Education reform in England


An overview of recent changes to education in England’s state schools, to help families on the move to understand their options.


St Mary’s Calne J


ust before the Brexit bombshell nudged all other events off the news agenda, government plans for education reform were dominating the headlines. And with


Theresa May’s first domestic speech as Prime Minister, in which she announced that she planned to lift the ban on new grammar schools, it seems that education is firmly back on the policy agenda for Brexit Britain. The government’s central aim in its programme of education reform is to drive up standards in England’s schools to match those of schools in other high-performing countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) international education league tables.


ACADEMY SCHOOLS


At the heart of the changes is the government’s desire to allow schools to become independent of local authorities, giving headteachers and senior leadership teams the freedom to undertake day-to-day management, funded directly by the Department for Education.


The academy school programme, initiated by the Labour government, began with ‘sponsored academies’ – schools that were deemed by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) to be underperforming and were required to convert to academy status, with a government-approved sponsor taking over leadership. Later, the programme was expanded to allow top-performing schools to convert to academy status. The present government believes


that the academy


programme is driving up standards in England’s schools, and the programme remains firmly on its agenda for poorly performing schools. There are currently around 3,300


18 | relocateglobal.com | Keep Informed


state-funded secondary schools in England, just over 2,000 of which are already academies. Of the approximately 16,500 primary schools, nearly 2,500 have converted to academy status.


GRAMMAR SCHOOLS Not long after she entered Number 10, Theresa May delivered a speech in which she revealed a radical set of proposals for education reform, including lifting the restrictions on grammar-school expansion.


Grammar schools are popular with relocating families, as they typically offer an excellent standard of education. Many grammar-school students perform exceptionally well at GCSE and A Level and in the International Baccalaureate. As a consequence, many transfer to top universities, both in the UK and overseas. Theresa May announced that she would like to relax the restrictions on new and expanding selective schools, as well as allowing existing non-selective schools to become selective in some circumstances.


She also wants to see independent schools offer more support for increasing the quality of provision in state schools. Independent schools are currently required to demonstrate a benefit to the public in order to maintain their charitable status. Mrs May would like them to work harder for this privilege. She suggested a raft of options that would range from undertaking full sponsorship of a local state school to providing direct school-to-school support. This could include supporting teaching in minority subjects, such as further maths or classics, which state schools often struggle to make viable.


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