Making Music: Lib Dems back more music

Posted on September 20, 2026 by John Howson

This morning Lib Dems discussed a motion at their Conference that Music Matters, Here is the text of my speech and a link at the end to the video and how it was delivered from the podium.

F15 Music matters

Conference, This November, one of Oxfordshire’s youth orchestras will play at the Schools’ Prom. We are lucky to still have a music service. However, the capping of the grant from Westminster since 2014 has made running the service so much harder, and restricted the work that the service can do with schools.

I fully support this motion; music is a vital part of our economy. Shame on Labour for abolishing the bursary for trainee music teachers: the result, a fall in trainee numbers, and fewer music teachers in 2027.

But, let me focus on the lines 59&60 about the aim for 1,000 extra teachers. I am afraid that this is pie in the sky.

This year there have been around 500 vacancies for music teachers in state schools across England. With pupil numbers falling over the next decade, our schools would not employ an extra 1,000 teachers even if we could recruit them.

This year’s 500 offers of training places have been made from less than 700 applications. That’s an offer rate of over three quarters and will probably result in fewer than 300 trainees.

If we want more teachers, then we need to increase the pipeline of graduates and either stop universities closing courses or design new teaching apprenticeships for those with skills in music not appreciated by traditional music degree courses.

Conference, we need more music in schools, whether primary, secondary, or special schools and certainly in Further education, the forgotten sector for non-vocational music making.

Let’s ensure it is the Liberal Democrats that makes this happen.

Support the motion Link to delivery at roughly 30.30 on the video F15 Music matters

But, let me focus on the lines 59&60 about the aim for 1,000 extra teachers. I am afraid that this is pie in the sky.

This year’s 500 offers of training places have been made from less than 700 applications. That’s an offer rate of over three quarters and will probably result in fewer than 300 trainees.

Conference, we need more music in schools, whether primary, secondary, or special schools and certainly in Further education, the forgotten sector for non-vocational music making.

Let’s ensure it is the Liberal Democrats that makes this happen.

Support the motion . Here is a link to the video Autumn Conference 2026 – Sunday Morning – YouTube my speech is at 30.30

Support the motion

Schools in rural and coastal areas: issues and concerns

Posted on September 19, 2026 by John Howson

Today was the first day of the annual Liberal Democrats conference. This year it is being held in Brighton. A motion today was about rural and coastal education and the need to recognise the issues children and young people living in these areas fare.

I was privileged to be call to speak in the debate. What follows is the text of my speech. for what I actually said, please go to the recording at: Autumn Conference 2026 – Saturday Morning – YouTube at 1:22:10 for the next 4 minute

Rural & Coastal Education

Conference, I have sympathy with this motion but, while like all of you I know what ‘rural’ means, I am less sure about what ‘coastal’ means. Does the term include cities such as Liverpool, Hull and Brighton, and are they markedly different to Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham? As a one-time geography teacher, I need to think carefully about what are the locations such a place-based policy might exclude.

Sadly, the motion doesn’t have much our MPs can campaign on. So, here’s three ideas linked to the spirit of the motion for them to campaign upon and that voters will understand.

Raise the free Home to school transport age to 18 to bring it into line with the learning leaving age. This will end the cliff edge at 16. Ensure everyone can get to college to study the course they want. Raising the £1 fare maximum age from 16 to 21 would be a start.

Importantly, revise the 2006 Education Act to include Academies or watch Academy Trusts close schools without any controls.

Look at taxation, such as motor insurance tax for those in rural and coastal areas forced by a lack of public transport to use a moped or car, but too young to have any ‘no claims bonus’. This tax is a penalty on learning for these young people, and a real disincentive to study.

Finally, much of both local authority and parent’s school transport cash goes back to the government in taxation. Urban authorities don’t pay this fuel tax, and neither should rural areas.

Living in a rural area should not mean a tax on learning for young people. Ater all, they don’t have a choice.

Conference on education, The message is simple, the message is clear, the message is from the Liberal Democrats:

Equal access to Education for Everyone.

Please support the motion.

The motion was passed both by the audience in the hall and the delegates following on-line.

Is the Teachers’ Pay Award fully funded or not?

