Inside Your Ed

September saw the launch of the results from the 2025 Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA for short.

Run by the OECD, PISA includes maths, reading and science tests for 15-year-olds across 90 countries as well as a survey about pupils’ education.

At first glance, England appears to have done very well in the latest PISA tests, rising to 10th place in maths, 9th place in reading and 8th place in science.

This led Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott to say that “countries around the world look at our schools and marvel at the progress we’ve made”, adding that “it would be an act of national sabotage to ignore the evidence of what is working.”

However, Schools Minister Georgia Gould claimed that England’s results showed that we were “stagnating” and Education Secretary Lucy Powell recently said that “too many are being left behind and failed by our education system”, adding that we need a “revolution”.

So how well did England perform in the latest PISA tests? Should we look at raw scores or rank positions when it comes to judging England against the rest of the world? And what can we learn not just from England’s performance, but that of other countries too, about our relative strengths and weaknesses?

I’m delighted to be joined by Luke Sibieta, a Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, to get his expert take on England’s performance in the PISA tests.

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As the new academic year kicks off across the country, there will inevitably be a lot of attention on whether enough people have chosen to embark on a new career in teaching to hit the Government’s teacher recruitment targets.

However, a new book called 'Love the One You’re With: Why teachers stay and what we can learn from them' argues that teacher retention matters just as much as teacher recruitment despite the latter typically stealing the political spotlight, and even within teacher retention the focus is too often on retaining newly qualified teachers instead of experienced colleagues.

Using a mixture of anecdotes, personal experiences and research evidence, the book explores why some teachers choose to remain in the profession for two decades or more, in the hope that by understanding what motivates and sustains experienced teachers, more people could be convinced to stay in teaching in future.

For this episode I’m delighted to be joined by both authors of this new book. Dr Haili Hughes, who is an Associate Professor of Educational Innovation and Impact at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia and served as a school leader in the UK for over 20 years, and Sam Gibbs, who has taught and led in secondary schools for 12 years and is now Director of Professional Learning at Greater Manchester Education Trust.

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So here we are, with a new Prime Minister in place two years on from the General Election.

In my last podcast, we had two expert guests join us to explore what an Andy Burnham premiership might mean for schools in England.

In this episode, I have brought together two policy experts to help us take a look at what could happen in post-16 education, consisting of universities, colleges, apprenticeship providers and many other organisations. 

So, will universities be top or bottom of the priority list for Andy Burnham and his new team of ministers? What might devolution and Manchesterism mean for colleges and other education providers across the country? And are the recent debates over student loans and cuts to apprenticeship funding likely to continue or fade away under this new administration? 

My guests are Julian Gravatt OBE, Deputy Chief Executive at the Association of Colleges, and Professor Diana Beech, Director of the Finsbury Institute at City St George's, part of the University of London.

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“The days of a school system configured entirely around the university route will be brought to an end.”

Our likely next Prime Minister Andy Burnham did not hold back in his speech at the end of June, adding that “we need a complete rethink of how we support the next generation to succeed”.

The question now is what do these sorts of comments mean for pupils, teachers, school leaders and those working on schools policy in Westminster and beyond?

In the first of two podcasts on what an Andy Burnham premiership might mean for education in England, I am joined by two experts to look at how our school system could be about to change course in the coming months and years, and what the potential benefits and drawbacks of those changes might be. 

My guests are Meg Powell-Chandler, Director of the New Schools Network and a former special advisor to the last Conservative government, and Reza Schwitzer, a principal consultant at Avencera and a former civil servant at the Department for Education.

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“Labour will end the VAT exemption for private schools to invest in our state schools.”

So said the Labour Party election manifesto in 2024, and in the Budget later that year the addition of VAT to school fees was enacted.

This was soon followed by predictions of a dramatic fall in the number of pupils attending independent schools, with some claiming that we would see a 25% drop as a result of this policy.

In June 2026, the Department for Education’s official data showed that the drop in pupil numbers in independent schools since 2024 was, in fact, 5.6%.

In this episode, I am joined by two people who have never been fans of this controversial policy. What do they make of the 5.6% decrease in independent school pupils since 2024? Is VAT the only reason why pupil numbers are falling? And how has the politics of VAT on school fees changed since this policy was introduced?

My guests are Julie Robinson, CEO at the Independent Schools Council, an umbrella body for 1,400 schools, and Maxwell Marlow, the Head of Public Affairs at the Adam Smith Institute.

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The Government’s consultation on their proposed reforms to the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, or SEND, system closed on May 18th.

Yet among the 39 consultation questions spread over 136 pages, one issue was notable by its absence: school admissions.

