The comments made by Alex Burghart, the Minister for Skills, on 27 May 2022.
We have transformed apprenticeships so they offer a high-quality route into professions as diverse as engineering, healthcare, and digital for young people starting their careers, or adults hoping to retrain and upskill.
We now want to focus on making the system as simple and user-friendly as possible, reducing bureaucratic burdens on employers and providers and giving apprentices the best possible experience.
The statement made by Michelle Donelan, the Minister for Higher and Further Education, in the House of Commons on 23 May 2022.
Today I am providing an update on my commitment in September 2020 to reduce regulatory burden in higher education.
Bureaucracy has a direct impact on how well providers can do their jobs: every pound spent on unnecessary bureaucracy is a pound that is not being spent on teaching and research.
I am therefore pleased to confirm that the Office for Students has already:
reduced its enhanced monitoring by over 75%, removing 376 individual information or reporting requirements;
removed its requirement for detailed monitoring returns on Access and Participation Plans in 2022
streamlined its communications with HE providers and provided a direct contact for every registered provider.
In addition, I recently set up the HE data reduction taskforce, to bring together attendees from providers, arm’s-length bodies and other data experts across the HE sector to identify where we are putting overlapping data requirements on providers and where they could be reduced. The taskforce provides a real opportunity for all parties involved in data in the HE sector to discuss challenges and opportunities and, most importantly, to agree tangible actions.
Institutional bureaucracy
There is, however, more that providers themselves could do to remove internal bureaucracy which is not needed to comply with regulatory requirements.
I therefore want to use this statement to encourage HE providers strongly to look at ways that they could reduce this gold-plating. This should include:
Reviewing their own schemes of delegation to ensure that they are fit for purpose, and that regulatory decisions and activity are clearly delegated to the right level in the provider. Not every decision needs to go to the Board of Governors, or through multiple layers of governance.
Ensuring that they remain focused on the content of the decisions they are making and the reasons for the decision, rather than ensuring that it goes to multiple committees.
Carefully considering which processes, committees, activities and external subscriptions genuinely add value for students and which could be dispensed with, to free up academic time for teaching and research.
Unnecessary bureaucracy can take up time that could be spent focusing on the academic experience or quality of teaching which a student receives. This Government and the OfS will continue to focus on this, but providers also need to look internally to do the same.
The speech made by Robin Walker, the Minister for School Standards, in the House of Commons on 16 May 2022.
Today, the Department for Education (DfE) informed applicants of the outcomes of the first accreditation round of the Initial Teacher Training (ITT) reform programme. Eighty applicants have been awarded accreditation so far, and a second round will open for applications on 23 May and close on 27 June. We will announce the successful applicants of both rounds when the process is complete in the autumn.
In December 2021, the Government announced a set of reforms to ITT that leads to qualified teacher status. The reforms, which centre around a new set of “quality requirements”, aim to ensure greater quality, consistency and coherence in ITT, building on earlier reforms to teacher development.
To deliver ITT from September 2024, both existing and prospective providers of ITT must pass a new accreditation process. This process has been designed to assess applicants’ capability and capacity to deliver the highest quality ITT in line with the new quality requirements, which will become part of the ITT criteria from the 2024-25 academic year.
From the autumn, accredited providers will proceed to the quality assurance stage. In this stage, providers will work with the DfE to ensure that all ITT courses are fully developed in line with the new 2024-25 ITT criteria. The DfE will also work with accredited providers ahead of 2024 delivery to ensure that they have strong partnerships in place to provide sufficient training places in the subjects, phases and geographies in which they are needed. Further details will be published in due course.
The accreditation process was designed to be rigorous but proportionate, and I am confident that the evaluation of applications for accreditation has been thorough, undertaken jointly by trained DfE and Ofsted assessors.
Applicants who were not awarded accreditation in round one have been given feedback on their application to help them understand the areas they need to address, should they wish to re-apply in round two. Both existing and prospective providers who did not apply in round one are being encouraged to do so in round two.
If an applicant decides not to re-apply, we are encouraging them to consider partnering with newly accredited providers to build strong families of providers ready for 2024 delivery and ensure a high-quality and sufficient ITT market.
I am confident that these reforms will help create a truly world-class teacher development system that makes England the best place in the world to become a great teacher.
The comments made by Robin Walker, the Minister of State for School Standards, at the Education Committee meeting on 15 March 2022.
Exclusion is clearly a concern. As you say, it is the highest rate of permanent exclusions, at 0.24%, and of suspensions, at around 15%, for the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community. We think that having strong cultures of good behaviour in schools helps to reduce the risk of suspensions and exclusions and helps to create an environment in which pupils from all backgrounds can feel safe and comfortable and can thrive.
To your point about persistent disruption, I think there is a concern that this is often a two-way process—that this is not necessarily just a child who is creating disruption. There can be tension between those children and others in the school and they then potentially go down that route. A school with a strong behaviour policy can manage that, deal with it and take earlier intervention to avoid the escalation to the types of suspensions and permanent exclusions that we have seen in this space too often.
We think it is right to back head teachers in having those policies, but our statutory guidance is clear that all schools should consider what extra support might be needed to identify and address the needs of children from groups with protected characteristics. That includes Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, who currently face a disproportionately high rate of exclusion. It is important we look at that.
Among this group there is also a higher rate of special needs. The work that we are doing on the SEND Green Paper will be important in making sure the right support is there in the right place for that area as well.
The comments made by Robin Walker, the Minister of State for School Standards, at the Education Committee meeting on 15 March 2022.
