Since the National Tutoring Programme, or NTP, was launched in 2020 to help combat the effects of the pandemic on children’s academic progress, it has provided 5 million tutoring courses to pupils of various ages at a cost of over £1 billion. 

However, these figures will not be increasing much further because the government has decided that after four years of operation, the NTP should have its funding removed and it will be closing down this August. 

So why has the government turned away from providing funding for the NTP across the country when the effects of the pandemic are still visible? Did the NTP deliver what pupils and schools needed? And if a national tutoring programme was to continue in future, should it look different from its current iteration? 

Our guests today are Susannah Hardyman, the founder and CEO of Action Tutoring, a tutoring provider, and Ben Gadsby, the Head of Policy and Research at Impetus. 

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On the 16th of May, EDSK published a new report called ‘Evolution and revolution’, in which we set out a 10-year plan for reforming primary and secondary education in England.

Our plan included, among other things, a Baccalaureate for all 14 to 18-year-olds that would bring academic, applied and technical courses together under one roof as well as everyone studying Core English and Core maths, otherwise known as literacy and numeracy, up to age 18. 

Bold as these proposals may sound, we do not pretend to be the first people to make such suggestions. In fact, two decades ago in 2004, Mike Tomlinson – now Sir Mike Tomlinson – chaired a working group for the then Labour government, which ended up proposing a Diploma for all 14 to 19-year-olds that contained many of the same ideas as EDSK’s new report. 

Our guest today is Sir Mike himself, who is perfectly placed to tell us what the Diplomas were, what benefits they were supposed to offer, and also why his proposals were never fully implemented in the months and years after the working group’s final report was published. 

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Despite the endless debates and disagreements in education policy, there are some things that we can all agree on, such as the need for a fair education system. 

However, a new report suggests that while we may agree on the need for a fair education system, we may well disagree on what fairness actually means in practice.

The report – titled Mapping the way to educational equity – offers a range of perspectives on how to define and use concepts such as equity, fairness and opportunity and it also describes a path to achieving a more equitable system in future. 

Who better to talk us through this new report than its author Loic Menzies. Loic is a visiting fellow at the Sheffield Institute of Education and a former teacher and think tank director.  We are also joined today by Jim Lauder, the Trust Assistant Principal at Dixons Academies Trust.

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This time last year, we did a podcast episode about the growing problem of pupil absences in the aftermath of the pandemic, with record numbers of children and young people failing to attend school on a regular basis. 

Since then, finding ways to reduce absences has become a priority for both main political parties in England, and numerous initiatives have been put in place by the current government to try and address the problem. 

But despite all this extra attention, and in some cases extra funding, pupil absence rates have remained stubbornly high in the current academic year. 

So what sits behind these high rates of absence? What does the research tell us about the factors behind pupil absences? And are we any closer to finding effective ways to reduce these absences both now and in future? 

Our guests today are Dr Sally Burtonshaw, an Associate Director at the consultancy Public First, and Emily Hunt, an Associate Director at the Education Policy Institute. 

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“It’s not just a skill for learning, it’s also a skill for life. Not just for the workplace, also for working out who you are – for overcoming shyness or disaffection, anxiety or doubt – or even just for opening up more to our friends and family. We don’t do enough of that as a society, and I’m as guilty as anyone, but wouldn’t that be something precious for our children to aim for? I think so.” 

Those words from Keir Starmer in July last year were how he described the importance of oracy. In the same speech, he announced that the Labour Party wants to give every primary school new funding to “invest in world-class early language interventions, and help our children find their voice.” 

Which is all well and good, but what exactly is oracy, why does it matter, how do you teach oracy, and is oracy as important as literacy and numeracy or is it something different altogether? 

To help answer these questions we are joined today by Geoff Barton, who was until very recently the General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, or ASCL for short. Not only is Geoff a former English teacher and headteacher, he has also just been announced as the Chair of a new Commission on Oracy Education. 

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In the current education policy landscape, the debate over adding VAT to independent school fees is by far the most high-profile dividing line between Labour and the Conservatives.

That said, the question of what would actually happen in practice if Labour won the next election and tried to implement this policy has received remarkably little attention in political circles.

