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 announced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer just after last year’s General Election, along with his observation that “our skills system is in a mess”.

But since that announcement, Skills England has not had an easy ride, with some observers describing it as a power grab that lacks clarity and clout, while others have questioned whether we needed Skills England in the first place.

So, why has the government created Skills England? What challenges is Skills England likely to face inside and outside government? And will Skills England, as the Prime Minister promised, transform our approach to meeting skills needs over the coming decades, or will it end up causing more problems than it solves?

My guests are Kirstie Donnelly MBE, Chief Executive at the City & Guilds Group, and Rob Nitsch, Chief Executive at the Federation of Awarding Bodies.

DOWNLOAD MY REPORT ON SKILLS ENGLAND HERE: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2025/03/31/skills-england-will-be-in-a-battle-for-relevance-from-day-one/

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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 much interest from schools, colleges, teachers, leaders and parents that the interim report from the Review, published at the end of March, was an important and high-profile milestone.

So what problems in primary and secondary education has the Review identified in its interim report? Which aspects of our curriculum and assessment system does the Review think are worth protecting, and which aspects need to be reformed? And how easy will it be for the Review to come up with solutions that are widely supported and improve outcomes for children and young people?

My guests are Mary Myatt, an education adviser, writer and speaker, and Dale Bassett, the director of assessment at United Learning, a group of over 100 schools.

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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 universities making redundancies, cutting costs and scaling back their operations in an attempt to make themselves more financially sustainable.

But despite all the gloom, one person is certainly not giving up on the HE sector. David Willetts was minister for Universities and Science from 2010 to 2014 and is now President of the Resolution Foundation and a member of the House of Lords.

David recently published a report for the Kings College London Policy Institute called ‘Are universities worth it’. 

So, to hear his case for why supporting universities is a good thing, and why he disagrees with many of the criticisms aimed at universities, I’m delighted to be joined by David in this episode to discuss his new report.

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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 £30 million for a pilot of free breakfast clubs in 750 primary schools starting in April 2025 in advance of an expected national rollout of breakfast clubs in all primary schools next year.

But far from generating positive headlines, the breakfast club pilot scheme has been dogged by reports of schools pulling out or potentially being left worse off as a result of taking part in the pilot. 

So why has this new scheme been met with such scepticism? What obstacles could primary schools face when setting up new breakfast clubs or expanding existing ones? And does everyone agree on what problems a national rollout of breakfast clubs is supposed to solve?

My guests are Rebecca Paddock, an Executive Headteacher at Hoyland Common Academy Trust, and Anna McShane, director of the New Britain Project – an independent progressive think tank.

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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 a 12-week consultation.

But far from splitting opinion, a poll by Teacher Tapp of more than 11,000 teachers found that 0% of respondents were ‘very positive’ about Ofsted’s plans, and a mere 6% were ‘somewhat positive’. Meanwhile, a survey by the National Association of Head Teachers found that 92% of school leaders disagreed with the main proposals put forward by Ofsted.

So what has Ofsted included in its new inspection framework? Have they learnt the right lessons from the current inspection system? And why does there seem to be such a large gap between the views of Ofsted and those working in the education sector? 

My guests are Mark Enser, a writer and columnist and also a former teacher and Ofsted inspector, and Julie McCulloch, Senior Director of Strategy, Policy and Professional Development Services at the Association of School & College Leaders.

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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 branded items in school uniforms and greater powers for Ofsted to tackle illegal schools.

However, just before Christmas, the Children’s Wellbeing Bill suddenly morphed into the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and included a whole host of measures intended to overhaul the way that state schools are managed and supported.

So what changes to our state school system have been put forward in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill? Is the Labour government right to question the previous government’s approach to overseeing state schools? And why has this Bill sparked accusations of ‘educational vandalism’ from its critics? 

 My guests are Freddie Whittaker, the Deputy editor at Schools Week, and Leora Cruddas, Chief Executive of the Confederation of School Trusts.

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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 review confirmed that many vocational and technical qualifications that were going to have their funding removed will in fact continue to be funded. Well, at least until 2026. Or maybe 2027. It depends. And lots of qualifications will be defunded in any case.

