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Inside Your EdWill the debate over vocational and technical qualifications ever end?Just before the end of 2024, the Government announced the outcome of their review of Level 3 vocational and technical qualifications, which are offered to 16 to 19-year-olds along with A-levels, apprenticeships and the new T-levels.The review confirmed that many vocational and technical qualifications that were going to have their funding removed will in fact continue to be funded. Well, at least until 2026. Or maybe 2027. It depends. And lots of qualifications will be defunded in any case.Regardless, the conclusion of the review provided some welcome relief and certainty for schools and colleges. Well, maybe a bit...2025-01-2236 min
Bike 76 VA: The Virginia Bikecentennial Route 76 Podcast5. RichmondAs it circles to the east of Virginia’s capital city, the Transamerican Bicycle Route 76 passes by several locations of Richmond Battlefield Park. These facilities commemorate a Civil War battle that took place over ten days in early summer 1864. Visitors to this historical site will be able to view explanatory signs and walk along the ground where men from both sides fought and died. This experience provides insights into continuing debates over the implications of the Civil War for Virginia in the past, in the present, and into the future. This episode is connected to the capital city of Ri...2025-01-0815 minInside Your EdWhat does President-elect Trump have in store for US (and UK) education?Happy New Year and welcome back to Inside Your Ed.Regular listeners will know that this podcast usually focuses on the latest education news in England, but for my first episode of 2025 we are taking a quick trip over the Atlantic because, as you may have noticed, Donald Trump will start his second term as President of the United States on January 20th.So what plans does President-elect Trump have for K-12 education, from Kindergarten at age 5 up to 12th grade at age 18? Should colleges and universities in the US be worried about what may...2025-01-0646 minInside Your EdWhat exactly will the 'Youth Guarantee' guarantee for young people?“Labour will establish a youth guarantee of access to training, an apprenticeship, or support to find work for all 18- to 21-year-olds, to bring down the number of young people who are not learning or earning.”So said the Labour Party election manifesto in June 2024. Fast forward to the end of 2024, and the Labour Government confirmed in its Get Britain Working report that a Youth Guarantee is now up and running.However, the same report admitted that at the moment, the Youth Guarantee is in fact just a collection of existing provision and entitlements for youn...2024-12-1928 minInside Your EdCan a new education institute help politicians make better policies?When it feels like every voter and politician has their own opinion on how to run the education system in England, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a credible, independent, evidence-led organisation that provided balanced information to politicians, government officials and the public on how to solve some of the biggest policy challenges.Well, as luck would have it, a new institute called the Centre for Education Systems, or CES, was officially launched in November. The CES has been set up by three leading lights in the world of education - Sam Freedman, Luc...2024-12-0428 minInside Your EdWill the Lifelong Learning Entitlement ever become a reality?Nuclear fusion offers the tantalising prospect of being a potentially limitless source of clean and self-sustaining energy, but, as the old joke goes, nuclear fusion is always 30 years away, and has been for decades.I’m starting to get the same feeling about the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, or LLE, which was first floated back in 2019 as a new way of funding Further and Higher Education courses in England.But the LLE took years to develop and it wasn’t until 2022 that the Conservative government launched a consultation on how the LLE should operate, and even then...2024-11-2036 minInside Your EdDo tuition fees and student loans need 'major reform'?On November 4th, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson confirmed that, for the first time since 2017, university tuition fees in England will rise from £9,250 to £9,535 for full-time undergraduates. The maximum maintenance loan available to students to cover their living costs will also increase by around 3%.Although these changes will do little to allay concerns about the long-term financial health of both universities and students, Bridget Philipson also said that the government would announce further “major reform” to Higher Education funding in the coming months.If the government is indeed hunting for some major reforms then a rece...2024-11-0736 min
Bag StregenTom Richmond - Claptrap, MAD MagazineTom Richmond kom, så og sejrede på Art Bubble, og det var en sand fornøjelse at få en snak med ham om det at være karikaturtegner, og det at arbejde for MAD Magazine.
