On Thursday 4th July 2024, the Labour Party won a resounding victory in the UK General Election.

In their election-winning manifesto, Labour’s number one pledge within their mission to ‘break down barriers to opportunity’ was to recruit 6,500 new teachers.

This pledge for 6,500 teachers has been repeated many times by government ministers in the 12 months since the election, but we’ve hardly heard anything about how the pledge will be delivered, or what it means in practice for schools and colleges.

So, what exactly was the original pledge that Labour made in their election manifesto? Why is it proving so difficult for the government to even define their pledge, let alone deliver it? And what risks lie ahead as the Government tries to attract more people into the teaching profession?

My guests are James Zuccollo, the director for school workforce at the Education Policy Institute, and Jack Worth, an education economist and school workforce lead at the National Foundation for Educational Research.

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On June 11th, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the result of the Government’s Spending Review, which confirmed the budgets that each government department will have until 2028.

The Department for Education, or DfE’s budget will rise from £101 billion to £109 billion over this period – an increase of 0.8% after adjusting for inflation.

So, is the Spending Review outcome a good or bad result for the DfE? How did schools, colleges and universities fare in relation to each other within the DfE’s spending plans? And what question marks remain about how the DfE will prioritise its spending going forward?

My guests are Katie Carr, an Associate Director at the consultancy Public First, and Dani Payne, Senior Researcher at the Social Market Foundation think tank.

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I think most people would agree that England’s rise up the international education league tables over the past decade or so has been a welcome sign of progress.

But when government funding is now in such short supply and is likely to remain so for some time yet, sustaining this recent progress may become increasingly challenging.

A new report from IPPR and Ambition Institute, written by Loic Menzies and Marie Hamer, argues that the way in which we support and invest in the teaching workforce through continuing professional development, or CPD, may be the key to unlocking higher education standards in future.

So, what does this new report want to change in terms of how we invest in teachers and leaders? How easy would it be to convince teachers, leaders and schools to spend more time and money on CPD? And could improving the quality and quantity of training go some way to convincing more people to stay in the teaching profession?

My guests are Avnee Morjaria, associate director for public services at IPPR, and Loic Menzies, an associate fellow at IPPR and co-author of this new report.

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