Posted on September 18, 2026 by John Howson

Earlier this week, the Secretary of State wrote to the National Education Union(NEU) about funding for the Teachers Pay Settlement. I cannot find the text of the letter on the DfE’s website, but the NEU helpfully stated that:

The NEU has secured through negotiations with the Secretary of State for Education a fully funded pay increase for all teachers throughout England. This is a significant step. In a letter to the General Secretary of the NEU Lucy Powell outlined her proposals for funding alongside a willingness to address issues around accountability, workload, and well-being. NEU secures from Government full funding for teacher pay offer | National Education Union

Since then, doubts have been cast upon whether there is enough money for a ‘fully funded’ pay rise for all teachers. Given that the NEU was considering industrial action over pay, this statement looked like a real win for the Union.

However, this announcement was never likely to create produce a ‘fully funded’ pay increase because of the manner in which the National Funding Formula for schools operates. Schools have different mixes of staff salaries, some have many inexperienced teachers near the bottom of the main scale, whereas other schools have many long-serving teachers at the top of the Upper Pay Spine. Schools also differ in how they reward additional activities with Teaching and Learning responsibility points (TLRs). The Formula cannot take these differences into account.

Asa result, some schools would be more than fully funded and other left still needing to find the rest of the pay award.

Subsequently, it seems that the DfE assumed that the funding for the pay award will come for the saving schools experience as a result of the reduction in the employer’s contribution to the non-teaching staff pension scheme: the LGPS. That seems like wishful thinking to many commentators, including myself.

First there are a number of LGPS Pools, with different outcomes, and hence different rates of employer contribution. As a result, a school with a high percentage of staff at the top of the Upper Pay Spine, few support staff and located in an LGPS fund with one of the higher contribution rates will fare far less well from this announcement than a school with the opposite profile.

Also, making an announcement in September mean that every school budget is already set, and the only spare cash is in any ‘contingency’ line on the budget. The DfE should know that fact. As a result, this announcement looks like either something of a face-saving act or another of the Labour government’s gross miscalculations. Either way, it seems likely many schools, if not most, will have given only a faint cheer on hearing the announcement, if they managed to raise a cheer at all.

I am told that the DfE clawed back the savings from reductions in employers’ contributions to the Teachers Pension Scheme. Unlike LGPS, where there are real schemes, with investments than can go up and down, the TPS, like the Civil Service Pension Fund, doesn’t actually exist as a fund, but is held by The Treasury as a notional fund.

70 Up

Posted on September 16, 2026 by John Howson

Like many of my generation, I watched 70 Up on TV last night with very mixed feelings. I first came across what was originally an ITV World in Action documentary called ‘7 UP’ when lecturing to trainee teachers at Oxford Polytechnic, as Oxford Brookes University then was, in the 1980s. The film was part of a module called ‘Societal Issues in Education’. The original documentary was about the lives and aspirations of 20 different children selected by the producer from schools across England. Eventually, it became series, revisiting the group every seven years.

Looking at the first part of 70 UP, the final two-part episode that both recalled the past lives of those willing to participate every seven years, and caught up with them for a final time at age 70, I was struck by what was missing from the series. No child with a visible disability, only a nod to even the possibility of multi-cultural Britian, as it already was becoming in 1964, when the original programme first aired. A group of children both very different from those that might be selected today, but in many ways a group still to be found in many schools today.

We have been privileged to share the lives of this particular group, and one must thank them for taking part in such a public recording of many aspects of their personal lives. Some played to the camera, and obviously enjoyed the experience; others didn’t, and dropped out, while others, while not enjoying the experience still participated.

What is striking, and heartwarming in the first part of 70 UP is the nature of relationships the group formed. Some survived, some didn’t. That’s not surprising, as the past 60 years have seen great changes in both divorce laws and the fluidity of relationships at all ages.

Every participant was a star. For many, the boy from the children’s home that went on to not only make a family with his partner, but also to foster 170 children in care, was a real star. Fostering demands real respect, as I know from my time as a county councillor just how difficult it is to recruit carers. If 70 UP persuades just one family to contact their local authority and offer to become carers it will have been worthwhile.

Not all the episodes were easy to watch, especially those filmed in the 1970s when teenagers were finding their feet. It is worth noting how many went to Oxford University, and that says much about the sampling, especially of the original participants from private schools.