2024-10-2832 minInside Your EdDo we need to overhaul how maths is taught and assessed?If you were asked to pick out a success story from the last 14 years of education policy, I’m sure some people would point to England’s rise in the international rankings for global tests such as PISA. In 2022, England came 11th for maths, up from 27th in 2009.That’s why I was intrigued to see recent reports claim that the way we teach and assess maths needs to be overhauled to make up for several perceived problems.One of those reports came from the Royal Society’s Mathematical Futures project, with the Royal Society’s Presiden...2024-10-2341 minInside Your EdHas the 'Growth and Skills Levy' set off in the right direction?The most significant education policy launched at last month’s Labour Party conference was the release of new details about the Growth and Skills Levy, which is set to replace the existing apprenticeship levy as a way of funding apprenticeships and other forms of training.The government claims they will boost opportunities for young people through what they describe as an “ambitious” set of reforms courtesy of their new Growth and Skills Levy.But how ambitious are the government’s plans in reality? Who will be the winners and losers from their proposals? And will our appr...2024-10-0933 minInside Your EdGCSE resits: should we keep them, reform them or scrap them?It is hard not to raise an eyebrow when a government policy is described by some as a ‘vital lifeline’ for students, while others describe the same policy as ‘demoralising’ and ‘soul destroying’.The GCSE resits policy, which has been in place since 2014, continues to divide opinion among academics, researchers, school and college leaders and the frontline staff who support those students who must retake English and Maths GCSEs after not passing their exams first time around.So what is the thinking behind GCSE resits? Is the current resits policy having a positive or negative impact? And...2024-09-2629 minInside Your EdWhy are so many people talking about 'tertiary education'?Although complaints from universities about a perceived lack of funding continue to attract plenty of media attention, some very interesting shifts in policy thinking that are potentially more significant than simple questions about money are already underway.Several countries such as Australia, Wales, Scotland and Ireland have begun to talk less about universities and colleges in isolation and instead talk more about ‘tertiary education’, with the aim of bringing universities and colleges closer together in terms of how they are funded, regulated and managed.So why have these nations started thinking about tertiary education as a wh...2024-09-1242 minInside Your EdCan anyone or anything stop AI cheating in exams?Although this year’s exam season has largely passed without incident or drama, many exams and assessments throughout our education system are potentially facing their greatest ever threat in the form of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence, or AI tools.When freely available websites and apps can write entire essays, projects, articles, poems and stories as well as produce art and music among other things, it presents a daunting challenge to the teachers, lecturers and institutions trying to award fair and trustworthy grades. So what impact are ChatGPT and similar AI platforms having in schools, col...2024-08-2832 minInside Your EdHow do you solve a problem like international students?“Read my lips — I will bring immigration numbers down” said Keir Starmer during the recent General Election campaign.The Labour Party election manifesto also said that “Labour will act to create a secure future for higher education”. In isolation, both these goals are legitimate aspirations, but when you put them together it raises an interesting policy question: how will the new government approach the issue of international students coming to the UK, as these students increase immigration numbers and also increase the income of UK universities? Just before the election, the Social Market Foundation...2024-07-1738 minInside Your EdWho has the better manifesto for education: Conservatives or Labour?Sometimes a UK General Election can be a tense and nervy affair with little indication of which party will prevail. The upcoming election on July 4th is not one of those situations, with the Labour Party miles ahead in the polls and set to form the next government.However, for today we are put the polls to one side and dive into what we’ve seen and heard over the past couple of weeks from the current Conservative government and the likely next Labour government. Which manifesto has the boldest plans to reform our education sys...2024-07-0242 minInside Your EdWhat could be done to improve policymaking in education?With a General Election just weeks away, people’s thoughts are quickly turning to which education policies the next government will try to implement. I think it’s fair to say that decisions made over the last 14 years have not always gone down well with teachers and lecturers or the people running our schools, colleges and universities. But would a new set of ministers, advisors and government officials really do any better, or would they end up facing the same barriers to designing and delivering good education policies? A new book called Improving Educati...2024-06-1931 minInside Your EdWhat does the future hold for tutoring on a national scale?