The Government’s new Opportunity for All White Paper will deliver for every child, parent and family, living anywhere from rural villages, to coastal towns through to the largest cities.
The White Paper will ensure that every child has an excellent teacher. By 2024, there will be 500,000 teacher training opportunities and £30,000 starting salaries to attract and retain the best teachers.
Every lesson will have high quality learning in calm and supportive environments. Furthermore, every school will have access to funded training for a senior mental health lead.
This White Paper will also ensure that there will be targeted support for every child who needs it. This is enshrined in a pledge to parents and supported by six million tutoring courses by 2024 and action to cement tuition as a permanent feature of the school system. Any child who falls behind in Maths or English will get the support they need from their school to get back on track
The school system will also work as a whole to raise standards. With trusts responsible for running schools, local authorities can be empowered to champion the interests of children.
By 2030 all children will benefit from being taught in a school in, or in the process of joining, a strong multi-academy trust, which will help transform underperforming schools and deliver the best possible outcomes for children. This will better standards so that 90% of children achieve the expected level by 2030.
Having visited them in Bassetlaw, I know that there are multi-academy trusts, such as Outwood in Worksop, doing fantastic work to improve standards in our local community. This step will raise standards across the country.
The Government is also guaranteeing that schools will offer a minimum school week of 32.5 hours by 2023. Whilst on the whole this is already the case, there are a small number of schools that do not meet this.
Finally, Ofsted will inspect every school by 2025. This includes schools rated outstanding that haven’t been inspected for several years.
This is levelling up in action. I spoke this week during the statement on the new Education White Paper and I also highlighted some of the great work going on at Serlby Park Academy in Bircotes and their initiative on oracy with Voice 21.
Finally, the Government has also announced ambitious plans to shake up the system for those with special educational needs (SEND), supporting our young people to access more specialist and mainstream support, improving assessment and linking up with health services. As somebody with dyspraxia myself, this is something I am particularly passionate about and I am really pleased to see action being taken.
