The early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread predictions of a catastrophic situation for young people in terms of unemployment and lost earnings.

However, although we did see a rise in youth unemployment by the middle of 2020, it never reached the scale of job losses that had been feared by many politicians and economists. 

In the middle of 2023, it could hardly feel more different, with newspapers having spent most of this year running stories about record low levels of unemployment, firms running out of workers, wages rapidly increasing and high numbers of job vacancies. 

So has the gloom of the pandemic given way to a boom in young people’s job prospects? Are there any lingering effects of the pandemic that should still worry us? And should young people be feeling optimistic or pessimistic at the moment about their chances of finding a good well-paid job? 

Our guests today are Barry Fletcher, the Chief Executive at the Youth Futures Foundation, and Naomi Phillips, the Deputy Chief Executive at the Learning and Work Institute. 

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It has often been said that school teachers should be called superheroes for heading into classrooms every day across the country to try to improve the lives and prospects of children and young people.

But every superhero has a weakness, and a new book released at the start of June says that bad behaviour in the classroom can be like kryptonite to an unprepared teacher.

By coincidence, the Department for Education has just released their first ever national behaviour survey covering the 2021/22 academic year, which will now provide the government with regular updates on pupil behaviour in mainstream primary and secondary schools in England.

So what is the current state of behaviour in mainstream schools? Has the new survey given a positive or negative view on what’s happening in the classroom? And what can be done to better support both new and experienced teachers when it comes to spotting and addressing poor behaviour?

My guest today is Sam Strickland, who is the Principal of Duston School in Northamptonshire as well as a blogger, trainer, speaker and the author of this new book on managing behaviour in schools.

SAM'S NEW BOOK
'They Don’t Behave for Me: 50 classroom behaviour scenarios to support teachers'
https://www.johncattbookshop.com/products/they-don-t-behave-for-me-50-classroom-behaviour-scenarios-to-support-teachers

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With widespread strike action already underway across the education system and with so many institutions in need of more staff and more money, things can understandably feel a little gloomy. Even so, a story that hit the headlines last month provided a welcome bit of good news. 

May 16th saw the release of the latest results from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study – known as PIRLS. It is conducted every five years and the 2021 data, which was delayed by the pandemic, showed that England was ranked 4th out of 43 participating countries when assessing the reading skills of 9 and 10-year-olds. 

Such an impressive performance inevitably attracted plenty of praise, so what exactly was behind the rise in England’s ranking from 8th in 2016 to 4th in 2021? Are there any reasons to be slightly cautious about England’s level of performance? And what do the PIRLS rankings tell us, if anything, about best practice in the classroom? 

Our guests today are Tarjinder Gill, the Associate Director of Research and Pedagogy for Primary at Outwood Grange Academies Trust, and Kathy Rastle, Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London.

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In the world of education and politics more broadly, we are all used to seeing politicians making major announcements and getting plenty of media coverage as a result. That makes it even more noteworthy when a politician gets plenty of media coverage for announcing that they don’t actually have a policy at all. 

And so it was that Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, found himself hitting the headlines at the start of May for announcing that he had ditched their longstanding commitment to abolish university tuition fees in England, saying it was necessary to “move on” from the idea because of the economic situation facing the country. 

So how did Labour end up here? Was Keir Starmer’s announcement a surprise or simply a political inevitability? Do current and future students actually want Labour to scrap tuition fees? And where should the Labour Party go next after abandoning their previous plans? 

Our guests today are Debbie McVitty, the editor of Wonkhe – a higher education news site, and Gordon McKenzie, the CEO of GuildHE - which represents 60 smaller specialist universities and colleges.

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Covid may no longer be forcing schools to close or requiring pupils to self-isolate at home but there are still a worrying number of empty desks in schools.

Both government datasets and independent sources have confirmed that there has been a dramatic increase in pupil absences over the past year. In fact, the situation has got so bad that it is being described as the ‘new epidemic for schools’.

So what exactly is happening here? Is COVID still causing widespread illness? Is something affecting pupils at home that could in turn be affecting their attendance at school? Why have pupil absences risen in some schools but not others? And what can schools, parents and government do to reduce the rates of pupil absence in the near future?

Our guests today are Margaret Mulholland, the Special Needs & Inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, and Ellie Costello, the director of Square Peg, a parent-led group that focuses on the barriers to school attendance.

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As always, the month of May signals the beginning of exam season, with students around the country facing various challenges such as GCSEs and A-levels. 