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 p...2024-06-0532 minInside Your Ed20 years on - is it time to revisit the '14-19 Diplomas'?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 decad...2024-05-2228 minInside Your EdDo we all agree on what 'fairness' means in education?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 syste...2024-05-0834 minInside Your EdWhy are so many pupils still absent from school?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 cu...2024-04-2431 minInside Your EdShould oracy play a greater role in primary and secondary education?“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...2024-04-1030 minInside Your EdWhy adding VAT to private school fees is more complicated than it soundsIn 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...2024-03-2631 minInside Your EdHow and why have 'academy schools' evolved over the past quarter of a century?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 ru...2024-03-1442 minInside Your EdAre universities facing a 'financial crisis'?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 wha...2024-02-2836 minInside Your EdShould we rethink how we talk about (and measure) social mobility?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 fu...2024-02-1433 minInside Your EdIs the switch from paper to digital exams finally underway?“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 sta...2024-02-0135 min
To Lead Is HumanHuman Comes Before Resources (Tom O'Brien)Welcome to To Lead Is Human. Envision how you can uplevel your leadership and shape cultures of accountability, respect, and candor.Tom O'Brien has built a long career in the field of human resources, currently serving as the VP of Human Resources at Trinchero Family Estates, a winery in Napa, California.“You got to lead from the heart. You got to lead from caring about others.” — Tom O’BrienTom O'Brien has built a long career in the field of human resources, currently serving as the VP of Human Resources...2024-01-2435 minInside Your EdWould the 'Advanced British Standard' improve 16-19 education?Almost exactly 12 months ago, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak set out his plans for all students in England to study some form of maths to age 18.Ten months later, the Prime Minister went much further by announcing plans for a single qualification – called “the Advanced British Standard” – to bring together A-levels and T-levels as well as making both maths and English compulsory to 18. Just before Christmas, the government published a consultation on how they think the Advanced British Standard could work in practice – albeit at the end of a 10-year implementation period. So what do we know s...2024-01-1737 minInside Your EdAre 'challenger' institutions in HE challenging the status quo?Welcome back to Inside Your Ed in 2024 and happy New Year to all our listeners. Speaking of things that are new, this episode is all about the new institutions - often called Challenger institutions – that have been appearing in England’s Higher Education (or HE) sector in recent years. So what is a challenger institution? What obstacles have these new HE providers faced? Have the challenger institutions been able to innovate in a way that other providers cannot? And what does the future hold for these small new institutions when the politics and funding of HE rem...2024-01-0533 minInside Your EdIs there a trade-off between apprenticeship quantity and quality?It seems as though the government are intent on continuing their crusade against what they call ‘low value’ Higher Education, with the Prime Minister declaring at the Conservative Party conference in October that he would be “cracking down on rip-off degrees and boosting apprenticeships”. Fast forward a few weeks to the Kings Speech in November, and again, the government iterated its goal to “reduce the number of young people studying poor quality university degrees and increase the number undertaking high-quality apprenticeships”. All of which raises an obvious question: if the government succeeds in reducing the number of supp...2023-12-1338 minInside Your EdTime to radically reform the way that we fund Higher Education?Ever since the Labour Party moved away from its plan to scrap university tuition fees, the debate over how to fund Higher Education, or HE, has gone rather quiet. Step forward Dr Mark Corver, the Managing Director and co-founder of dataHE, who wrote an article for the Higher Education Policy Institute at the start of November that set out an entirely new vision for how we could fund our HE system: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2023/11/08/funding-undergraduate-higher-education/ So how does Mark want to reform HE funding? What trade offs and tensions do his proposals generate? And...2023-11-2948 minInside Your EdIs Labour's 'Early Years' review asking the right questions?Regular listeners will know that we recently dedicated a whole episode to the main education stories from this year’s Conservative and Labour Party conferences, but there was one story we didn’t get a chance to look at in that episode because it was announced on the last day of the last conference. On the 11th of October, Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson outlined plans for a large-scale review of the early years sector, which essentially covers the period from birth up to the start of primary school. The review will be chaired by Sir David Bell...2023-11-1535 minInside Your