Friday Five: teachers’ pay, private school VAT, apprenticeships, school attendance, OfS review

by

2nd August 2024

1. 5.5% teacher pay recommendation accepted by Reeves

Teachers’ pay will rise by an average of £2,500 from September following Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ announcement that she accepts ‘in full’ the School Teachers Review Body recommendations on pay. The report, published this week, called for an increase to teachers’ pay of 5.5% across the board. Following the rise, the median salary for a teacher in 2024-25 will be £49,000, according to government figures.

The pay rise is part of an additional £1.2 billion the new Government has promised for schools. This rise will ‘fully fund’ both teachers’ pay increases and a proposed pay increase for support staff.

More detail from SchoolsWeek is here.

2. Government publishes detail on its private school VAT plans

This week the Government published details on exactly how its plan to charge VAT on private school fees will work. The changes, which come into effect in January 2025, will see all education and vocational training supplied by a private school ‘subject to VAT at the standard rate of 20 per cent.’ Any fees paid from July 29th 2024 for the school term from January 2025 will also be charged.

The Government has also confirmed that pupils with education, health, and care plans that state their needs can’t be met by the state sector will be exempt. Local authorities, which are responsible for funding private school places for pupils on these EHC plans, will be able to reclaim the VAT they have paid.

The full technical note is here.

3. Latest data paints mixed picture for apprenticeships

The latest apprenticeships data release shows starts and achievements by employer industry for the 2021/22 academic year. Combining Individualised Learner Record (ILR) and ONS data, the release reveals that: 

  • The number of apprenticeships in ‘smaller’ employers has increased by 13% on the previous year, and similarly 13% for medium sized employers
  • Most industry sectors still have fewer apprenticeship starts than in 2018/19 (before pandemic), but more starts than in the previous year
  • The industry sectors with the largest proportional falls in apprenticeship starts since before the pandemic are the ‘Arts, Entertainment and Recreation’ sector (down by 29%

Increased uptake of apprenticeships is largely a good thing. However:

  • The 46% increase in starts for apprenticeships in “Accommodation and Food Services Activities” may reflect an increase in employers using the lower apprenticeship minimum wage as a route to pay younger restaurant and bar employees less than minimum wage (with low quality, or no, accompanying training and upskilling) 
  • The 20% fall in starts in “Manufacturing” may reflect concerns in our report for government’s Skills Commission on Higher Technical Qualifications that apprenticeships are failing to provide the higher technical skills that are increasingly key to the manufacturing sector 

The full data release is here.

4. New attendance figures for 2023/24 published

The Government has published school attendance figures for the 2023/24 academic year up to 12 July 2024. Headlines are that the overall absence rate for the academic year to date is 7.1%, with the persistent absence rate remaining high, sitting at just over 20%. Absences are higher in state-funded special schools (13%) than state-funded secondary (9%) or primary (5.5%) schools.

That the persistent absence rate remains high continues to be a particular worry. The new Government’s manifesto contains a number of policies designed to bring this rate down, and I’ve written previously about how the Government must make sure it looks beyond the school sector to other factors impacting attendance if it’s serious about tackling this problem.

The full data release is here.

5. Findings from the Independent Review of the Office for Students published

The Independent Review of the Office for Students (OfS) has published its findings this week. Main findings and recommendations from the report are that:

  • To work effectively, the OfS needs greater clarity of remit from the Department for Education. The report argues that as the OfS’ remit has grown, its ‘clarity of focus’ has ‘diluted’. In other words, it’s being asked to do too much.
  • The OfS should take a greater role in championing the needs of students.
  • The OfS should do a better job of ‘anticipating, identifying, and responding rapidly’ to risk.
  • The OfS should develop a ‘comprehensive stakeholder strategy’ to develop its wider relationship across the sector.

The full report and recommendations are here.

That’s all for this week! If you found this blog useful, please be sure to share/tweet it and follow @theCfEY, @conorcarleton, and @Barristotle, for future editions.