Happy New Year and welcome back to Inside Your Ed.

Regular listeners will know that this podcast usually focuses on the latest education news in England, but for my first episode of 2025 we are taking a quick trip over the Atlantic because, as you may have noticed, Donald Trump will start his second term as President of the United States on January 20th.

So what plans does President-elect Trump have for K-12 education, from Kindergarten at age 5 up to 12th grade at age 18? Should colleges and universities in the US be worried about what may lie in store for them? And, most importantly for us on this side of the Atlantic, could Trump’s plans for education in the US have a knock-on effect on education debates and policies in England?

I’m delighted to be joined today by Dr Rick Hess, who is an American educator, political scientist, and author. He is currently a Senior Fellow and Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and his work has been widely published in academic journals as well as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Education Week and Education Next.

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“Labour will establish a youth guarantee of access to training, an apprenticeship, or support to find work for all 18- to 21-year-olds, to bring down the number of young people who are not learning or earning.”

So said the Labour Party election manifesto in June 2024. Fast forward to the end of 2024, and the Labour Government confirmed in its Get Britain Working report that a Youth Guarantee is now up and running.

However, the same report admitted that at the moment, the Youth Guarantee is in fact just a collection of existing provision and entitlements for young people, and it does not offer any new national programmes or initiatives.

So is the Government’s Youth Guarantee for 18 to 21-year-olds on the right or wrong track? Would this sort of Guarantee actually reach the young people who need it the most? And what could a more ambitious Youth Guarantee look like in 2025 and beyond? 

My guests are Barry Fletcher, Chief Executive at the Youth Futures Foundation, and Naomi Clayton, Director of Policy and Research at the Learning and Work Institute.

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When it feels like every voter and politician has their own opinion on how to run the education system in England, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a credible, independent, evidence-led organisation that provided balanced information to politicians, government officials and the public on how to solve some of the biggest policy challenges.

Well, as luck would have it, a new institute called the Centre for Education Systems, or CES, was officially launched in November. 

The CES has been set up by three leading lights in the world of education - Sam Freedman, Lucy Crehan and Loic Menzies – and it boasts an equally impressive advisory board and list of academic partners.

So what spurred Sam, Lucy and Loic to create the CES? In a busy and crowded policy landscape, what can the CES offer that other organisations cannot? And what challenges might the CES face as it tries to have a positive impact on education policymaking in the months and years ahead? 

I’m delighted to be joined today by two of the CES’s co-founders. Lucy is an international education consultant and author, and will be the International Director at the CES, and Loic is an education researcher and policy specialist, and will be the CES’s Chief Research Officer.

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Nuclear fusion offers the tantalising prospect of being a potentially limitless source of clean and self-sustaining energy, but, as the old joke goes, nuclear fusion is always 30 years away, and has been for decades.

I’m starting to get the same feeling about the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, or LLE, which was first floated back in 2019 as a new way of funding Further and Higher Education courses in England.

But the LLE took years to develop and it wasn’t until 2022 that the Conservative government launched a consultation on how the LLE should operate, and even then its planned introduction was not until September 2025.

In April this year the LLE was delayed until January 2026, and now in the Labour Government’s Budget on October 30th it was confirmed that the LLE’s first funded courses won’t start until January 2027 at the earliest.

So what do we know about the LLE and what it is trying to achieve? Could it be a big deal for students, colleges and universities, or is it just likely to be a distraction? And is there is a risk that the LLE goes down the same road as nuclear fusion by always being a few years away but never quite being made a reality?

My guests are Dr Kate Wicklow, Director of Policy & Strategy at GuildHE, a membership body in the Higher Education sector, and George Ryan, an Associate Director at the consultancy Public First.

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On November 4th, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson confirmed that, for the first time since 2017, university tuition fees in England will rise from £9,250 to £9,535 for full-time undergraduates.

The maximum maintenance loan available to students to cover their living costs will also increase by around 3%.

Although these changes will do little to allay concerns about the long-term financial health of both universities and students, Bridget Philipson also said that the government would announce further “major reform” to Higher Education funding in the coming months.

If the government is indeed hunting for some major reforms then a recent paper by Tim Leunig, published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) describes a whole package of reforms to tuition fees, student loans and university funding.

So, are Tim’s proposed reforms likely to appeal to students, universities and taxpayers? What trade offs does Tim put forward, and who might end up better or worse off as a result? And is the government even ready for big changes to Higher Education funding?