EdReducing teachers' workload - easier than it sounds?If you’ve been following the recent headlines on teacher recruitment and retention, you’ll know that the government’s statistics paint a grim picture of missed targets and schools finding it increasingly hard to find enough teachers. In September, the Government decided to set up a new Workload Reduction Taskforce because ministers seem to believe that if they can reduce teachers’ workload then perhaps more people will sign up to become teachers and then remain in the profession once they get there. To help this new taskforce with their important work, I have devised three prop...2023-11-0235 minInside Your EdWhat was the best new policy to emerge from the Labour and Conservative Party conferences? This year’s party conferences could be the last big gatherings before the next General Election, so it was the perfect opportunity for the Conservative Party and Labour Party to set out their respective plans. That said, the challenges facing the two parties are very different. Can the Conservative Party convince voters that they are still the right people to oversee the education system after 13 years in power? And can the Labour Party convince voters that their ideas would improve the system that the Conservatives have overseen for so long? To talk us through the educa...2023-10-1435 minInside Your EdPupil wellbeing: what is it, and can we actually measure it?It has not been a great three and a half years to be a school pupil. The pandemic, repeated openings and closures of schools, illness and absences, exams disappearing then reappearing – it has clearly been a difficult time for many children and young people.In response, there have been numerous calls to prioritise pupil wellbeing as much as academic progress in the aftermath of the pandemic, given the disruption over the last few years. But do we all agree on what pupil wellbeing means? Can you actually measure wellbeing in a meaningful and consistent way? And...2023-09-2730 minInside Your EdShould we welcome rising state school admissions to Oxbridge?The annual cycle of school and college students applying to university, sitting their summer exams and being awarded their grades in August finally returned to normal this year after the severe disruption to delivering and grading exams caused by the pandemic. But a recent news story shows that some things in our university application system have evidently not returned to business as usual. Earlier this year, it was announced that Lucy Cavendish College at Cambridge University had become the first college at the university to admit over 90% of its students from state schools, and it al...2023-09-1440 minInside Your EdIs 'ed tech' heading in the right or wrong direction?Welcome back to Inside Your Ed - I hope you all had a good summer. Just as the summer break was getting underway in late July, you may have missed a new report published by UNESCO, an agency of the United Nations, which investigated the use of education technology, or ed tech, around the world. The report’s findings were quite startling, as they discovered that “there is little robust evidence on digital technology’s added value in education [and] a lot of the evidence comes from those trying to sell it.” When budgets ar...2023-08-3142 min
Screw The Commute PodcastRich Men, North of Richmond: Tom reacts to this songThis has to be the furthest I've ever departed from straight entrepreneur stuff, right? Even though it probably will have some entrepreneurial lessons in it this episode. But I'm going to do a reaction podcast to the historic and I mean historic song Rich Men, North of Richmond. Screw The Commute Podcast Show Notes Episode 791 How To Automate Your Business - https://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/ Internet Marketing Training Center - https://imtcva.org/ Higher Education Webinar – https://screwthecommute.com/webinars See Tom's Stuff – https://linktr.ee/antionandassociates 2023-08-2516 minInside Your EdIs it boom or gloom for young people in the labour market?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 v...2023-07-1234 minInside Your EdIs behaviour in schools getting better or worse?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...2023-06-2937 minInside Your EdHas England just become a 'reading superpower'?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...2023-06-1535 minInside Your EdLabour will not scrap tuition fees, so what should they do instead?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...2023-06-0136 minInside Your EdWhat is behind the recent rise in pupil absence rates?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 s...2023-05-1839 minInside Your EdHas the time come to say 'time is up' to written exams?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 writte...2023-05-0436 minInside Your EdTwo reports raise questions about the future of OfstedIn 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 pu...2023-04-1946 minInside Your EdIs it time to replace the apprenticeship levy with a 'Growth and Skills Levy'?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. ...2023-04-0541 minInside Your EdWhy did teachers go on strike, and are there more strikes to come?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, looki...2023-03-2231 min
12 Rows BackRichmond vs Carlton - A draw and some quick thoughtsJust some quick thoughts after tonights draw between Carlton & Richmond. How good is it to have footy back!