Regardless, the conclusion of the review provided some welcome relief and certainty for schools and colleges. Well, maybe a bit of certainty, for a couple of years, possibly less.

So what exactly did this Review say about vocational and technical qualifications? Has the decision to fund many existing qualifications for just one or two years created a more stable or unstable system? And will we be back here in a couple of years’ time having the same conversation about qualification reform all over again?

My guests are Tom Middlehurst, Deputy Director of Policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, and James Kewin, Deputy Chief Executive at the Sixth Form Colleges' Association.

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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 because, as you may have noticed, Donald Trump will start his second term as President of the United States on January 20th.

So what plans does President-elect Trump have for K-12 education, from Kindergarten at age 5 up to 12th grade at age 18? Should colleges and universities in the US be worried about what may lie in store for them? And, most importantly for us on this side of the Atlantic, could Trump’s plans for education in the US have a knock-on effect on education debates and policies in England?

I’m delighted to be joined today by Dr Rick Hess, who is an American educator, political scientist, and author. He is currently a Senior Fellow and Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and his work has been widely published in academic journals as well as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Education Week and Education Next.

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“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 election manifesto in June 2024. Fast forward to the end of 2024, and the Labour Government confirmed in its Get Britain Working report that a Youth Guarantee is now up and running.

However, the same report admitted that at the moment, the Youth Guarantee is in fact just a collection of existing provision and entitlements for young people, and it does not offer any new national programmes or initiatives.

So is the Government’s Youth Guarantee for 18 to 21-year-olds on the right or wrong track? Would this sort of Guarantee actually reach the young people who need it the most? And what could a more ambitious Youth Guarantee look like in 2025 and beyond? 

My guests are Barry Fletcher, Chief Executive at the Youth Futures Foundation, and Naomi Clayton, Director of Policy and Research at the Learning and Work Institute.

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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 politicians, government officials and the public on how to solve some of the biggest policy challenges.

Well, as luck would have it, a new institute called the Centre for Education Systems, or CES, was officially launched in November. 

The CES has been set up by three leading lights in the world of education - Sam Freedman, Lucy Crehan and Loic Menzies – and it boasts an equally impressive advisory board and list of academic partners.

So what spurred Sam, Lucy and Loic to create the CES? In a busy and crowded policy landscape, what can the CES offer that other organisations cannot? And what challenges might the CES face as it tries to have a positive impact on education policymaking in the months and years ahead? 

I’m delighted to be joined today by two of the CES’s co-founders. Lucy is an international education consultant and author, and will be the International Director at the CES, and Loic is an education researcher and policy specialist, and will be the CES’s Chief Research Officer.

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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 the same feeling about the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, or LLE, which was first floated back in 2019 as a new way of funding Further and Higher Education courses in England.

But the LLE took years to develop and it wasn’t until 2022 that the Conservative government launched a consultation on how the LLE should operate, and even then its planned introduction was not until September 2025.

In April this year the LLE was delayed until January 2026, and now in the Labour Government’s Budget on October 30th it was confirmed that the LLE’s first funded courses won’t start until January 2027 at the earliest.

So what do we know about the LLE and what it is trying to achieve? Could it be a big deal for students, colleges and universities, or is it just likely to be a distraction? And is there is a risk that the LLE goes down the same road as nuclear fusion by always being a few years away but never quite being made a reality?

My guests are Dr Kate Wicklow, Director of Policy & Strategy at GuildHE, a membership body in the Higher Education sector, and George Ryan, an Associate Director at the consultancy Public First.

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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 available to students to cover their living costs will also increase by around 3%.

Although these changes will do little to allay concerns about the long-term financial health of both universities and students, Bridget Philipson also said that the government would announce further “major reform” to Higher Education funding in the coming months.

If the government is indeed hunting for some major reforms then a recent paper by Tim Leunig, published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) describes a whole package of reforms to tuition fees, student loans and university funding.

So, are Tim’s proposed reforms likely to appeal to students, universities and taxpayers? What trade offs does Tim put forward, and who might end up better or worse off as a result? And is the government even ready for big changes to Higher Education funding?