Judging by the analysis in a new report by the Sutton Trust called ‘Selective Inclusion’, ignoring state school admission policies within discussions of the SEND system is potentially a worrying oversight.

Their report finds that the top 500 state secondary schools take in half as many disadvantaged pupils with SEND as the average comprehensive school, and they admit 36% fewer than live in the school’s catchment area.

So why are some state schools admitting far fewer pupils with SEND than other schools? Is it the job of headteachers, government ministers or Ofsted inspectors to tackle this problem? And what do teachers and school leaders say they need from government to make sure that they can offer the best possible support to every pupil who needs it?

My guests are Charley O’Regan, the School Engagement Lead at the Sutton Trust and one of the authors of their new report, and Jonny Uttley, an education leadership consultant and a former headteacher and CEO of a school trust.

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It has been over 3.5 years since then opposition leader Keir Starmer announced that a Labour government would give businesses the flexibility they need to train their workforce by turning the Conservative Party’s apprenticeships levy into a ‘Growth and Skills Levy’.

After waiting a very long time to hear anything meaningful about the Growth and Skills Levy, we have suddenly been inundated in the opening months of 2026 with a raft of hugely significant - and hugely contentious - changes in quick succession.

So what have been the big changes to apprenticeships since the start of this year? Why has the Government decided to take such an active role in the apprenticeship system when its predecessor shied away from this approach? And will these recent changes help tackle the rising concerns about rising unemployment among young people?

My guests are Stephen Evans, the Chief Executive at the Learning and Work Institute, and Ben Rowland, the Chief Executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP).

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With exam season just around the corner, hundreds of thousands of students in schools, colleges and universities are making their final preparations as they aim for a successful outcome and possibly the very top grades.

But, as we know, for many children, young people and adults, rather than experiencing success in the coming weeks and months, they will instead find themselves encountering failure.

This failure can easily lead to a loss of motivation, lower expectations, lower self-esteem or even giving up altogether.

So, instead of helping learners of different ages to study better or revise better, perhaps we should spend more time helping them to fail better?

That’s the thinking behind a new book called ‘Fail Better’, which was released in March. It explores a whole range of concepts, ideas and strategies that try to turn something as seemingly negative as failure into something more positive. 

So, what exactly do we mean by failure? Why are some students better able to cope with failure than others? And, most importantly, what advice and guidance could be given to students as well as their teachers and parents to help them grapple with failure as it arises?

I’m delighted to be joined by Mark Roberts, the author of Fail Better and also the Director of Research and an English Teacher at Carrickfergus Grammar School.

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“We have concluded the disadvantages are such that we do not support a graduate tax”

So said Lord Dearing in his landmark review of Higher Education, or HE funding in 1997, shortly before tuition fees were first introduced.

Over a decade later, Lord Browne’s review of HE funding in 2010 also rejected calls for a graduate tax before going on to propose a significant uplift in tuition fees.

Here we are, over a decade on from the Browne Review, and yet again a graduate tax is being proposed by some commentators as the solution to the financial woes facing the HE sector, particularly as opposition to the current student loan system grows by the day.

A graduate tax would essentially mean that rather than a graduate paying back the cost of their HE course through student loan repayments when they are in work, graduates would instead pay an extra tax on top of their income tax and these extra payments would depend purely on their income level rather than the actual cost of their HE course.

So what makes a graduate tax look appealing relative to a student loan system? Would students, universities and the government be better or worse off if a graduate tax was implemented? And, crucially, do the reasons that led to a graduate tax being rejected in the past still hold true today? 

My guests are Professor John Blake, director of the Post-18 project, and Jonathan Simons, a Partner and Head of the Education Practice at Public First.

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SEND reforms to 'strip away' children's legal protections, charity says. That was according to a recent headline on the BBC website.

Needless to say, the Department for Education, or DfE, disagrees, claiming that their planned reforms to the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities system in England represent “a clear expansion of children’s rights”.

When so much money, time, effort and emotion is poured into the SEND system every day, any attempt to change the system was likely to prove controversial. The DfE’s consultation on their proposed changes is open until May 18th, and there is plenty at stake for everyone concerned.

So what reforms has the DfE put forward in their consultation? Are children’s legal rights going to change, and if so, are they changing for the right reasons? And how confident can we be that children and young people, their families, teachers and school leaders will be better off as a result of the DfE’s reforms?

My guests are Sam Freedman, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government and a former advisor at the DfE, and Jim Lauder, who works in a school trust and is also the parent of a child with an Education, Health and Care Plan, or EHCP.

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