A solo episode from Seb with his instant reaction to the Richmond vs Carlton game and a few things that caught his eye. Also available as a video on Spotify and YouTube!2023-03-1605 minInside Your EdShould we bring back work experience for school pupils?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 ba...2023-03-0939 minInside Your EdIs 'compulsory maths to age 18' a sensible and achievable goal?In a cost of living crisis and with widespread strike action taking place across the education sector, it is always going to be difficult for the government to build momentum behind any new policy ideas. That said, there is one proposal that the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appears particularly keen on: an ambition for all pupils to study maths until the age of 18. As it stands, around half of 16 to 19-year-olds in England study some form of maths after age 16, yet the Prime Minister’s desire to increase this proportion seemed to generate more questions than...2023-02-2333 minInside Your EdThe Schools Bill is dead - what happened, and what now?Almost exactly a year ago, EDSK released an episode of this podcast about what the Department for Education should put into their upcoming Schools White Paper – which would set out the government’s plans to reform the state school system in England. The White Paper was then published in March 2022, and in May some of the plans in the White Paper were converted into the Schools Bill – which was essentially the new legislation required to implement a number of the government’s reforms. Just seven months later in December, the Schools Bill was dead, having encountere...2023-02-0938 min
Speaking of the EconomyTom Barkin on Inflation and the Fed's ResponseTom Barkin discusses the state of inflation and the monetary policy response of the Federal Reserve, as well as his outlook on the national economy. Barkin is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Full transcript and related links: https://www.richmondfed.org/podcasts/speaking_of_the_economy/2023/speaking_2023_02_08_barkin_inflation2023-02-0812 minInside Your EdHas the 2021 FE White Paper made a difference to the FE sector?Despite all the turmoil in our education system since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been occasional glimpses of long-term policymaking at the Department for Education. One of the best examples of this is the White Paper in January 2021 that set out a large package of reforms to Further Education, or FE, in England.Like schools, colleges are used to being buffeted around by seemingly endless announcements from politicians, but the FE White Paper tried to bring about change on a significant scale – with the then Education Secretary Gavin Williamson describing the White Pap...2023-01-2539 minInside Your EdTwo think tanks try to fix our childcare systemAt the start of 2023, the cost of living crisis is still dominating the news. In recent months, the government has chosen to spend billions of pounds on reducing energy bills to ease the financial pressures on households. However, ministers have paid much less attention to another significant strain on many families’ budgets: the cost of childcare. In the UK, over a quarter of parents’ joint income is now spent on childcare – around three times higher than the average across developed countries. This is largely caused by the government investing much less in childcare than in other co...2023-01-1341 minInside Your EdIs the government still interested in reforming Higher Education?Thanks to a turbulent few months in British politics, it is easy to forget that earlier this year the government announced a sweeping set of reforms to the Higher Education system in England that could have a significant impact on both students and institutions. However, two Prime Ministers later at the end of 2022, the policy environment has changed dramatically. In the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement in November, universities were barely mentioned. What’s more, those sweeping reforms from the start of 2022 appear to have slipped off the radar, and the government doesn’t even have a dedica...2022-12-1438 min
Coffee Time with ByronTom McCarthyTom McCarthy (born July 5, 1968) is an American sports broadcaster. He is the play-by-play announcer for Philadelphia Phillies television broadcasts and also calls National Football League games for Westwood One. He calls select NFL, NBA and college basketball games on CBS beginning in 2014. McCarthy previously served as the play-by-play voice of Saint Joseph's University men's and women's basketball teams. Very grateful to have my 2nd ever broadcaster on the pod. We talked about the Phillies of last year to what they need to do in this year free agency. We also talked how exciting it was to have his son follow...2022-12-1145 minInside Your EdWhy are so many apprentices dropping out of their training?On the 27th of November 2012, the then Coalition Government published a major review of the apprenticeship system in England, which had been led by the entrepreneur Doug Richard – hence the title ‘the Richard Review’. The Review put forward a wide range of reforms to the design, delivery and funding of apprenticeships – all of which were intended to raise the quality, and eventually the quantity, of apprenticeships.On the 28th of November 2022, almost exactly ten years after the Richard Review was published, EDSK released a new report that investigated whether the quality of apprenticeships has indeed improved...2022-12-0137 minInside Your EdWhat does the future hold for private schools in England?