OFSTED. At the moment, OFSTED is undergoing a review led by Christine Gilbert into its performance and practices. Why Gilbert, I have no idea. It seems unlikely that any changes will happen before the review concludes. Labour have pledged to bring in report cards instead of overall judgements, but how that works in practice, if it ever does, remains unclear. The unloved curriculum framework, which may be politely described as a fucking train crash, seems set to stay for now for the same reason.

RAAC: Not a lot that can be done here other than rebuilding the affected schools (and hospitals, courts, offices etc.) Whether the Treasury will stump up the cash for it is an entirely different question. The smart money is on them not doing so.

Exams: Farcically poor, but any changes would mean more work and be even more confusing. Realistically, however shit they are we’re lumbered with them. She could have an easy win by abolishing SATs which are about as reliable as a Cummings eye test and are highly injurious to the education of children by squeezing them into narrow curriculum straitjackets, but the controlling instincts of Labour would militate against it.

Governance: Academy chains have not only not worked, they have been counterproductive and expensive. About the only thing likely to make things worse would be changing them back, as LEAs are no longer able to cope with them.

Curriculum: One thing that might cause academy chains and freeschools to be reverted to the LEA fold is Labour’s apparent desire to make every school follow the National Curriculum. If they do I hope they do not mean the current iteration, which is prescriptive, badly written and a nonsense. Again, therefore, that might need reviewing – but that needs more work.

More teachers: Yes, we need them. She won’t get them. In fact, we’re about to have an even more acute crisis in teacher numbers. In 2022, just 50% of target for recruitment was met. In 2023, it was a horrifying 39%. This summer, we see the first effects of the catastrophic attempt at reorganising teacher training. 68 providers providing 16% of training places were delisted, with the North East and West Country especially hard hit. Why, nobody seems to know. Best guess is some fool messed up the paperwork. 21 new providers have been permitted to start training, but it’s unclear how many trainees they will be taking. We should therefore assume that by 2025, it will be not 6,500 but liker 10,000 teachers she will be hunting for.

Restore the DfE’s reputation to merely unpopular rather than actively hated: unless she’s willing to reinstitute the old Board of Education and fire all her existing civil servants, which she clearly isn’t, that’s probably past praying (or partying?) for.

It’s a lot. Odds are she will fail in all of it.

It is not a coincidence that only one secretary of state for education has ever been Prime Minister. I don’t see that run changing.

Y doethur