Insights

February 5, 2020

BESA Policy Update January 2020

As death knell chimes for half the cabinet, it’s time for Williamson to breathe live into an education agenda.

Big Ben’s bells may not be set to bong for Brexit but, for many government ministers, 11pm on Friday will sound the end of their time in cabinet.

February 20, 2020

BESA representations to HM Treasury Budget 2020

Ahead of the proposed Budget on 11 March 2020, BESA has provided written submissions to HM Treasury.

March 13, 2020

Pandemic Politics: DfE prepares to publish school closure guidance, as businesses seek comfort in Budget announcements

Forty-two days on from Brexit and the panicked nature of British political debate continues on. Questions of stockpiling and emergency food parcels continue to rule the airwaves, while popularised acronyms have swapped places with the WTO giving way to the WHO.

January 10, 2020

Policy Briefing 10.01.2020

In the week Downing Street launched Conservative Friends of Education, a new policy forum tasked with restoring “ambition” and “a culture of high achievement” to the British education system, it was perhaps unsurprising that the question of school improvement returned to the top of the national debate

November 1, 2019

Policy Update 01.11.2019

In the week that it was decided that the Welsh education system will undertake its biggest curriculum reform in a generation, it is perhaps time to check-in with what’s happening curriculum-wise in England. As you know, on September 1st, Ofsted’s new Education Inspection Framework (EIF) came into force, with the updated guidance now providing that Ofsted’s 158 inspectors must look beyond the mere headline data of examination results to consider the breadth and depth of a school’s curriculum.

August 2, 2019

Policy update 02.08.19

The UK’s new Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson MP, has outlined the three priorities that will be at the heart of his education policy. In an interview published last weekend in his local constituency newspaper, Williamson said he would devote his time at the DfE to further education (FE), free schools and funding- or the three ‘Fs’ as he called them.

April 3, 2020

Policy Update 03.04.20

In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, a number of political commentators compared Boris Johnson to the fictional mayor in Jaws. Steven Spielberg’s mayor refuses at first to accept that a shark is responsible for the fatal attacks that, one by one, pick off the affluent holidaymakers on which the town relies- instead attributing the deaths to freak boating accidents.

July 3, 2020

Policy Update 03.07.20

Government publishes Plan A for school return, but Plan B is the elephant in the room It is perhaps worrying that the most significant paragraph to feature in the school reopening guidelines published by the Department for Education on Thursday, was also the one that seemed, of all the document’s pronouncements, to say the least. … Continued

September 4, 2020

Policy Update 04.09.20

Suppliers should prepare for secondary school closures Tens of millions of pupils, most wearing face marks, have headed back to school in England, France, Belgium, Poland and Russia this week, as schools across Europe cautiously reopened amid spiralling numbers of new coronavirus cases in several countries. Research by the Charité Institute in Berlin concluded that … Continued

October 4, 2019

Policy Update 04.10.19

Conservative Party Conference 2019:   Gavin Williamson outlines plans for new wave of Maths Schools “Education will be at the very heart of government policy” Gavin Williamson announced upon becoming Secretary of State for Education in July 2019. If the agenda of this week’s Conservative Party Conference was anything to go by, Williamson is indeed … Continued