HEP Talks

The Education Brief: Saturday 21 June 2025 - Top stories include:

• Ninety-three educators received Silver Awards in the Pearson National Teaching Awards.

• The government will rebuild 250 more schools as part of a £20 billion programme expansion.

• Entries for GCSE statistics have nearly doubled since 2021.

• Pupils could lose up to 12 teaching days a year by 2100 due to climate change.

This week’s deep dive: 

• What Might Be in the Autumn Schools White Paper?

We’ll also tell you what’s happening at HEP this week and what we’ve been watching, listening to, and reading!

Watching - https://steplab.co/watch/great-teaching-unpacked-episode-3-securing-success

Listening - https://evidenceintoaction.podbean.com/e/ep-25-retrieval-practice/

Reading - https://thinkingflexibly.com/2025/04/14/learning-to-be-human-ai-and-learning/

AI Tool - https://ai-2027.com/

Music by Slo Pony

The Education Brief: Saturday 14 June 2025 - Top stories include:

• Christine Gilbert set to be appointed Ofsted chair

• Stop Talking About Relevance in the Curriculum

• AI guidance for schools: 9 key findings for leaders

This week’s deep dive: 

• WalkThrus London Conference 2025

We’ll also tell you what’s happening at HEP this week and what we’ve been watching, listening to, and reading!

Watching -https://www.youtube.com/live/lX75lqsxipc 

Listening - https://open.spotify.com/episode/59tbDsNcpHcgpg9r42eFur 

Reading - https://www.tes.com/magazine/teaching-learning/general/how-to-design-better-subject-specific-cpd 

AI Tool -https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/test-and-evaluate/develop-tests 

Music by Slo Pony

The Education Brief: Saturday 7 June 2025 - Top stories include:

• Maths hubs funding drops (but DfE says it’s not a cut)

• Teacher supply: why 5 subjects face gloomier forecasts

• Schools risk ‘inadvertently’ breaking minimum wage law

• Popular schools should prioritise places for poorer pupils, says charity

This week’s deep dive: 

• Schools and Academies Show 2025

We’ll also tell you what’s happening at HEP this week and what we’ve been watching, listening to, and reading!

Watching - https://researchschool.org.uk/clips-from-the-classroom 

Listening - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s4e5-steplab-teach-like-a-champion-with-doug-lemov/id1602317019?i=1000672779630 

Reading - https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/gender-equality-first-uk-wide-index-reveals-no-local-authority-has-achieved-full-parity 

AI Tool -https://gamma.app/ 

Music by Slo Pony

The Education Brief: Saturday 24 May 2025 - Top stories include:

• Teachers are set for a 4% pay rise from September.

• The STRB wants every school to publish a flexible working policy.

• The House of Lords is flooding the government’s schools bill with amendments.

• Ofsted is quietly overhauling the toolkits behind its upcoming ‘report card’ inspection system.

This week’s deep dive: 

• The SEND System: Crisis, Reform, and the Path Forward

We’ll also tell you what’s happening at HEP this week and what we’ve been watching, listening to, and reading!

Watching - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-25neDdO9k

Listening - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/whats-in-the-curriculum-review-so-far/id1714972358?i=1000705810724

Reading - https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/the-opportunity-index/

AI Tool - https://connectsafely.org/

Music by Slo Pony

The Education Brief: Saturday 17 May 2025 - Top stories include:

• Labour has torn into the Conservatives’ £70 million SEND improvement plan for being too little.

• The government is merging its behaviour and attendance hubs into a single support scheme.

• School-based mental health teams will be expanded to nearly a million more pupils by 2026.

• SEND sport is getting a boost with a three-year extension of its inclusion initiative.

This week’s deep dive: 

• Opportunity in London… and Beyond

We’ll also tell you what’s happening at HEP this week and what we’ve been watching, listening to, and reading!

Watching - https://steplab.co/watch/great-teaching-unpacked-episode-2-teaching-behaviour

Listening - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m002bswl

Reading - https://www.sec-ed.co.uk/content/best-practice/adaptive-teaching-explained-what-why-and-how

AI Tool - https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/en_uk

Music by Slo Pony

The Education Brief: Saturday 10 May 2025 - Top stories include:

• Ofsted may delay its controversial school report card inspections until 2026.