“We shall withdraw charitable status from private schools and all their other public subsidies and tax privileges. We will also charge VAT on the fees paid to such schools” said the Labour Party manifesto. In 1983. Here we are 40 years and many changes of government later with the Labour Party yet again calling for major changes to the way that private schools are treated. Government-funded schools are certainly under immense financial strain, as we discussed in our previous podcast episode, but surely private schools cannot be blamed for the difficulties faced by teachers and headteachers working in sta...2022-11-1642 minInside Your EdWhy are teachers and headteachers on the verge of strike action?As you have probably noticed, the Government has been going through Education Secretaries at quite a rate – with five people having held the post since July of this year.Given the chaotic political landscape in recent months, it is easy to forget that back in July, an important announcement was made about teacher pay.In effect, teachers and school leaders were offered a pay rise of between 5 and 9 per cent. Far from being welcomed, the pay offer was widely criticised by those in the profession.And the situation has got considerably worse since Ju...2022-11-0340 minInside Your EdIs enough progress being made with mental health support in schools?“I want children and young people to have access to mental health support in schools.” said Liz Truss during her campaign for the Conservative Party leadership this summer. Unfortunately the Prime Minister is having to deal with a few other matters at the moment, but that does not detract from how serious the issue of mental health has become. Approximately one in seven young people aged 11 to 19 in England experience at least one diagnosed disorder, with the most common being emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression along with behavioural disorders. In 2017, the Governm...2022-10-1942 minInside Your EdHow many education policies emerged from this year's party conferences?In some years, the political party conference season from mid September to early October can pass largely without incident. This year, party conference season was a bit of a rollercoaster. To kick things off, the Liberal Democrat conference didn’t happen at all, as it would have clashed with the Queen’s funeral. Then came the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, which had a spring in its step as it began to flesh out what a future Labour government may offer. And finally we had the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, which was overshadowed by heat...2022-10-0743 minInside Your EdWhat is sitting in the new Education Secretary's in-tray?The “education prime minister” was how Liz Truss described herself during her leadership campaign this summer, and she offered plenty of proposals for how she would change things from primary schools up to universities. To help deliver her education reforms, Kit Malthouse has been appointed as Education Secretary – the fourth person to take on this role in the last 12 months. Although I’m sure everyone is now hoping for greater stability at the Department for Education, the rapidly changing political and economic landscape is unlikely to make the new ministers’ lives any easier. The new Educa...2022-09-0843 minInside Your EdWhat were the major headlines from the 2022 exam season?To say that the last two years of public examination results have been controversial would be an understatement. In 2020, many students’ final grades were set by an algorithm, only for the government to change its mind and hand out the grades that teachers had awarded their students in the first place. In 2021, the government walked away from the process altogether and allowed schools and colleges to determine what grades each student should receive, leading to some dramatic grade inflation. In 2022, the plan was simple: get back to normal exams with a normal marking proce...2022-08-2638 minInside Your EdIs the government's COVID recovery plan having the desired effect?“After schools shut their gates on Friday afternoon they will remain closed until further notice. This will be for all children, except for those of key workers and for children who are the most vulnerable.” So said former Education Secretary Gavin Williamson on Wednesday 18th March 2020. Most pupils eventually returned to school in September of that year after six months out of the classroom, only for more closures to follow in January 2021. Even though many pupils have now been at school since March last year, absence rates have remained higher than usual and the res...2022-08-0544 minInside Your EdShould teaching be less art and more science?Perhaps one of the most enduring debates in the world of teaching is the question of whether teaching is an art or science. In recent weeks, not one but two new books have made a strong case for placing a greater emphasis on the science of teaching. At the beginning of June, Ross McGill – the founder of Teacher Toolkit and probably the most followed teacher on Twitter – published a book called ‘The Teacher Toolkit Guide to Memory’. Then later in June, Paul Kirschner, Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology at the Open University of the Netherl...2022-07-1441 minInside Your EdIs the government right to reform qualifications for 16 to 19-year-olds?You don’t often see teaching unions, schools, colleges, universities and education charities publicly join forces to resist a new government policy, but the debate over the future of qualifications for 16 to 19-year-olds in England has done just that. In 2016 when the government published their plans for T-levels, the new technical qualification for 16 to 19-year-olds, it raised an obvious question: what would happen to all the vocational and technical courses that were already in place? It wasn’t long before it emerged that the government’s vision was for young people to only have three options...2022-06-2941 min
3 Point Perspective: The Illustration PodcastArt of Caricature with Tom RichmondEver wondered what it’s like to be a full-time caricature artist? We sat down with MAD Magazine illustrator Tom Richmond to learn about the art and business of caricature. From theme park concessions to big-name publications, Tom illuminates every angle of this illustration niche.Sign up for SVSLearn's 14 Day Trial: https://courses.svslearn.com/bundles/subscription3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place where becoming a great illustrator starts!Click here for this episode's links and shownotes.
