New Education Minister – Michael Gove

There is a new man at the DCSF. Michael Gove.

Here is a reminder of the Conservative education policies.

For Pupil Premium read Lib Dem figures (£2.5bn suggested in their manifesto).

The Conservative Party Manifesto – Education Section

Here is a summary.

Headlines

• Reinforcing discipline and raising the entry requirements for trainees entering the profession.
• Improving the curriculum and exam system – reforming curriculum under subject headings, keeping tests and tables, getting universities and academics to define examinations.
• Estabilising new Academies and creating a pupil premium.

Better teachers and tougher discipline

• Enhance status of teaching profession.
• Heads to have the power to pay good teachers more.
• Expand Teach First and create Teach Now and Troops to Teachers to get career changers and ex-services personnel into schools.
• Heads to have final say on violent incidents and exclusions.
• Raise entry requirement for taxpayer-funded primary school teacher training.
• 2:2 required to get state-funded teacher training.
• Top Maths and Science graduates will have student loans repaid if they go into teaching.
• Teachers protected from false accusations.
• Home-school behaviour contracts to be strengthened.

A rigorous curriculum and exam system

• Synthetic phonics to be promoted and more training for teachers.
• Simple reading test at age 6.
• More challenging National Curriculum – Primary curriculum organised around subjects ‘like’ Maths, Science and History.
• Setting to be encouraged in Primary School.
• Key Stage 2 tests and league tables to be kept and made more rigorous.
• Universities and examinations to be made more robust by giving universities more say over their form and content.
• Technical Academies to be formed in 12 cities.
• School League tables to include data on most and least able.
• IGCSE and BACC to be offered in State Schools.
• Separate Sciences to be offered in state schools (Biology, Chemistry, Physics)
• 20,000 new apprenticeships created.
• Schools and colleges to offer work place training.
• All performance data at DCSF to be published.
• Free online database of exam papers and mark schemes.

Giving every parent access to a good school

• Any good education provider to be able to set up a new Academy.
• New Academy schools in most deprived areas of UK.
• All exisiting schools can become Academies with ‘outstanding’ schools pre-approved.
• Primaries can become Academies.
• Pupil Premium to be introduced providing extra funding for disadvantaged children.
• No more closure of special schools and no to inclusion.
• More rigourous Ofsted regime focusing on performance in the core areas of teaching and learning.
• Schools in ‘special measures’ for more than 1year will be taken over by Academy provider.
• Give parents power to save local schools and allowing schools to run community smaller schools.
• Give Academies more freedoms.
• Inspect failing schools more often and best schools visited less frequently.

Filed under: Blog entries by ben