Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, announced that despite Ofsted removing single-word verdicts on schools in England, failing schools could still be forced to become academies. The new system will use current single or two-word verdicts across four categories, but schools won’t receive a single-word verdict for overall performance. Phillipson emphasized the importance of driving up standards and ensuring schools receive the necessary support for improvement, stating that she will not hesitate to intervene if schools are failing. She also mentioned the introduction of a new report card system for schools from September 2025. Despite the change in ratings, Phillipson retains the power to convert failing schools into academies if necessary.
Bridget Phillipson says failing schools could still be forced to be academies despite end of Ofsted single-word ratings – UK politics live | Politics
Bridget Phillipson says failing schools could still be forced to become academies despite Ofsted giving up single-word ratings
Here is the news release from the Department for Education about the removal of single-word verdicts on schools in England from Ofsted.
In interviews this morning, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, explained that Ofsted reports issued during the new academic year will still use the current single or two-word verdicts (outstanding, good, requires improvement, and inadequate) across the four categories covered by its inspections: quality of education; behaviour and attitudes; personal development; and leadership and management. But schools won’t get a single-word verdict applying to performance overall.
And from September 2025 a new report card system for schools will be introduced.
Phillipson said the change announced today will not stop her intervening if schools are failing, and she said she would retain the power to turn a failing school into an academy. She told the Today programme:
I want to make sure that we drive up standards, that we make sure schools are getting the support that they need to make improvement.
I won’t hesitate to take action if schools are not making that improvement because our children only get one chance when they’re at school, one chance, and we have to get that right.
Asked whether an inadequate judgment in the sub-categories could lead to a school being forced to become an academy, Phillipson replied:
It can do, or it could involve support being put in place. I retain the power to issue an order to convert that school into an academy.
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Claire Hanna set to become new leader of SDLP
Shane Harrison
Claire Hanna, the MP for South Belfast and Mid Down, is set to become the new leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) after Colum Eastwood MP announced last week that he was stepping down from the post next month.
For decades the party was viewed as the moderate voice of Irish nationalism in Northern Ireland but it has seen Sinn Féin massively overtake it in recent years.
The SDLP has also seen some of its support seep to Alliance, a moderate party that seeks support from both nationalist and unionist communities in Northern Ireland and which is neutral on whether there should be a united Ireland or whether the union should continue.
Her leadership bid has been endorsed by both Eastwood and the leader of the SDLP in the Northern Ireland Stormont Assembly, Mathew O’Toole, a former Downing Street press officer.
No other candidate is expected to stand against her.
In a statement she thanked Colum Eastwood “in friendship and respect” for his leadership of the party.
She said she was motivated to find practical solutions to the challenges being faced by communities in Northern Ireland.
“People are losing faith that Stormont and politics, more generally, will deliver for them,” she added, “They live with falling public services and a politics driven by division, dysfunction and pettiness.”
Hanna, whose parents were also leading figures in the SDLP, said the party must have the “humility” to recognise that it has to work harder to earn voter support.
We have to listen more, organise better and offer a fresh compelling message of optimism and clarity of purpose. We must engage voters, including those who didn’t grow up in the nationalist tradition [but] who share our social democratic and anti-sectarian principles.
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Kemi Badenoch, the former business secretary who is generally seen as the favourite in the Tory leadership contest, is formally launching her campaign at an event in London starting at 11am. Yesterday she posted a preview on X highlighting her feud earlier this year with the actor David Tennant, who criticised her at an award ceremony because of her lack of support for the trans community.
Badenoch’s enthusiasm for culture wars with what she sees as the leftwing establishment on issues like gender is one of the factors that makes her popular with Tory activists. But what the public at large make of this is another matter.
ShareLisa O’Carroll
Jack Chambers, the Irish finance minister, is meeting Rachel Reeves today as part of the bid to reset relations with Ireland and the wider EU after the years of strain caused by Brexit.
They will discuss Brexit barriers impact on trade – Ireland now ranks as the UK’s fourth biggest export partner – along with issues concerning Northern Ireland.
Chambers said:
Chancellor Reeves and I share a common determination to play our full part in the reset of Irish-British relations which is now well underway. These relations are of deep consequence and of course there are many strands to them – human, cultural, sporting and business.
The meeting comes weeks after the taoiseach Simon Harris instructed ministers to increase their engagement with London in the wake of the change of government in the UK.
Two-way trade between the two countries is worth more than £100bn a year but Brexit has caused exporters to return to customs documentation and other declarations.
Trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland has also been impacted with traders forced to continue to observe some EU laws relating to standards of goods in the event that they cross the border into the Republic of Ireland.
Chambers and Reeves spoke on the phone soon after the UK general election and are meeting in London today. The Irish government said:
The meeting should offer an excellent opportunity to discuss issues of common bilateral interest with a view to cooperative and collaborative relationships at both political and official levels.
The government is fully committed to a strong Irish-British relationship in all its various dimensions. This relationship has seen significant challenges in the years since Brexit, but there is now positive momentum.
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Yesterday Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said she would review “surge pricing” that allows websites to inflate prices for shows where demand is very high. She said she would act after people queuing for Oasis tickets online found prices soaring while they were waiting in the queue. Harry Taylor has the details.
In an article in the Sunday Times yesterday Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, said she wanted to reduce persistent absences from schools. She mentioned parents taking children out of school so they can go away when holidays and flights are cheaper, although that was not the main focus of her argument, and on the Today programme Mishal Husain, the presenter, pointed out that cheaper term-time flights are also a consequence of a version of dynamic pricing. She asked if the government was planning to review this too.
