King’s Speech 2024: What’s in it for schools?

The new government will introduce a “children’s wellbeing bill” in the next year to legislate for a raft of its education policies, the King’s Speech has confirmed.

King Charles III told Parliament today that “a bill will be introduced to raise standards in education and promote children’s wellbeing”.

He added that “measures will be brought forward to remove the exemption from value added tax for private school fees, which will enable the funding of six and a half thousand new teachers”.

The children’s wellbeing bill will “put children and their wellbeing at the centre of the education and children’s social care systems, and make changes so they are safe, healthy, happy and treated fairly”, a briefing note from Downing Street said.

It will also “remove barriers to opportunity and raise school standards to ensure the school system is fair for every child, no matter their background”.

Many of the proposed policies had been trailed over the weekend ahead of the first King’s Speech under Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government.

There are also proposed laws that will likely affect schools in the proposed employment rights bill and equality bill.

The King’s Speech, delivered during the state opening of Parliament, sets out the legislative priorities for the government over the next year-long session.

Here’s what the government say the bills will do…

Children’s wellbeing bill

• Strengthen multi-agency child protection and safeguarding arrangements
• Require free breakfast clubs in every primary school
• Limit the number of branded items of uniform and PE kits that a school can require
• Create a duty on councils to have and maintain children not in school registers and provide support to home-educating parents
• Provide Ofsted with stronger powers to investigate the offence of operating an unregistered independent school
• Enable serious teacher misconduct to be investigated, regardless of when the misconduct occurred, the setting the teacher is employed in, and how the misconduct is uncovered
• Require all schools to cooperate with the local authority on school admissions, SEND inclusion, and place planning, by giving local authorities greater powers to help them deliver their functions on school admissions and ensure admissions decisions account for the needs for communities
• Require all schools to teach the national curriculum. This measure will be commenced after the review of curriculum and assessment is concluded and is reflected in programmes of study. The review will set the foundations to equip every child with the essential knowledge and skills for the future
• Ensure any new teacher entering the classroom has, or is working towards, Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). This will be accompanied by recognising the essential role of support staff in schools by giving them a national voice in the setting of their pay and conditions
• Bring multi-academy trusts into the inspection system and enable direct intervention when schools and trusts are not performing to the highest standards

Employment rights bill

• Reinstate the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, to establish national terms and conditions, career progression routes, and fair pay rates
• Update trade union legislation so it is fit for a modern economy, removing unnecessary restrictions on trade union activity – including the previous government’s approach to minimum service levels – and ensuring industrial relations are based around good faith negotiation and bargaining

Equality (race and disability) bill

• Introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for larger employers (those with 250+ employees) to help close the ethnicity and disability pay gaps

The sector reacts

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the ASCL school leaders’ union, said: “At the heart of these policies, there is clearly a burning desire to tackle inequities and improve the life chances of vulnerable and disadvantaged children.

“We fully support that direction of travel – it is long overdue.

But he said there was a “vital missing ingredient to these plans as they currently stand”

“That is the question of ensuring that schools and colleges are sufficiently funded not only to deal with the current huge financial pressures they are facing but in order to be sustainable in the future.

“We recognise that national finances are tight, but this nettle simply must be grasped when the government sets out its spending plans in the autumn.”

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said the measures in the bill were “largely sensible and welcome”.

He said the QTS requirement would “put an end to the degradation of the profession that happened under the last administration and helps signal a clear reset of the government’s relationship with the profession”.

“Greater consistency between academies and maintained schools is also long overdue, and it makes sense that all schools are expected to teach the national curriculum.”

But he said his union stood “ready to open dialogue with the new government to understand how the new requirement for all schools to provide breakfast clubs will work in practice”.

“It is important the government understands that there are many different ways to ensure children who need it can access before-school provision, including local partnerships and the utilisation of existing childcare providers.”