The first thing is to look at attendance across the piece. We discussed previously the work that we are doing with the attendance alliance, some of the excellent work the Children’s Commissioner has been doing in this space and learning from some of the good practice that I think we have seen in some schools at reaching out to the local Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community and engaging them and supporting attendance in that space.
Also, we need to look at intergenerational literacy as a challenge. There is money in the adult education budget to support adult literacy, but at the moment I think this is a community that isn’t being effectively engaged on that. There is more that we could do on that front because I think that is very important. Part of it is also to show that we take the concerns of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community, where they have those concerns, seriously. We are spending money on anti-bullying activities, including some specific work targeted towards that community, because it is right that they should not have to be concerned about their children being in schools. That is one of the things that may in turn affect attendance.
The comments made by Robin Walker, the Minister of State for School Standards, at the Education Committee meeting on 15 March 2022.
It is very important that GCSE and A-level examinations do go ahead this year. I will be meeting Ofqual later today for ongoing work, and to talk about how we support those students and how we make sure that this series of examinations can go ahead effectively and with the right support in place.
In terms of the adaptions, you will be aware that grades will be based around the mid-point between 2021 and pre-pandemic grades for GCSEs and some A levels, with results therefore likely to be higher than pre-pandemic, providing a safety net for some of this year’s students.
The package of measures, along with the exams, includes four elements: a choice of topics or content on which pupils will be assessed in English literature, history, ancient history and geography; in all other GCSEs and A levels that have exams, advance information about the focus of the content of the exams, which was published on 7 February; changes to some assessment requirements for practical assessments in some subjects to take account of public health measures that were in place; and allowing students to have access to support materials in the exam room for maths, combined science and physics.
Combined with the choice of content and the other measures, another thing that I think is important in the context of people still possibly suffering from Covid absence is spacing exams. Where we have multiple exams in the same subjects, we are having a 10-day space in between them to make sure that pupils have the best opportunity of being able to sit them.
We think that package will mean that we can go ahead with the exams and that we can do so in a fair way. Since taking on this job, many of the conversations that I have had with teachers have been very clear about the downsides of the teacher-assessed grades process. It is something that people recognise was necessary at the time we had it, during the height of the pandemic, but many teachers are very keen to move away from it to something that is independently assessed. That is something that will be welcomed by the system more generally. I think it sets us on a path to restoring independently assessed exams as the best way forward for most people.
The comments made by Robin Walker, the Minister of State for School Standards, at the Education Committee meeting on 15 March 2022.
Schools should be teaching facts and information in that respect. As you said, quite a lot of the allegations or suggestions here are anecdotal. It is important to get to the bottom of each individual issue. We want schools to be able to support pupils, including the small number of pupils who may have gender identity issues and may need support in that respect. It is important that if they approach members of staff, they can be signposted to the right advice and support—which will not always be people in their school, by the way. I think it is important to reflect on that.
We also need to make sure that issues around sex and gender and identity are taught in an age-appropriate way, listening to the concerns of parents. That is one of the responsibilities we have set out in our guidance around RSHE, so that schools engage in that. I recognise that there are some really complex legal issues to do with the Equality Act in this space and I know that there are concerns about protecting, for instance, single-sex spaces in some schools.
We are doing a piece of work with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to look into this space to see if we can provide any further guidance and support in this area. That will take some time because these are not straightforward and simple things, but it is important that we balance responsibility to protect the characteristics of sex with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, which is also protected under the Equality Act, and we make sure that we address the concerns that parents may have in this space.
There have been some examples where parents have had concerns—those have been raised—where Ofsted has stepped in from a safeguarding perspective or an improvement perspective. It is important that we look at those and take the evidence from those.
With regard to the political impartiality guidance, it is very clear that what we are setting out is that there should never be an attempt to indoctrinate or impose a particular view on children. Equally, we do have to respect protected characteristics under the Equality Act. That is the difficult area that schools are trying to navigate. I think we should be doing more as a Department to support them in that and I am very keen that we do that. That is why the Secretary of State undertaking to do this work with the Equality and Human Rights Commission is an important step forward on that.
The statement made by Michelle Donelan, the Higher and Further Education Minister, on 14 May 2022.
I am horrified by the thought of Jewish students feeling ostracised by an organisation which should be a voice for their community and an advocate of equality for all students.
Although this was a decision that the Department did not take lightly, we have been clear that antisemitism must be stamped out of the sector and are treating these allegations with the utmost seriousness.
Whilst our door is not closed to the NUS, our message could not be simpler. We need decisive and effective action in response to these repeated allegations of antisemitic behaviour. We are glad that the NUS has started to respond and are ready to work with them again when sufficient action has been taken.
The statement made by Nadhim Zahawi, the Secretary of State for Education, on 14 May 2022.
I am seriously concerned to hear of so many reports of alleged antisemitism linked to the NUS.
Jewish students need to have confidence that this is a body that represents them, and we need to be sure that the student bodies that we engage with are speaking fairly for all students, which is why we are disengaging with the NUS until the issues have been addressed.
From the NUS’s initial response to our concerns, I am confident that they are keen to take action and welcome further updates from them. Antisemitism has no place in our society and we will stamp it out, wherever it occurs.
The comments made by Nadhim Zahawi, the Secretary of State for Education, on 13 May 2022.
The quality of pupils’ education in crucial subjects like maths and science should not be dependent on where they live, and teachers shouldn’t feel that they must leave their local area for a better paid job.
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