episode about the growing problem of pupil absences in the aftermath of the pandemic, with record numbers of children and young people failing to attend school on a regular basis. Since then, f...

“It’s not just a skill for learning, it’s also a skill for life. Not just for the workplace, also for working out who you are – for overcoming shyness or disaffection, anxiety or doubt – or even just for opening up more to our friends and famil...