3 Point Perspective Podcast is sponsored by SVSLearn.com, the place w...2022-06-211h 09Inside Your EdWill the government's SEND proposals improve the lives of pupils and families?At the end of March, the government published two significant documents in the space of two days. First came the government’s plans for the future of the state school system in England, which grabbed plenty of media attention. Next came their new consultation on how to improve the support available to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (or SEND for short), which may not have hit as many national headlines but it could end up being far more consequential for pupils and families. The consultation document claimed to “outline a vision...2022-06-1643 minInside Your EdDo we need to overhaul careers education in schools and colleges?A Greek philosopher once said that “change is the only constant in life.” I’m sure that rings true for anyone working in careers education in England over the past decade. In many respects, it seems obvious that we need to provide young people with careers information, advice and guidance because they need help to find out what jobs are available, and which qualifications and courses they need to get into those jobs. Even so, the careers landscape has seen many schemes, initiatives and government agencies come and go over the years, while schools and colleges...2022-06-0643 minInside Your EdHow can we prevent young people from falling out of our education system?As the UK economy slowly emerges from the pandemic, the government has already begun withdrawing many of the schemes that it introduced to support young people over the last two years. This includes the demise of the Kickstart programme, which subsidised jobs for young people who were unemployed, as well as the incentive payments for employers who recruited apprentices during the pandemic. But the truth is that for some young people, their difficulties are far from over. Even a return to life before the pandemic will not be enough to improve their chances of making a su...2022-05-1942 minInside Your EdWill future students win or lose from the government's plans for Higher Education?Who would have thought - you wait three years for a government response to an independent review of the Higher Education system, and then two responses come along at once. Unsurprisingly, when ministers recently published their plans for the Higher Education, or HE sector, the headlines were dominated by the decision to freeze tuition fees at £9,250 for the next three years as well as some controversial changes to student loans. However, alongside those eye-catching decisions, the government opened a consultation on a separate set of proposals that they claim will “improve outcomes, access and value for m...2022-05-0541 minInside Your EdIs the National Tutoring Programme delivering what pupils and schools need?“Failing children and taxpayers”, “a bureaucratic nightmare”, a “spaghetti junction of funding”, “baking in deepening inequalities”, “pouring taxpayers’ money down the drain”.....Judging by these reviews, it is hard to conclude that the National Tutoring Programme in England has been a resounding success thus far. Having been announced in June 2020 as part of the government’s COVID recovery efforts, the National Tutoring Programme, or NTP, began operating in November of that same year. The aim was simple enough: provide primary and secondary state-funded schools with access to high-quality subsidised tutoring for 5 to 16-year-olds. So why is it that just...2022-04-2042 minInside Your EdWhat have we learned after five years of the apprenticeship levy?One of the most common criticisms of politicians and policymakers is that they keep chopping and changing between different policies, making it hard for any idea or approach to build momentum and recognition among those it is trying to reach. On that basis, perhaps we should be glad that the apprenticeship levy – which was introduced in 2017 – is still very much alive and kicking as it celebrates its fifth birthday on April 6th 2022. The levy is, in effect, a payroll tax of 0.5 per cent for any UK employer with an annual wage bill of over £3 million. Simple as this...2022-04-0645 minInside Your EdDid 'Kickstart' actually kickstart new jobs for young people?As the Chancellor Rishi Sunak set out his ‘Plan For Jobs’ in July 2020, he recognised that the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic were hitting young people particularly hard. In response, the Government wanted to generate new jobs and opportunities for them, and so the £2 billion ‘Kickstart’ programme was born. Through Kickstart, employers were asked to create new jobs for any 16 to 24-year-old who was claiming Universal Credit and at risk of long-term unemployment. In return, employers would receive a government grant of £6,500 to pay the young person’s wages for six months and cover any o...2022-03-2340 minInside Your EdWhat role do wealth and privilege play in university admissions?The ‘Varsity Blues’ cheating scandal in the United States, which began almost exactly two years ago to the day, is one of the most astonishing education stories in living memory. The rich and famous, including Hollywood actresses, hedge fund managers and a number of chief executives, paid vast sums, sometimes over a million dollars, to fraudulently boost their children’s prospects of getting into the most prestigious US universities. Mercifully, we are unlikely to witness a scandal of this scale and brazenness in this country. However, that does not mean all is well with our universi...2022-03-0946 minInside Your EdHow could you 'level up' our education system?In his foreword to the Government’s