To talk through his proposals, I’m delighted to be joined by Tim himself. He is a Visiting Professor at the LSE who has, over the last 14 years, been an advisor to the Prime Minister, two Chancellors and the Education Secretary among other senior politicians.

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If you were asked to pick out a success story from the last 14 years of education policy, I’m sure some people would point to England’s rise in the international rankings for global tests such as PISA. In 2022, England came 11th for maths, up from 27th in 2009.

That’s why I was intrigued to see recent reports claim that the way we teach and assess maths needs to be overhauled to make up for several perceived problems.

One of those reports came from the Royal Society’s Mathematical Futures project, with the Royal Society’s President, Sir Adrian Smith, claiming that not only is radical reform necessary, but “politicians who fail to grasp the nettle are failing our young people.”

So what are these apparent problems with maths in primary and secondary education? Does the maths curriculum need a few tweaks or a major rethink? And should we have more maths exams in schools and colleges, or fewer exams, or perhaps just different exams?

Both my guests are former maths teachers and former headteachers.

Lynne McClure OBE is a Trustee at National Numeracy and the Academy for Mathematical Sciences and was also a Board Member of the Royal Society’s recent project, and David Thomas OBE is the CEO at Axiom Maths and a former government advisor.

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The most significant education policy launched at last month’s Labour Party conference was the release of new details about the Growth and Skills Levy, which is set to replace the existing apprenticeship levy as a way of funding apprenticeships and other forms of training.

The government claims they will boost opportunities for young people through what they describe as an “ambitious” set of reforms courtesy of their new Growth and Skills Levy.

But how ambitious are the government’s plans in reality? Who will be the winners and losers from their proposals? And will our apprenticeship system be better or worse off as a result of these upcoming reforms?

My guests are Holly Papworth, Head of Policy at the Edge Foundation, a vocational education charity, and Joanna Wake, Director of Public Affairs at Baltic Apprenticeships, an apprenticeship provider that focuses on tech and digital skills.

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It is hard not to raise an eyebrow when a government policy is described by some as a ‘vital lifeline’ for students, while others describe the same policy as ‘demoralising’ and ‘soul destroying’.

The GCSE resits policy, which has been in place since 2014, continues to divide opinion among academics, researchers, school and college leaders and the frontline staff who support those students who must retake English and Maths GCSEs after not passing their exams first time around.

So what is the thinking behind GCSE resits? Is the current resits policy having a positive or negative impact? And are exam resits the best way to improve the English and maths skills of young people beyond age 16?

My guests are Sarah Waite, the founder and CEO of Get Further, a charity that supports students who are resitting their GCSEs, and Lee Elliot Major OBE, Professor of Social Mobility at the University of Exeter.

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Although complaints from universities about a perceived lack of funding continue to attract plenty of media attention, some very interesting shifts in policy thinking that are potentially more significant than simple questions about money are already underway.

Several countries such as Australia, Wales, Scotland and Ireland have begun to talk less about universities and colleges in isolation and instead talk more about ‘tertiary education’, with the aim of bringing universities and colleges closer together in terms of how they are funded, regulated and managed.

So why have these nations started thinking about tertiary education as a whole? What benefits could a more integrated tertiary system offer than cannot be achieved when Higher Education and Further Education, or HE and FE, are dealt with separately? And could England follow suit by building a single tertiary system in the coming years, or would it face too many obstacles along the way?

My guests are Professor Ellen Hazelkorn, Professor Emeritus at Technological University Dublin and Joint Editor of Policy Reviews in Higher Education, and Professor Ewart Keep, an emeritus professor in Education, Training and Skills at the Department of Education at Oxford University.

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Although this year’s exam season has largely passed without incident or drama, many exams and assessments throughout our education system are potentially facing their greatest ever threat in the form of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence, or AI tools.

When freely available websites and apps can write entire essays, projects, articles, poems and stories as well as produce art and music among other things, it presents a daunting challenge to the teachers, lecturers and institutions trying to award fair and trustworthy grades. 

So what impact are ChatGPT and similar AI platforms having in schools, colleges, universities and elsewhere? Do we know how much cheating is already linked to these AI tools? And is anyone or anything ready and able to combat AI-powered cheating in future?

Our guests today are Dr Thomas Lancaster, a computer scientist at Imperial College London who has conducted research on academic integrity, cheating and plagiarism, and Jessica Hill, senior investigations and features reporter for Schools Week and FE Week.

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