4 November 2019

By Francis Green

Private schools find themselves in the news lately, more than they usually are. Boris Johnson became the fifth Old Etonian prime minister since the war, and immediately appointed a cabinet in which nearly two-thirds were privately educated, re-affirming once again what the Sutton Trust and the government’s Social Mobility Commission have been revealing about the political influence of the privately educated. At the same time, for the first time in many decades the possibility of radical private school reform has entered the political agenda. 

Formal evidence on what private schools do can help people evaluate views about Britain’s private school system and whether there is a need for reform. There are two important findings from our latest research which looks at a cohort born in 1990 and (more…)

19 September 2019

By John Jerrim

Over the last five years, the Department for Education has taken steps to reduce teacher workload. This was spurred by results from the TALIS 2013 survey which illustrated how teachers in England work longer hours than teachers in most other countries. The government subsequently pledged to “[collect]robust evidence on teacher workload at least every two years”.

But what counts as “robust evidence”? And has the DFE kept this promise? Let’s take a look.

(more…)

16 July 2019

By Sara Bubb

In an effort to turn schools into academies too little attention has been given to constructing a middle tier oversight system that is fair and efficient for all.

This is an unescapable conclusion of our new study, Understanding the Middle Tier: Comparative Costs of Academy and LA-maintained Systems, which has uncovered the cost of England’s systems for overseeing academies and local authority (LA) schools. We found a complex and confusing picture that reinforces the Public Accounts Committee judgement that the Department for Education’s ‘arrangements for oversight of schools are fragmented and incoherent, leading toinefficiency for government and confusion for schools.’

The ‘middle tiers’ are the systems of support and accountability connecting (more…)

10 May 2019

By Ed Baines and Peter Blatchford

School breaktimes and play have been exercising policy-makers of late. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on a Fit and Healthy Childhood has called on the Government to mandate a minimum amount of time for break and lunch for all children every day. They proposed a statutory minimum break time of 75 minutes.

This advice is unusual because previously policy makers have shown no interest in school break and lunch times, reflected in a complete absence of policy or guidance. But there has also been a lack of knowledge about their basic features, children’s views and experiences, or in what ways break and lunch times may be of value.

Unlike most other aspects of education, there is little national (or international) data on (more…)

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19 February 2019

By Francis Green

Private schools tend to be richly resourced and expensive, so those children lucky enough to attend them normally receive a good education, with academic advantages enhanced by a range of extra-curricular activities. But while this might be great for private pupils these schools pose a serious problem for Britain’s education system and society.

Britain’s private schools are very socially exclusive and there is no sign that attempts to mitigate this exclusivity through means-tested bursaries are working. The scale of bursaries is far too small to make a difference – just 1% of children go for free.

The exclusivity stems from the enormous price tag of private schooling. Fees average £17,200 a year per child, and are much higher for boarding schools. Some question (more…)

IOE Events.
Although estimates of the impact of automation on the labour market vary widely, it is generally agreed that the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, and especially the advance of AI, is set to transform how we live and work. The question we wanted to address in the next in our debates series was what this means for education – particularly, for how we prepare the next generation of citizens and workers to thrive in a very different context.  Will the addition of a few more classes on coding and machine learning suffice?  To help us in our quest we brought together experts from the fields of education and technology: Rose Luckin, Professor of Learner Centred Design at the UCL Knowledge Lab; Gi Fernando founder and CEO of Freeformers; Professor Mark Bailey, High Master of St Paul’s School; and Baroness Sally Morgan, whose engagement with the education sector ranges across the compulsory and post-compulsory phases. (more…)

Sam Sims
In a recent IOE London blog post, Professor Becky Francis highlighted wide and persistent gaps in GCSE attainment and university entry rates between rich and poor pupils. This follows the recent Social Mobility Commission report, which argued that policy makers have spent too much time on structural reforms to the schooling system and not placed a high enough priority on getting the best teachers into struggling schools, echoing Francis’ own research. Francis concludes that, in order to improve social mobility, we need to do much more to “support and incentivise the quality of teaching in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods.”
In recent work, Rebecca Allen and I found that there are indeed reasons to be concerned about disadvantaged pupils’ access to good teachers. Experience (or lack thereof) is a good indicator of teacher quality. We found that pupils in the most deprived fifth of schools are around twice as likely to get an unqualified teacher, and a quarter more likely to get a teacher with less than five years of experience, when compared to pupils in the least deprived fifth of schools. Moreover, we found that, even within schools, disadvantaged pupils are more likely to be assigned to an inexperienced teacher. (more…)

Francis Green. 
Private schooling in Britain is unaffordable for the majority of families, but for those that can afford it what do their children get out of paying for education? There are some who say, not much, and that it all depends on family background, but most of the evidence finds that this is not true: private school pupils achieve better GCSEs and A-levels (England’s school-leaving exams) – on average – even when we allow for their background. The crucial point for those interested in social mobility, however, is that later in life it is those that have been to private school who are found – again on average – to get on especially well in the labour market and in (more…)

Alice Sullivan. 
The Conservative manifesto confirms Teresa May’s pledge to reintroduce grammar schools, as part of a drive to turn Britain into ‘The World’s Great Meritocracy’. But does this claim stand up to scrutiny?
As has been widely rehearsed in public debate ever since the Conservative government published its schools green paper back in September 2016, the essential reason that grammar schools are such an unlikely tool for promoting social mobility is that working class kids are far less likely than their more privileged peers to attend them. The wider evidence base provides no findings that suggest that selection will help Britain to tackle educational inequality and increase social mobility. Among other sources, a review of the evidence published by Parliament, produced by Parliament’s in-house source of independent analysis, makes this clear.
So, how does the Conservative Manifesto justify the claim that (more…)

Simon Burgess, University of Bristol; Claire Crawford, University of Warwick, and Lindsey Macmillan, UCL. 
With the recent news that more than £500m has been set aside by the UK government for new free schools – many of which could well become grammar schools – the selective schooling debate is firmly back on the table.
This £500m includes a one-off payment of £320m which will be allocated to help set up 140 new free schools. This comes on top of the already promised £216m which will help to rebuild and refurbish existing schools. The 140 new schools are in addition to the 500 already pledged to be created by 2020, and will pave the way for a new generation of grammar schools.
The cash boost comes as a schools white paper will be published over the next few weeks. It will include plans to reverse the ban on new grammars. The ban has been in place for nearly (more…)