To talk through his proposals, I’m delighted to be joined by Tim himself. He is a Visiting Professor at the LSE who has, over the last 14 years, been an advisor to the Prime Minister, two Chancellors and the Education Secretary among other senior politicians.

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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 from 27th in 2009.

That’s why I was intrigued to see recent reports claim that the way we teach and assess maths needs to be overhauled to make up for several perceived problems.

One of those reports came from the Royal Society’s Mathematical Futures project, with the Royal Society’s President, Sir Adrian Smith, claiming that not only is radical reform necessary, but “politicians who fail to grasp the nettle are failing our young people.”

So what are these apparent problems with maths in primary and secondary education? Does the maths curriculum need a few tweaks or a major rethink? And should we have more maths exams in schools and colleges, or fewer exams, or perhaps just different exams?

Both my guests are former maths teachers and former headteachers.

Lynne McClure OBE is a Trustee at National Numeracy and the Academy for Mathematical Sciences and was also a Board Member of the Royal Society’s recent project, and David Thomas OBE is the CEO at Axiom Maths and a former government advisor.

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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 and other forms of training.

The government claims they will boost opportunities for young people through what they describe as an “ambitious” set of reforms courtesy of their new Growth and Skills Levy.

But how ambitious are the government’s plans in reality? Who will be the winners and losers from their proposals? And will our apprenticeship system be better or worse off as a result of these upcoming reforms?

My guests are Holly Papworth, Head of Policy at the Edge Foundation, a vocational education charity, and Joanna Wake, Director of Public Affairs at Baltic Apprenticeships, an apprenticeship provider that focuses on tech and digital skills.

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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 place since 2014, continues to divide opinion among academics, researchers, school and college leaders and the frontline staff who support those students who must retake English and Maths GCSEs after not passing their exams first time around.

So what is the thinking behind GCSE resits? Is the current resits policy having a positive or negative impact? And are exam resits the best way to improve the English and maths skills of young people beyond age 16?

My guests are Sarah Waite, the founder and CEO of Get Further, a charity that supports students who are resitting their GCSEs, and Lee Elliot Major OBE, Professor of Social Mobility at the University of Exeter.

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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 already underway.

Several countries such as Australia, Wales, Scotland and Ireland have begun to talk less about universities and colleges in isolation and instead talk more about ‘tertiary education’, with the aim of bringing universities and colleges closer together in terms of how they are funded, regulated and managed.

So why have these nations started thinking about tertiary education as a whole? What benefits could a more integrated tertiary system offer than cannot be achieved when Higher Education and Further Education, or HE and FE, are dealt with separately? And could England follow suit by building a single tertiary system in the coming years, or would it face too many obstacles along the way?

My guests are Professor Ellen Hazelkorn, Professor Emeritus at Technological University Dublin and Joint Editor of Policy Reviews in Higher Education, and Professor Ewart Keep, an emeritus professor in Education, Training and Skills at the Department of Education at Oxford University.

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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, or AI tools.

When freely available websites and apps can write entire essays, projects, articles, poems and stories as well as produce art and music among other things, it presents a daunting challenge to the teachers, lecturers and institutions trying to award fair and trustworthy grades. 

So what impact are ChatGPT and similar AI platforms having in schools, colleges, universities and elsewhere? Do we know how much cheating is already linked to these AI tools? And is anyone or anything ready and able to combat AI-powered cheating in future?

Our guests today are Dr Thomas Lancaster, a computer scientist at Imperial College London who has conducted research on academic integrity, cheating and plagiarism, and Jessica Hill, senior investigations and features reporter for Schools Week and FE Week.

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“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”. 

In isolation, both these goals are legitimate aspirations, but when you put them together it raises an interesting policy question: how will the new government approach the issue of international students coming to the UK, as these students increase immigration numbers and also increase the income of UK universities? 

Just before the election, the Social Market Foundation, or SMF – a centrist think tank – published two reports that set out their plans to address these competing priorities. 

And here to discuss the analysis and recommendations in these reports, we are joined today by Jonathan Thomas, a senior fellow at the SMF. 

