Analysis

Curriculum review pivots away from Tories’ overtly ideological approach – but is it sufficiently radical on children’s experience of education?

19 March 2025

Snap analysis of yesterday's interim report of the government's curriculum and assessment review.

Analysis: is the “extra pay” in some academy contracts really such a good deal for teachers?

5 February 2025

Teachers at one of England’s largest academy chains are being paid nearly 20 per cent less per contracted hour than they would be if it followed national pay and conditions arrangements, calculations by this website indicate.

Why is the private control of taxpayer-funded schools continuing, via the academies policy?

29 November 2024

The story of a proposal by governors at a federation of an infant and junior school in Sussex to join an academy trust, which is ultimately in the control of individuals from a for-profit private company from the United States, shines a light on privatisation via the academies policy.

Bridget Phillipson’s focus on wellbeing is a breath of fresh air

11 November 2024

Last week’s speech by Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, was one of the most refreshing I can recall hearing from a leading government figure on education, in 27 years covering schools reform.

Seeking to marginalise outside voices is a mistake for the academies policy –and for the teaching profession as a whole

13 September 2024

I dipped into a discussion on Facebook this morning, hosted by a local councillor for a town which has seen the academies policy become a live debating issue.

Top 10 education policy scandals of the past five years

2 July 2024

What are the biggest education policy scandals of the last five years? With the general election just days away, I wanted to try to get my head around this question. For it seems right to try to set out some defining events under a government whose era seems to be drawing to a close.

Academies: education’s Brexit policy

20 June 2024

This was a piece originally written for a non-specialist audience. So bear with me as I describe an academies policy with which many of you are, of course, familiar.

Community rejecting Astrea academies’ behaviour policies as “too strict” seems significant to national debate

3 May 2024

The "Astrea Ascent" behaviour poster

Weak response from board about its chair’s twitter activity seems to underline the institutionalised remoteness of Ark Schools’ governance from the schools it runs

27 February 2024

Sir Paul Marshall. Photo: Alamy.

Initial teacher and early career education reforms: a logistical and over-politicised mess

9 February 2024

What a mess England’s reforms of teacher education and early career development are in.

New report raises important criticisms of academies structure –but fails to address its defining weakness

29 January 2024

Imagine the excitement chez Education Uncovered, on learning of a new report about the structure of schools. Not only that, but this one seemed to be taking head-on some of its multi-faceted problems, about which this website is reporting almost daily. Great stuff.

Grounds for cautious optimism: Labour laying down some principles and policy detail which might make academy controversies less likely under a future government

10 January 2024

Plans for education under a Labour government hold out the potential of taking the wind out of the sails of on-the-ground controversies which have featured heavily on this website.

The one-sentence dismissal of academies reform by Labour-leaning think thank –and why this is so disappointing

6 October 2023

My jaw hit the floor on learning of how the Institute for Public Policy Research had considered possibly the most significant education reforms of the past 20 years.

Rishi Sunak’s “rebuttal” of claims about blocked school rebuilding requests from DfE should still leave the PM facing plenty of scrutiny

5 September 2023

Is criticism, from the man who until 2020 was the Department for Education’s leading civil servant, of the Treasury’s recent record of investment in school rebuilding projects “completely and utterly wrong”?

Keir Starmer speech signals a break from the Nick Gibb “knowledge-rich” approach to education reform –and a possible battle with Ofsted over “creativity”

6 July 2023

Keir Starmer appears to have signalled a decisive break away from some central tenets of education reform under the Conservatives since 2010, a possible battle ahead with Ofsted over what matters in the classroom and a departure from seeing academy trusts as central to policy implementation.

How the Holland Park legal case gives the lie to the “better jump before we’re pushed” argument for academisation

29 November 2022

Over recent years, it has been an argument I’ve heard relatively frequently in relation to the academies policy, as schools contemplate alternative possible versions of their futures.

Oak National Academy: can it really be seen as independent of government while being “strategically aligned with government policy”?