The women in the group joined 7 UP before the equal opportunity’s legislation of the 1970s, and it shows in those that worked rather than had careers. There were also fewer of them, again I suspect a sign of the times and attitudes in the early 1960s, before the sexual revolution and the ‘swinging sixties’.

Next week, there will be the final part of the series. 70 UP had a new producer, the previous, and only other producer, died after 63 UP was produced. Not surprisingly, not all the original participants survived to 70.

Indeed, I worry, that the treatment of the death of one of the original group of participants reveals both the best and worst of television in its mission to entertain; inform and educate its viewers.

Social mobility and the far right

Posted on September 13, 2026 by John Howson

The announcement that that Social Mobility Commission is to be abolished was announced when I was on holiday. As a result, I have only just caught up with news of its demise – one of the few QUANGOs to escape previous culls. While the term ‘class’ for its replacement within the civil service may be more ‘in your face’ than ‘social mobility’, I suppose it fits better with the debate about ‘White working class boys’ that has featured in many discussions about educational attainment during the past decade.

I am sad to see the Commission abolished. Taking work back into government departments inevitably makes policy discussion less transparent, and places greater emphasis on the work of think tanks. The Commission has had something of a chequered history, as might be expected given its role and the fact that rt worked under a Conservative government for most of its life. I documented one such event in this blog post from 2017 Social Mobility Commission | John Howson that interestingly also mentioned AI, and the risk of the rise of the ‘far right’.

‘With the IT revolution once again picking up speed, and predications of massive job losses from the growth in Artificial Intelligence awakening the Luddite mentality in many of us, the Commission must act not only as the government’s conscience on social mobility, but also as a source of genuine new policies that are radical and forward thinking. More of the same just won’t work.

We have seen in Germany that the failure to ensure the success of the economy across the whole country has inevitably led to the rise of the far right in politics. Social mobility is important, but we cannot ignore those left behind. They must not become the poor relations kept, for ever, out of sight.’ Social Mobility Commission | John Howson Still, it is sad to see a Labour government abolish it.

I had a number of discussions with officials at the commission over the years, most notably about teacher supply matters. The following post followed the publication of one of the Commission’s reports in 2019 We cannot ignore those left behind | John Howson and also shows that, even under Conservative control, those of us from all political parties concerned about the issue of deprivation and education were able to have our voice heard: such is the value of good quality scrutiny.

One of the key outputs from the Social Mobility Commission was its annual State of the Nation Report. It will be a disappointment to lose that scrutiny, and I hope civil servants will either want to continue it or ask The Office for National Statistics to take it over. Here are a couple of links to my blog posts about the report:

Class rules: not OK | John Howson

Industrial revolutions alter a country’s geography | John Howson

Birds of a feather | John Howson

As I write this on a Sunday morning, I am reminded of the phrase in Matthew’s gospel at Chapter 26 and Verse 11: ‘The poor you will always have with you.’

That statement is not an admission of defeat, but a call to arms’. Abolishing the Social Mobility Commission must not weaken our mission for a more equal society. Now, I wonder where that advocation will feature any policy resulting from the spending of the £76 million pounds received by a political party this week?

Music Teachers: demand and supply

Posted on September 11, 2026 by John Howson

As part of its monthly review of applications by graduates to train as a teacher, this blog has often commented upon the issue of whether there will be sufficient new teachers of music. This blog has also condemned the withdrawal of the bursary for music by the Labour government.

Wearable glasses: a need for a new school rule?

Posted on September 10, 2026 by John Howson

This post on LinkedIn caught my eye recently. It adds yet another challenge to schools trying to keep pupils and staff safe in an ever-changing world, where technology is continually throwing up new challenges.

A small request as the new academic year begins. As Meta glasses and other wearable technologies become more common, ‘covert’ recording in classrooms is going to become increasingly easy. I get that it happens, maybe it shouldn’t but it does.

Personally, I really don’t mind being recorded; if a student genuinely thinks having a recording of part of a session will help them revisit an explanation or support their learning, I’m pretty relaxed about it. ,Indeed, if the reason was genuine, I’d probably be quite happy that there’s another way for you to digest the information I’m trying to deliver.

But please ask first.

Ater reading this post, and considering the debate around mobile phones in schools, I wonder if I can see a new school rule being developed, perhaps along the following lines:

Any pupils, staff and visitors wanting to wear glasses on school premises must register a photograph of those glasses with the school office, and notify the school office of any change.