new ‘levelling up’ plans, the Prime Minister declared that “From day one, the defining mission of this government has been to level up this country” - which raises the question of why it has taken over two years to find out what ‘levelling up’ actually means. But at long last, the government has revealed all – or so they claimed. The Prime Minister accepted that we live in – and I quote – “a country in which the place of your birth is one of the clearest determining factors in how you’ll get on, what opportunities...2022-02-2443 minInside Your EdTo Baccalaureate or not to Baccalaureate? That is the questionIt is not just Prime Minister Boris Johnson who has been imploring us to BUILD BACK BETTER. Even US President Joe Biden has used this same phrase to describe his own plans to reshape America in response to the pandemic. So what would BUILDING BACK BETTER look like in the context of our education system? Plenty of attention and debate has focused on the question of what exams in England should look like in future, or indeed whether exams should exist at all. But within those same debates about the future of assessment, an interesting po...2022-02-1043 minInside Your EdWhat could and should go into the 2022 schools 'White Paper'?A new Education Secretary was appointed a few months ago, and the government feels that now is the time to reshape the schools system by publishing a White Paper, which describes their proposals for future policies and the legal changes needed to deliver them. The year, of course, is 2010 and recently appointed Education Secretary Michael Gove is about to launch his ambitious plans that would reshape state schools in England for years to come. Fast forward six years and another White Paper emerged when Nicky Morgan was Education Secretary in 2016, and here we are another si...2022-01-2646 minInside Your EdWhat problems does the government's upcoming SEND review need to solve?Special educational needs and disabilities, or SEND for short, covers a wide range of difficulties that can affect a child or young person’s ability to learn. This could relate to their behaviour, reading and writing skills, physical abilities, social skills and much more besides. Well before COVID-19 emerged, and perhaps even more so since the pandemic began, almost every major news story about SEND has used the same word to describe the current situation: ‘crisis’. So what has caused so many parents, teachers, headteachers and policy experts to talk about a crisis in special needs pr...2022-01-1345 minInside Your EdHas the government done enough to support young people during the pandemic?Looking for your first ever job can be a daunting experience at the best of times. Looking for your first ever job in the middle of a global pandemic will only make things harder. In recessions, unemployment among young people is normally one of the most visible casualties. In the economic downturn that followed the financial crisis in 2008, the proportion of 16 to 24 year olds who were out of work and outside of education reached 20%. As COVID-19 began to spread last year, the government was understandably keen to avoid a repeat of this situation, not least be...2021-12-2145 min
DatabustersS3 Episode 3 Tom Richmond talks EDSK Making Progress reportRichard Selfridge and James Pembroke's regular look at education data. The databusters welcome special guest Tom Richmond, Director of the EDSK think tank, to discuss Making Progress, EDSK's latest report on the future of assessment and accountability in Primary Schools.
Making progress The future of assessment and accountability in primary schools
Contact us on Twitter: @databusting or @jpembroke2021-12-1733 minInside Your EdAre T-levels the right answer, and if so, what was the question?In terms of name recognition in our education system, two brands are hard to beat: A-levels, which were created back in 1951, and apprenticeships, which have been around for quite literally hundreds of years. However, the question of what should sit between A-levels and apprenticeships has been debated and contested for a long time, and not in a good way. The two most recent attempts to fill the gap between A-levels and apprenticeships – first, GNVQs and NVQs in the early 1990s; and then ‘Diplomas’ in 2007 – both failed despite considerable political and financial investment. If one were to add Applied A...2021-12-0745 minInside Your EdWhy are the government's plans to reform teacher training so controversial?The government does not often find itself in a war of words with the likes of Oxford University and Cambridge University, yet that is precisely what has transpired over the past few months. But their public disagreements have nothing to do with tuition fees, student loans or university funding. Instead, it is the government’s proposed reforms to the way teachers are trained that has generated a considerable amount of friction. Anyone who wants to become a teacher in England has several options available to them in terms of how they train. For example, you can...2021-11-2446 minInside Your EdHow will the Augar Review affect the future of Higher Education?It is often said that a week is a long time in politics, and yet it is now almost four years since the former Prime Minister Theresa May announced a review of Post-18 Education and Funding to be led by Philip Augar. The Review, which was completed in May 2019, provided a detailed analysis of the whole post-18 education sector in England including universities, colleges and apprenticeships. In fact, it was so detailed that it offered 53 separate recommendations on the future structure and funding of post-18 education. But two and a half years after the Review wa...2021-11-0940 min