2 November 2022

Can Oak National Academy be seen as independent of the government while simultaneously being both completely funded by the Department for Education and “strategically aligned with government policy”?

Local authorities’ proposed new academisation powers will be more sweeping even than those the Department for Education now holds

13 May 2022

New powers over academisation, which the newly-published schools bill will give to local authorities, remarkably are more sweeping even than any of those which the Department for Education itself has had since the policy was introduced 20 years ago.

What the white paper didn’t say

1 April 2022

Education Uncovered has carried a string of articles, this week and last, about Monday’s schools white paper.

“Perform or else” warning to multi-academy trusts, buried in the white paper

1 April 2022

Are England’s multi-academy trusts about to be subject to increasing intervention by the Department for Education, as ministers seek to make the model become ubiquitous across the country?

The dishonesty of the schools white paper, and why it should be called out

30 March 2022

Where to start with an article which attempts to fact-check claims in this week’s schools white paper and its associated documents?

Will the government’s all-academy ambition be rescued by…local authorities?

28 March 2022

Will local authorities ride to the rescue of the Department for Education as it seeks to achieve its strange ambition of an all-multi-academy-trust system for England’s state-funded schools within eight years?

Study, questioning government’s synthetic phonics evidence base, sets up questions for Ofsted

21 January 2022

A detailed new academic study, which concludes that the government’s approach to the teaching of reading in England is “not sufficiently underpinned by research evidence” and is “failing children”, seems to raise fresh questions for the schools inspectorate, Ofsted.

Are schools about to be given other “trust” options, beyond the academies scheme?

20 January 2022

The schools white paper, expected imminently, will see every school “benefit[ing] from being in a strong trust,” the education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, said in a tweet on Tuesday.

Plans for “academies-style” reform of the NHS set up prospect of effectively private control of state-funded hospitals

18 January 2022

Plans, reported today, for an “academy-style” model for the National Health Service would appear to pave the way for what would effectively be private control of state-funded hospitals.

Conservative takeover of education’s public bodies continues with Birbalsingh announcement at Social Mobility Commission

11 October 2021

The announcement that the traditionalist free school headteacher, Katharine Birbalsingh, is the government’s preferred candidate to oversee the Social Mobility Commission marks another step in what seems an accelerating takeover of education-related public bodies by conservatives.

“New ideas” floated by Department for Education amount to tired re-treads of initiatives which have struggled in the past

4 October 2021

Is this the best that the government can do, in terms of setting out ideas for supporting schools to get the best out of pupils as England seeks to emerge from the debilitating educational and health effects of the pandemic?

DfE use of “expert groups” and Ofsted: a sketch of recent events in initial teacher education policy, and questions

23 September 2021

My recent work on goings-on in and around Ofsted and the DfE in relation to teacher education, and in other related fields, has provoked many questions, as I reflect on what might be happening and how it compares to policymaking in my experience of covering education since 1997.

Where now for controversial current DfE policies, after Nick Gibb’s exit?

16 September 2021

Could some of the most controversial Department for Education policies currently on the stocks have an uncertain future, now that the minister most closely associated with them has been moved on?

Selection of DfE loyalist Jo Saxton as government’s choice for Ofqual post invites questions about experience, independence

21 June 2021

Trust founder’s 15-minute Facebook interview with former Brexit Party MEP fails to spell out wider pressures it is facing from DfE

11 March 2021

Why would you spend a 15-minute interview talking about the pressures from government on your academy trust, without disclosing that the Department for Education had in effect threatened to wind it up if it did not comply with a string of demands to improve its financial management and governance?

Fact-checking Rachel de Souza

16 December 2020

Rachel de Souza, the government’s pick to become Children’s Commissioner for England, appears to have made two out-and-out false statements in an appearance before MPs yesterday.

“Join our MAT and your budget will improve.” Really?