That is why at the beginning of March, EDSK published a new report that outlined the findings from our investigation into the obstacles that a future government may face if it tried to add VAT to school fees. 

This podcast episode will not be offering, and does not intend to offer, any legal or financial advice, but what this episode is absolutely going to offer is an important and timely insight into what VAT is, how it works and the complexity that lies beneath the surface. 

If you thought that adding 20% VAT to independent school fees would be a straightforward matter then you may well be having second thoughts by the end of this episode. 

To help us unravel some of the complexities of VAT legislation and bust a few myths along the way, our guest today is Kieran Smith, a Partner in the VAT group at Crowe, which is an audit, tax and advisory firm. Kieran has over two decades of experience working on VAT, and yes, VAT is that complicated that people can spend their entire careers working on it!

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On the 15th of March in the year 2000, then Education Secretary David Blunkett invited businesses, churches and voluntary groups to build and manage a network of "city academies", a new type of urban secondary school outside the control of local authorities. 

Little did David Blunkett, now Lord Blunkett, know that a quarter of a century later, there would be over 10,000 academy schools in England educating over half of all school pupils.

In January this year, EDSK published a major new report called ’20 years of muddling through’, in which we argued that the government has ended up running two separate state school systems – one for academies, and one for local authority schools – which is causing all sorts of problems for headteachers, parents, academy bosses and local authorities as well as government ministers. 

Rather than taking a detailed look at the present, as we did in our report, this podcast will instead look back into the past to understand the journey that the academies programme has been on since the first academy schools opened in 2002. 

Our guests today are Sir David Carter, a former headteacher, Multi Academy Trust leader and National Schools Commissioner for England, and Laura McInerney, a former teacher and editor of Schools Week and now the co-founder of TeacherTapp. 

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Existential crisis - at risk of insolvency - looming financial crisis - ticking time bomb -  bankruptcy.

Newspaper headline writers have certainly not been holding back in recent months as they try to describe the predicament that UK universities apparently find themselves in. 

Then again, with a General Election on the way, universities and other higher education (or HE) providers are not going to be the only educational institutions hoping to secure more money from a future government. 

So what do we know about the financial health of the HE sector? Who or what is responsible for the financial pressure that some, if not all, HE providers are experiencing? And who should be responsible for alleviating that pressure in future?  

Our guests today are Professor Jane Harrington, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Greenwich, and Jess Lister, an Associate Director at the consultancy Public First. 

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With a General Election on the way, all eyes and ears are trained on what our politicians are saying about the future of education and skills. 

However, there are plenty of other important individuals who you won’t see in the political spotlight but are nevertheless thinking hard about how to improve the life chances of the most disadvantaged children, young people and adults. 

One such individual is Alun Francis OBE, the Principal and Chief Executive of Blackpool and The Fylde College and also the Chair of the Social Mobility Commission. 

The Commission is funded by government but acts as an independent body to promote social mobility in England, carry out research, publish annual reports on the progress being made with social mobility and provide advice to ministers on how to improve social mobility. 

As Alun has just completed his first year in the hot seat at the Social Mobility Commission, I thought now was the perfect time to get his views on some fascinating policy issues.  Where have we got to with social mobility? Do we actually know if social mobility is getting better or worse? And what would make for a really strong agenda on improving social mobility going forward? 

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“The arrival of on-screen and online high stakes assessment has been predicted for many years.”

Those are not my words, but the words of the exam regulator Ofqual back in 2020, in their report on the barriers to greater adoption of high stakes on-screen and online assessments, and how these barriers may be overcome. 

Perhaps the wait for these digital assessments is finally over because in recent months all three main exam boards in England have announced plans to start digitising their exams – particularly GCSEs. 

So what have been the experiences so far with high stakes digital assessments in this country and abroad? What barriers will digital exams face in England if they are to be delivered at scale every year? And are digital exams potentially fairer than assessments done on pen and paper? 

Our guests today are Grainne Hallahan, senior analyst at the Times Educational Supplement, and Hayley White, the Vice President of Assessment, Standards and Services at Pearson who own the Edexcel exam board. 

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