• The government is shortening the postgraduate teaching apprenticeship from 12 to nine months.

• Funding for England’s acclaimed maths hubs will drop by 20% this September.

• 218 'stuck' schools will receive support from the newly expanded RISE teams.

This week’s deep dive: 

• School Absence: What the past can teach the present

We’ll also tell you what’s happening at HEP this week and what we’ve been watching, listening to, and reading!

Watching - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc6r8ZxJeig

Listening - https://uk.bettshow.com/edtech-unwrapped

Reading - https://www.isospartnership.com/blog/strengthening-professional-accountability-working-with-local-education-partnerships

AI Tool - https://www.anthropic.com/education

IfG Report link: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/2025-04/School-absence-innovation-lessons-last-labour-government.pdf

Music by Slo Pony

The Education Brief: Saturday 3 May 2025 - Top stories include:

• Trainee teacher numbers rise by 8%, with surges in STEM subjects like physics and computing.

• Education unions are taking the Teaching Regulation Agency to court.

• NAHT are taking Ofsted to court over its new inspection regime.

• Interim EHRC guidance ruled trans pupils must use toilets matching their biological sex.

• 82% of school leaders report having children stuck in mainstream schools despite EHCPs mandating specialist provision.

We’ll also tell you what’s happening at HEP this week and what we’ve been watching, listening to, and reading!

Watching - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sElN9Axzcm8

Listening - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/disciplinary-literacy-pedtech-and-flexible-working/id1516532537?i=1000704845843

Reading - https://thinkingflexibly.com/2025/04/19/powerpoint-and-iwbs-its-time-to-reclaim-analogue-teaching/

AI Tool - https://academy.openai.com/home

Music by Slo Pony

The Education Brief: Saturday 26 April 2025 - Top stories include:

• Teacher job adverts are down, and the education sector is bracing for a staffing squeeze.

• Pupil suspensions surged by 12% last spring, with the North East topping the exclusions charts.

• An Inspector Calls reigns supreme for literature GCSEs, but calls for change are growing louder.

• School budgets are under fresh strain as pay rises and food costs outpace funding.

This week’s deep dive: 

• Why CPD fails

We’ll also tell you what’s happening at HEP this week and what we’ve been watching, listening to, and reading!

Watching - https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/live-lessons/articles/z7mdp9q#zrfwvj6

Listening - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/roundtable-what-educators-really-think-about-the-new/id1608692574?i=1000703953285

Reading - https://home.edurio.com/resources/insights/culture-driven-recruitment/

AI Tool - https://gemini.google/overview/deep-research/?hl=en-GB

Music by Slo Pony

Welcome to HEP Talks: Roundtables, where we take the big questions in education to our member schools.

In this second episode on Ofsted, we're diving into the recently proposed changes to the inspection framework—what they say, what they really mean, and whether they hit the mark.

Joining us for this episode, we have:

• Jade-Simone Bacon, Headteacher at St Michael’s C.E. Primary School
• Lucy Walker-Collins, Headteacher at Stroud Green Primary School
• Stephen McNicholas, Headteacher at St John Vianney Primary School and Our Lady of Muswell Catholic Primary School
• James Page, Chief Executive of HEP
• Fran Hargrove, Deputy Chief Executive of HEP

The roundtable covers the rise of report cards and toolkits, and whether ‘exemplary’ is just the new ‘outstanding’ in disguise. Spoiler alert: it’s complicated...

The Education Brief: Saturday 5 April 2025 - Top stories include:

• Ofsted is considering renaming the proposed ‘secure’ grade on its five-point school report cards.

• A new trial suggests AI could “revolutionise” how student writing is assessed.

• Bridget Phillipson has called for more male teachers to act as role models for boys.

• The cost of repairing England’s crumbling school estate will exceed £13.8 billion.

This week’s deep dive: 

• One City, Two Worlds

We’ll also tell you what’s happening at HEP this week and what we’ve been watching, listening to, and reading!

Watching - https://news.sky.com/story/the-system-just-doesnt-work-more-children-than-ever-are-not-in-school-report-finds-with-more-than-11-million-lost-days-13331143

Listening - https://freshedpodcast.com/paglayan/

Reading - https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/children-missing-from-education/

AI Tool - https://aicoursecreator.eskilled.io/

Music by Slo Pony