Funding, inspection, statistics

Dodgy predictions are 10-a-penny at this time of year, so I won’t add to the noise. However, I’m not going out on a limb too much by saying that 2019 will be another year of great change in education.

School leaders are used to coping with change and are well equipped to deal with whatever 2019 throws at them.

The challenge for us at NAHT, at a policy level at least, is to encourage the government to make positive rather than negative interventions.

January brings the annual appearance of Ofsted’s chief inspector before the Education Select Committee to discuss her Annual Report.

The elephant in the room during the Annual Report’s launch last month was school funding. An annual health-check of the nation’s education system is incomplete without a view about whether the demands placed on schools can be met within the current financial picture. The time has come when Ofsted must take a view on this issue. I wonder whether Robert Halfon, the Education Select Committee’s chair, will ask the chief inspector for one. Under his chairmanship, the committee has moved further towards the concept of a 10-year funding plan for education, in much the same way we have seen in the NHS. Some long-term policy-making of this nature could well be a good thing and may be the only thing that allows the government to give itself permission to increase funding.