The short guide to the new education reforms

Posted on 22 March 2016

This week’s budget revealed plans for major reforms to education in England over the next five years – read on for a short summary of the main points you need to know, and how they could affect your child.

Key initiatives:

• Turn every state school into an academy
• A new accreditation system intended to raise teaching standards
• A range of support for areas where not enough children have access to a good school place has been unveiled
• Further change to primary assessment likely
• Introduction of a new parent portal

The five key initiatives explained:

Introduction of a new parent portal

The biggest change to parents will be the introduction of a new parent portal. For the first time, parents will have the power to hold schools and the education system to account through a clearer and fairer school complaints and admissions system. The portal will also provide essential information on how the school system works and information on specific school’s performances, alongside other resources.

Every state school will be turned into an academy

The white paper (the report published by the government to set out proposals for future legislation) confirmed the government’s plans for all schools to become or be in the process of becoming an academy by the end of 2020.

This will mean that the majority of schools will work in multi-academy trusts, which will allow for more sharing of resources, staff and expertise. This constitutes part of the government’s plan to improve teaching standards nationally.

A new accreditation system intended to raise teaching standards

There will be significant changes to the way in which a teacher can become qualified – there will now be a new accreditation system, focusing particularly on areas such as behaviour management and subject knowledge. Teachers will no longer by assessed by their completion of a course, but rather by their classroom proficiency as judged by headteachers.

A range of support for areas where not enough children have access to a good school place has been unveiled

Whilst full plans for this have not yet been revealed, we know that it will involve giving certain schools priority access to programmes such as the National Teaching Service. This will mean they’ll have the resources and expertise they need from other outstanding schools to reach and maintain an unprecedented level of improvement in their own school.

Further change to primary assessment likely

It looks like primary assessment will be even tougher on children in the near future. Reforms will be made to ensure “every child leaves primary school with the essential building blocks to succeed at secondary level.” This is likely to involve making KS2 assessments “more demanding”, as well as the introduction of a new times table check in Year 6.

Read the education white paper in full here.