November 2017 – Westminster Roundup

Sutton Trust and EEF mentions:

Sutton Trust report, Fairer Fees, was cited during a debate on restoring tuition fees to £3,000 in Parliament. Mike Hill (Labour MP, Hartlepool) and Gordon Marsden (Labour MP, Blackpool South) both mentioned Fairer Fees, whilst Jo Johnson (Universities Minister) cited Sutton Trust research on access in Scotland. Find the full Hansard here.

Sutton Trust’s early years reports, Closings Gaps Early, was cited by Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe during a short debate on what measures the Government are taking to provide high quality early years education in England. Find the full Hansard here.

Lord Shinkwin mentioned the Education Endowment Foundation’s during a motion ‘to take note of the case for a comprehensive agenda to address regional and national inequalities within the United Kingdom’. Find the full Hansard here.

The EEF was cited numerous times in the Department for Education’s paper on Literacy and Numeracy catch up strategies which examined strategies and interventions for low attaining pupils in literacy and numeracy at the end of Key Stage 2. Read the full paper here.

Key appointments:

Peter Lauener, the current Chief Executive of the Education and Skills Funding Agency and the Institute for Apprenticeships, will replace Steve Lamey as interim Chief Executive of the Student Loans Company.

Alan Milburn, David Johnston, Paul Gregg and the Conservative peer Gillian Shephard have resigned from their posts at the Social Mobility Commission. The Government will be appointing a new chair in due course. Read the Sutton Trust response here.

Key announcements:

Chancellor, Phillip Hammond, announced his Budget for the year ahead. On education, announcements included:

• Rewarding schools and colleges who support their students to study maths by giving them £600 for every extra pupil who decides to take Maths or Further Maths A levels, or Core Maths
• Testing innovative approaches to improve GCSE Maths resit outcomes by launching a £8.5 million pilot, alongside £40 million to establish Further Education Centres of Excellence across the country to train maths teachers and spread best practice.
• Investing £42 million to pilot a Teacher Development Premium. This will test the impact of a £1,000 budget for high-quality professional development for teachers working in areas that have fallen behind.
• Tackling the problem of graduates overpaying their student loans.

You can find the Budget speech here and the red book here.

The Social Mobility Commission published its annual State of the Nation Report. The report concluded that a social mobility postcode lottery exists throughout the country and that social mobility in the UK is getting worse, not better. Read the full report here.

The Department for Education hosted a skills summit where Secretary of State, Justine Greening, called for delegates to give all young people, regardless of their background, opportunities to learn new skills, both to aid social mobility and help fill the skills gap. Greening also launched the National Retraining Scheme and that over £100 million has been committed to career learning pilots. Find Justine Greening’s full speech here.

The Government announced over 3000 higher and degree apprenticeships. You can find the full list of employers who are offering them here.

The National College for Teaching and Leadership will combine with the Department for Education in order to give a boost to the teacher recruitment drive but regulation of the profession will continue to handled by an executive agency at the DfE which will become known as the Teaching Regulation Agency. You can find the full announcement here.

Skills Minister, Anne Milton, has launched the government’s new careers strategy. Key areas included ensuring every school and college has a high-quality careers programme and offering tailored support to students. You can find the full strategy here.