Given the high-profile nature of these tests, EDSK has just published a brand new report called ‘Examining exams’, in which we looked in detail at why written exams have come to dominate the assessment landscape and also, perhaps more importantly, whether any other form of assessment such as coursework could and should be given a greater role in future. 

To delve into the upsides and downsides of the use of written exams, we have brought together two guests who can offer very different perspectives on the future of assessment in England. 

Dr David James is a Deputy Headteacher and regular writer on education issues, and Dr Amelia Peterson is Head of Learning and Teaching at The London Interdisciplinary School. 

You can read a summary of 'Examining Exams' or download a copy here:
https://www.edsk.org/publications/examining-exams/

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In March this year, the news that headteacher Ruth Perry had taken her own life caused a huge storm both within and outside the teaching profession after Ruth’s family claimed that a recent Ofsted inspection had contributed to her death.

In the weeks since this news emerged, a row has erupted between government and unions about whether Ofsted inspections should be paused, or possibly scrapped altogether, in the wake of this tragic incident.

However, the pressure on Ofsted was in fact growing well before we hit March because in February two new reports were published that both raised serious questions about whether we can trust the judgements made by Ofsted inspectors when they visit schools.

Our guests today are the authors of those two reports. First, Dr Sam Sims from the Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities at UCL will be taking us through the new research paper that he and his two co-authors have published on the impact of Ofsted inspectors on the outcome of an Ofsted inspection. And second, Steve Rollett, the Deputy Chief Executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, will be outlining the main conclusions from their new discussion papers about the future of Ofsted.

Paper from Sam Sims and colleagues: https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/473908/1/WP_Inspector_Effects_FINAL_020223.pdf

Paper from Steve Rollett: https://cstuk.org.uk/knowledge/guidance-and-policy/cst-discussion-paper-reforming-inspection-10-proposals/  

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On April 6th 2023, the apprenticeship levy celebrates its sixth birthday. The question now is whether the levy will get the chance to celebrate many more birthdays in future. 

The levy is essentially a payroll tax of 0.5 per cent for any UK employer with an annual wage bill of over £3 million, with the total pot of levy contributions funding the entire apprenticeship system for both large and small organisations.  

Last year, the Labour Party decided that it was time to change course and proposed replacing the current apprenticeship levy with a Growth and Skills Levy. 

So what do we know about the Growth and Skills Levy? How might employers react to a new levy system? And when the current levy has become a major source of frustration for many employers, what would a Growth and Skills Levy have to do to avoid the same fate? 

Our guests today are Kate Shoesmith, Deputy CEO at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, or REC, and Kevin Rowan, the Head of Organisation, Services and Learning at the TUC, the umbrella body for almost 50 trade unions.

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Doctors, nurses, train drivers, ambulance drivers, postal workers, university academics – the list of professions that have gone on strike since the start of 2023 is as broad as it is deep. 

On that basis, the recent strike action by teachers has certainly not come as a surprise. Even before the end of last year, teacher and headteacher unions were warning of huge discontent among their members. 

Across February and March, six days of strike action took place at a regional and national level, which inevitably caused some disruption for schools and their pupils. 

So, looking back at this spring term, what do we know about why the strikes took place and whether they could have been avoided? What have parents and the wider public made of the teacher strikes? And are we still heading for more strike action after the Easter holidays? 

Our guests today are Niamh Sweeney, the Deputy General Secretary of the National Education Union (or NEU) - the largest education union in the UK - and Ed Dorrell, a director at the consultancy Public First and former journalist.  

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The decision in 2012 to remove the duty on schools to arrange a work experience placement for all 14 to 16-year-olds was perhaps not one of the most high-profile changes made by then Education Secretary Michael Gove. 

Even so, it generated plenty of grumbling at the time, with the British Chambers of Commerce later describing the decision as ‘careless’. 

Over a decade later, the Social Market Foundation – a centrist think tank – has just published a new report calling for the introduction, or perhaps the reintroduction, of universal work experience for secondary school pupils. 

So would bringing back compulsory work experience be a good idea for pupils and schools? Would employers be willing to offer schools enough placements to deliver this proposal? And when schools are battling on so many other fronts, have teachers and headteachers got the time and energy to take on this challenge? 

We are joined today by Dr Aveek Bhattacharya, the Research Director at the Social Market Foundation and co-author of their new report, and Dr Elnaz Kashef, the Head of Research and Policy at Speakers 4 Schools, a social mobility charity that links young people to leading speakers and employers. 

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