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24 July 2026

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Opinion

Transparency is needed from schools commissioners, not marketing

Six months ago I sat in a room in Oxfordshire full of top school leaders – mostly chiefs of multi-academy trusts – and chaired a discussion where they could ask education policy experts questions. To my surprise, the most popular questions were about regional schools commissioners (RSCs). What were they for? How much of a […]

Forget the local school model, we need to break the housing price influence

The evidence is clear: local schools favour well-off parents, while more enrolment in publicly-funded private schools increases equity. The government should be encouraging more private providers to enter the market Every child should have the opportunity to succeed educationally. But for many, education equity is hard to come by. Disadvantage has proven stubbornly difficult to […]

Why the latest research shows heads should give teaching assistants space to do their jobs

The Education Endowment Foundation has released its latest research on new tools for teaching assistants and called for them to be used more effectively in schools. Here, senior researcher Jonathan Sharples explains why the research is significant. One of the challenging aspects of conducting honest, robust evaluations is that they often suggest, honestly and robustly, […]

Randomly allocating places in over-subscribed schools is the fairest option

As parents find out if their child will go to their preferred secondary school, Alastair Thomson considers what governors can do to stop lengthy appeals. Each year schools get a hard lesson about how they are perceived when parents express preferences for where their daughter or son should be educated. Eight years ago I was […]

‘No excuses’ is not a solution for angry teens

Insisting disadvantage can be fixed with a traditional academic curriculum and a strong dose of discipline is not engaging with the issue. That method did nothing for my sister, and it will do nothing for others like her, says Kiran Gill Last term there was a predictable exam hullabaloo when school GCSE data was published. […]

Does anyone know how many teachers we need?

There is a crisis in recruitment, not helped by low pay, the tangled and defragmented employment process and the Department of Education massaging the figures. And there’s no sign that this shortage will improve Teacher vacancies have rocketed, with more and more teachers employed without a degree in their subject and more and more leaving […]

The seven deadly sins of executive headship

Taking on the role requires a new set of skills. It’s easy to lose the personal touch you had before, but to move on you need to abandon what you previously held on to in order to grow and develop. Toby and Russell look at the perks and pitfalls of the role and how to […]

Education bill: Who will pay the bills as academies are passed around between trusts?

With the late inclusion of academies and free schools in new coasting schools legislation, schools could be passed around like Premiership footballers, leading to worries over costs, warns Phil Reynolds. The government has been very clear in their vision to ensure that school performance is not ‘coasting’ and their target to make every school in […]