A peek inside Lucy Powell’s (very full) in-tray

Lucy Powell has entered the Department for Education to an overflowing in-tray that includes SEND reforms, the curriculum review and possible teacher strikes.

Under Bridget Phillipson’s tenure the government passed the children’s wellbeing and schools act and introduced the schools white paper. Ofsted also introduced its new inspection regime. 

Here’s what Powell will face in her first few months.

Curriculum changes 

The new national curriculum is set to be rolled out from September 2028, following the curriculum and assessment review last November.

The draft curriculum is due this September for public consultation. But questions remain over whether the review could be reopened, resulting in further delay. 

The new prime minister Andy Burnham has previously stressed the need for technical and academic education to be put on an even footing.

Timing is already tight, and any delay will inevitably push the new curriculum’s introduction into the next parliament.

However, the DfE said this week the timing for implementing the new curriculum currently still stands.

As part of the consultation, it will also be announced which subjects are in phase one and phase two of the reforms, which will determine when they will be first examined based on the changes.

Phase one subjects are set to be taught at GCSE from September 2029 and A-level from September 2031, while phase two subjects will be first taught for GCSEs from September 2030 and A-levels from September 2032.

Another key decision for Powell is the future of Pearson’s SATs contract. The exams giant failed to deliver results on time this summer.

The matter is subject to an independent review by Ofsted chair Christine Gilbert, who is due to report back in the autumn.

Progress 8, V-levels and post-16 

The last government planned to “reform” the progress 8 and attainment 8 accountability measures, going against the recommendations of the Francis review to leave the measures unchanged.

At present, schools are given a progress score based on pupils’ improvement since primary school in eight subject “buckets”.

Starmer’s government proposed to change two buckets to be specifically for science qualifications, including double science, the separate sciences or computing.

English and maths would remain the first two buckets.

The remaining four would be new “breadth” buckets and would have to include a subject from two of the three categories of humanities, creative subjects and languages.

The consultation closed in May – but the outcome, due in the summer term, has not been published yet.

Powell’s department will have to decide whether to go ahead with the proposals.

New V-levels and are also being introduced, building on the introduction of T-levels. The first V-levels will be taught in digital, education and early years, and finance and accounting from September next year.

The defunding of BTECs and other applied general qualifications will begin in autumn 2027.

The DfE also aims to make 16-19 performance measures more consistent across different qualifications. Its consultation on potential changes closed this week.

SEND

SEND was one of Phillipson’s biggest projects, with the schools white paper earlier this year placing mainstream schools in the driving seat of reforms.

Phillipson planned to introduce a three-tiered offer of inclusion in mainstream schools, expect all secondaries to have an inclusion base and for leaders to produce legally binding individual support plans for pupils with additional needs.

The most controversial aspect was to limit education, health and care plans to pupils with the “most complex needs” by 2035. Powell has already faced calls to row back on this.

Councils had to submit their local SEND reform plans to the DfE in June in return for a 90 per cent write-off of historical SEND deficits. 

Powell will have to oversee the DfE’s decisions on plans submitted. She will also have to respond to the SEND consultation, which closed in May.

Pay and conditions

Potential teacher and support staff strikes also loom.

The National Education Union (NEU) is set to formally ballot on industrial action for improved funding and pay, while Unison says it will ballot this summer.

Teachers are set to receive a 3.5 per cent pay rise in 2026-27, with schools expected to fund half of this themselves.

The NEU wants the new government to make a fully-funded, above-inflation pay offer.

Support staff are also threatening to strike. In June, GMB, Unison and Unite, which represent more than 500,000 education workers in England, said there had been a “lack of meaningful progress” over pay.

Labour has re-established the school support staff negotiating body (SSSNB), and Powell will need to make early decisions about how it will operate.

The ever-moving pledge

Burnham and Powell have said they will remain faithful to Labour’s 2024 election manifesto, which included a pledge for 6,500 more teachers – though Starmer’s government repeatedly watered this down and moved its goalposts.

The DfE only released its recruitment strategy in February, saying it would focus on recruiting secondary, special and further education teachers (primary pupil numbers are now in freefall).  

Phillipson claimed the DfE had hit 70 per cent of its target in June, with 3,009 more secondary and special teachers last November than there were in 2023, and 1,646 more further education teachers.

But a closer inspection of the numbers revealed this was counting teachers recruited before Labour’s election win in July 2024.

Powell will need to decide whether to stick with the published strategy as part of the schools white paper, or whether to bring a fresh approach.

Safeguarding

In January, the DfE announced it would launch new suspensions and exclusions guidance which would encourage schools to keep more suspended pupils on site.

Ministers said schools should only send pupils home in the most serious cases of poor behaviour and violence. They also hinted that leaders may have to record internal suspensions, including the use of isolation or reset rooms.

The schools white paper said a consultation would be launched later this year, which gives Powell about four months once Parliament is back in session.

The landmark children’s wellbeing and schools act was a major milestone for Phillipson.

The legislation, passed in May, gave councils the power to request home visits for pupils electively home–educated. Councils will also have to provide education support for a child out of school if requested, and collate registers of all pupils not in school

The act has also given Ofsted the power to search suspected illegal schools.

However, many of these powers will be introduced through secondary legislation and require further work and guidance from the new education secretary.

Ofsted

Ofsted’s new inspection framework, revealed last October, replaced its controversial headline grades and removed single-word judgments.

However, leaders have warned the new regime is more burdensome, with the school leaders’ union NAHT launching a failed legal challenge in November against the changes.

Powell will have to consider whether to ask the watchdog to make further changes and how to proceed with plans for it to inspect multi-academy trusts.

In January, the DfE said trust inspections “will focus on leadership, governance and impact”.

Academies

The DfE published its annual academy trust handbook last week, which ordered trusts to publish detailed breakdowns of how cash is divvied up between their schools.

But more changes are planned. In a letter to chief executives last week, the DfE’s director of funding said the department would publish new trust standards – which will set Labour’s expectations for all academy chains – and commissioning guidance “later this year”.

It will “also issue consultation proposals on the local tier of trust governance”. DfE “will update the handbook as necessary following this”.