20 November 2020

Does joining a multi-academy trust really translate to an improvement in a school’s budget, compared to what it had when operating under the auspices of its local authority?

Has school which chose to ignore parent critics of its academisation gone against the Nolan principle of accountability?

16 November 2020

Have a school’s governors, who have refused to engage with parent critics of possibly the biggest decision they could ever take, violated one of the Nolan principles which they are supposed to stand by?

A case which seems to epitomise how the academies policy allows decision-makers to stick two fingers up to local democracy

28 October 2020

A school with a history dating back more than 400 years faces a decision which, while technical and complex, stands to change its control permanently.

“Chaos” as primary school’s executive board chair resigns, only for council to announce the next day that it will press on with academisation

26 October 2020

The former swimming pool at Peacehaven Heights

Williamson “blaming Ofqual”. Yet it has performed the role it was set up to do-by ministers

18 August 2020

Sanctuary Buildings, home of the Department for Education. Surely, the buck has to stop here (or with the Prime Minister), rather than with officials.

Results fiasco is symptom of the lack of trust inbuilt in the way England’s schools system has been set up

14 August 2020

In slides made available for a presentation by the exams regulator Ofqual last month, one set of statistics stood out.

2020: The year that Ofqual’s “comparable outcomes” system ran into the ground?

12 August 2020

Does the government’s reported extraordinary last-minute change to the way this year’s A-level grades are awarded spell disaster, this year at least, for the carefully-calibrated statistical system through which England’s exams regulator has controversially attempted to combat “grade inflation”?

“This experience has been horrendous”. Former Harris supply teacher describes the year leading up to being let go by the chain

17 June 2020

This is a first-person piece linked to our story today of the Harris Federation letting supply teachers go during the Covid-19 crisis

Steiner free schools debacle shows failure of government drive to promote genuine “diversity” in state system

14 May 2020

A few years ago, I watched* a short film about High Tech High, the innovative charter school in San Diego, California which sees students taught to a great extent through projects and which largely eschews exams.

Why do the UK’s failings on coronavirus planning seem to resonate with the endless dysfunctionality of English education policymaking?

13 April 2020

Why is the UK now in such a poor position on coronavirus, amid predictions that it could end up with the highest number of deaths of any European country, despite seemingly starting with the advantage of cases having ramped up relatively late here?

Could other schools be at threat after DfE described two-form entry model of secondary sections of two free schools as “unviable”?

30 January 2020

An institution which has become one of the free schools movement’s most high-profile success stories, and another at which ministers appear to have thrown many millions of pounds, are operating on a scale not much larger than that seemingly deemed as “unviable” by civil servants in relation to two former Steiner academies.

Is our school going to close? DfE: we’ve told the academy trust what the decision is and they’ll tell you in due course

23 January 2020

My jaw frequently drops to the floor in covering the academies scheme. But for summing up the problems with decision-making-in-private which is at the root of the policy’s endless weaknesses, this latest development surely takes the biscuit.

Success of School Cuts publicity drive –despite Labour’s general election defeat –shows the value of campaigning

17 December 2019

Are there any positives, in terms of the future outlook for schools, to cling to for those who backed the losing parties in last week’s general election result?

Academy trusts not living up to government governance ideals show up the weakness of regulation, and how these are effectively private organisations

10 December 2019

The news, in my investigation published today, that some 39 academy trusts appear not to be living up to government ideals in terms of how their control structures operate appears highly significant.

Is it right for state schools to be under the control of a few individuals?

7 November 2019

The investigation of businessmen’s control of academy trusts through their governance structures, as reported today by Education Uncovered, is in my view possibly the most significant published by this website since it was founded two years ago.

Not-so-hidden agenda behind controversial forced academisations would be exposed in glare of greater transparency. No wonder decision-making happens in secret

30 October 2019

How desperate does the government have to be, in its search for academy sponsors, that it is prepared to put forward trusts, to take on hugely contentious school takeovers, with the records which some of them have?