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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 the next government.

However, for today we are put the polls to one side and dive into what we’ve seen and heard over the past couple of weeks from the current Conservative government and the likely next Labour government. 

Which manifesto has the boldest plans to reform our education system? Who ran towards controversial issues, and who ran away from them? And were there any great manifesto ideas that didn’t hit the headlines but could still transform the life chances of children, young people and adults? 

Our guests today are John Dickens, the editor of Schools Week, and Shane Cowen, the editor of FE Week. 

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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 always gone down well with teachers and lecturers or the people running our schools, colleges and universities. 

But would a new set of ministers, advisors and government officials really do any better, or would they end up facing the same barriers to designing and delivering good education policies? 

A new book called Improving Education Policy Together investigates why policymaking in English education often fails to improve outcomes for children and young people, even when policies are driven by the very best of intentions. 

Our guests today are the co-authors of this new book - Nansi Ellis, who is a freelance education policy consultant and a school governor, and Gareth Conyard, who is the co-CEO of the Teacher Development Trust and a former civil servant. 

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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. 

However, these figures will not be increasing much further because the government has decided that after four years of operation, the NTP should have its funding removed and it will be closing down this August. 

So why has the government turned away from providing funding for the NTP across the country when the effects of the pandemic are still visible? Did the NTP deliver what pupils and schools needed? And if a national tutoring programme was to continue in future, should it look different from its current iteration? 

Our guests today are Susannah Hardyman, the founder and CEO of Action Tutoring, a tutoring provider, and Ben Gadsby, the Head of Policy and Research at Impetus. 

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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.

Our plan included, among other things, a Baccalaureate for all 14 to 18-year-olds that would bring academic, applied and technical courses together under one roof as well as everyone studying Core English and Core maths, otherwise known as literacy and numeracy, up to age 18. 

Bold as these proposals may sound, we do not pretend to be the first people to make such suggestions. In fact, two decades ago in 2004, Mike Tomlinson – now Sir Mike Tomlinson – chaired a working group for the then Labour government, which ended up proposing a Diploma for all 14 to 19-year-olds that contained many of the same ideas as EDSK’s new report. 

Our guest today is Sir Mike himself, who is perfectly placed to tell us what the Diplomas were, what benefits they were supposed to offer, and also why his proposals were never fully implemented in the months and years after the working group’s final report was published. 

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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 for a fair education system, we may well disagree on what fairness actually means in practice.

The report – titled Mapping the way to educational equity – offers a range of perspectives on how to define and use concepts such as equity, fairness and opportunity and it also describes a path to achieving a more equitable system in future. 

Who better to talk us through this new report than its author Loic Menzies. Loic is a visiting fellow at the Sheffield Institute of Education and a former teacher and think tank director.  We are also joined today by Jim Lauder, the Trust Assistant Principal at Dixons Academies Trust.

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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, finding ways to reduce absences has become a priority for both main political parties in England, and numerous initiatives have been put in place by the current government to try and address the problem. 

But despite all this extra attention, and in some cases extra funding, pupil absence rates have remained stubbornly high in the current academic year. 

So what sits behind these high rates of absence? What does the research tell us about the factors behind pupil absences? And are we any closer to finding effective ways to reduce these absences both now and in future? 

Our guests today are Dr Sally Burtonshaw, an Associate Director at the consultancy Public First, and Emily Hunt, an Associate Director at the Education Policy Institute. 

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“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 family. We don’t do enough of that as a society, and I’m as guilty as anyone, but wouldn’t that be something precious for our children to aim for? I think so.” 

Those words from Keir Starmer in July last year were how he described the importance of oracy. In the same speech, he announced that the Labour Party wants to give every primary school new funding to “invest in world-class early language interventions, and help our children find their voice.” 

Which is all well and good, but what exactly is oracy, why does it matter, how do you teach oracy, and is oracy as important as literacy and numeracy or is it something different altogether? 

To help answer these questions we are joined today by Geoff Barton, who was until very recently the General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, or ASCL for short. Not only is Geoff a former English teacher and headteacher, he has also just been announced as the Chair of a new Commission on Oracy Education. 

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