Asked if the government might be willing “to act on travel companies and airlines in the same way you seem to be prepared to do on ticket touts and ticket websites”, Phillipson said she agreed this as “an area that requires further consideration”.
Asked again whether she would like action to stop firms selling holidays more cheaply during term time, Phillipson again said this was “an area that I would like to consider”, but she argued that this was not the main reason for so many children missing school. She said there were many other reasons why parents were keeping pupils out of class.
Phillipson did not seem to be expecting the question about dynamic pricing and the cost of flights during school holidays, and her response sounded more of a holding answer than a statement of intent to take on the travel industry. It is hard to imagine the government doing anything that would lead to non-parents having to pay a lot more for flights during term time.
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Bridget Phillipson says failing schools could still be forced to become academies despite Ofsted giving up single-word ratings
Here is the news release from the Department for Education about the removal of single-word verdicts on schools in England from Ofsted.
In interviews this morning, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, explained that Ofsted reports issued during the new academic year will still use the current single or two-word verdicts (outstanding, good, requires improvement, and inadequate) across the four categories covered by its inspections: quality of education; behaviour and attitudes; personal development; and leadership and management. But schools won’t get a single-word verdict applying to performance overall.
And from September 2025 a new report card system for schools will be introduced.
Phillipson said the change announced today will not stop her intervening if schools are failing, and she said she would retain the power to turn a failing school into an academy. She told the Today programme:
I want to make sure that we drive up standards, that we make sure schools are getting the support that they need to make improvement.
I won’t hesitate to take action if schools are not making that improvement because our children only get one chance when they’re at school, one chance, and we have to get that right.
Asked whether an inadequate judgment in the sub-categories could lead to a school being forced to become an academy, Phillipson replied:
It can do, or it could involve support being put in place. I retain the power to issue an order to convert that school into an academy.
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In her Today programme interview Amanda Spielman, the former Ofsted chief inspector, said she thought today’s announcement about the end of single-word verdicts for schools in England implied short Ofsted inspections will end. She explained:
The other thing that I think is implied by this announcement is that the short, ungraded inspections that were all government would fund Ofsted to do for most schools will be scrapped so that it can do a full set of judgments in every inspection.
Here is a clip from the interview.
Former Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman says scrapping the one-word rating ‘is not about changing the wording of judgements’ and shouldn’t be about ‘putting the interests of schools and their staff ahead of children’.#R4Today
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) September 2, 2024
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Former Ofsted chief welcomes abolition of single-word school ratings, saying old system ‘more of problem than help’
Good morning. The summer recess is over, parliament is back, the newish Labour government is still in its hyperactive ‘early days’ stage (although no one is using the word honeymoon any more) and Keir Starmer is celebrating his 62nd birthday by making a visit to publicise the government’s announcement about the abolition of single-word Ofsted verdicts for schools in England.
This is a policy proposed in Labour’s manifesto, and it has been warmly welcomed by teaching unions who have long complained that single-word judgments were too crude. Pressure for their removal intensified after Ruth Perry, a primary school head, killed herself after learning that her school was going to be downgraded from outstanding (the best of four grades) to inadequate (the worst), even though Ofsted said it was giving pupils a good education, because of safeguarding errors.
Pippa Crerar’s overnight story about the announcement is here.
This morning Amanda Spielman, who was appointed to run Ofsted when the Conservatives were in office and who served for seven years until December last year, welcomed the change. In an interview with the Today programme, she said that although parents liked the simplicity of one-word Ofsted judgments, the system was flawed because the overall one-word assessments were too powerful. For example, schools rated inadequate had to become academies if they weren’t acadamies already. Spielman told the Today programme:
[The previous government] wouldn’t acknowledge that fear of inspection overwhelmingly related to the fear of consequences. I listened a lot to the sector. I knew that. So this a very interesting switch … I think this is beneficial for inspection, I think it’s beneficial for schools. I think it’s beneficial for parents and children …
When you survey parents, generally, they like the simplicity and clarity [of one-word judgments]. Various surveys have showed stronger support from parents for models with overall effectiveness judgments. But, nevertheless, because of the weight of consequences that government had hung on them, they had become more of a problem than a help.
I will post more from Spielman’s interview, and from the interviews the education secretary Bridget Phillipson has been giving, shortly.
The Conservative leadership contest is warming up this week. Kemi Badenoch, who is generally seen as the favourite, is giving a speech this morning and, as Harry Taylor reports, she has also given up one-word assessments. She has got a three-word verdict on the Labour government – “clueless, irresponsible and dishonest”.
Guardian readers can probably think of another recent government which might deserve this label much more.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Keir Starmer is visiting a school in London, where he will do a pooled TV interview.
10.30am: Kemi Badenoch formally launches her campaign for the Conservative leadership.
11am: The campaign group More in Common holds a briefing on research into what people who voted Tory in 2019 think about the current leadership candidates.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
12.10pm: James Cleverly, another Tory leadership candidate, gives a speech.
2.30pm: Angela Rayner, the housing secretary and deputy prime minister, takes questions in the Commons.
We will probably get various statements and/or urgent questions at 3.30pm too, but they have not been announced yet.
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Updated at 09.12 BST
Read the full story on www.theguardian.com
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/sep/02/latest-politics-live-news-keir-starmer-kemi-badenoch-james-cleverly-ofsted-downing-street-labour