Pupils and visitors should be aware that cameras at entry points and classroom doors check anyone entering the school wearing glasses to ensure that they are of the registered design.

The rule is to protect everyone (pupils and staff) from the use of unregistered recordings within the school premises. It is just an extension of the current photo pass rules, but adapted to cope with new technology.

If we are going to be wiped out as a species by AI, sometime before my 90^th birthday, then is this issue worth worrying about. I don’t know, but I do know keeping vulnerable young people safe is an essential role for the State, and its agents, as well as private sector organisations that offer services to young people and vulnerable adults.

I would be interested to hear what others think? Over-reaction, as I think knife arches are in schools, or a sensible approach to a possible problem? What degree of risk are we willing to accept? I don’t want knife arches in schools | John Howson

It was the mass killing of pupils 30 years ago in Dunblane that started the drive to ensure the safety of those in schools. So far, compared with what is happening around the world, especially in countries where guns are commonplace, England has avoided large scale attacks, but, as I know from personal experience, one attack is one too many.

Teacher retention versus recruitment: not just a matter of economics

Posted on September 10, 2026 by John Howson

This week, the Education Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank with left leanings, published another report about the value of ensuring teachers don’t leave the profession compared with trying to boost recruitment. Their latest report is called Retain or Recruit? Microsoft Word – EPI_RetrainRecruit_September2026 and follows on from their earlier report on a similar topic, reviewed in my blog post from 2022, ‘Keeping Science Teachers in Schools Keeping science teachers in schools | John Howson Both EPI reports were supported by The Gatsby Foundation, a body that has a long and honourable history of supporting research in this field.

The latest EPI report makes three recommendations:

Fund a specialist-equivalent retraining programme

Close the data gaps on completion, post-programme teaching, and demand

Add retraining alongside bursary policy, not in place of it

Microsoft Word – EPI_RetrainRecruit_September2026 page 53.

I am all in favour of re-training, if there are the teachers with sufficient knowledge, skills and desire to retrain to do so located in the schools that need them. After all, with an open labour market for teachers, using price as a mechanism for attracting teachers to work in schools without teachers capable of delivering physics at an advanced level hasn’t worked.

However, the EPI report does need to be set into the current context of falling pupil numbers that will eventually affect the size of sixth forms. As I demonstrated in an earlier post, Are small sixth forms a good idea? | John Howson small sixth forms often don’t perform well. Is it worth making sure any first tranche of retrained teachers would be in schools with a viable future, and the possibility of a credible ‘A’ Level programme? However, this is a much wider issue than just teaching physics to ‘A’ level that a future government may need to deal with at some stage.

I am all in favour of ensuring we know who teachers what to whom, and indeed what isn’t being taught in some schools because of the lack of a qualified teacher. I wonder whether this information already exists within the School Workforce database? If not, some sampling of schools might be useful. The 1999 study that I participated in showed that ‘Teaching ‘A’ Level physics was an important driver in retention of early career teachers. I guess it might also be for those retrained. We know for ‘A’ Level entries the schools not currently entering any candidates for the subject.

It is also worth recalling the EPI previously visited this issue in 2018, as I noted in my blog post Pay physics teachers more than history teachers? | John Howson when the issue of differential pay was discussed. Mechanisms around recruitment and retention incentives and equal pay for jobs of equal worth can bedevil that debate.

Finally, it is worth considering whether programme such as Teach First have a better rate of retention than other ITT routes, including apprenticeships and salaried schemes.

We all want more teachers of physics, so I hope that decision-makers consider the EPI approach seriously, as they did with pre-ITT course subject enhancement courses.

NEETS: the journey starts at six not sixteen

Posted on September 9, 2026 by John Howson

In my previous post, I looked at the PISA survey comments about teachers. I am sure that there is a degree of correlation between high-quality teaching on the one hand, and student outcomes at the end of each transition stage in a young person’s education journey on the other hand. Inputs affect outputs.

However, the equation is not as simple as that. For the most part, learners need to engage to succeed. I came across this interesting paragraph about NEETs, in a briefing note written by the Confederation of School Trusts.

‘The larger lesson is therefore that NEET should not principally be understood as a status to be

remedied after the event. It is better understood as the possible end-point of a progressive

weakening of the connections between a young person and the institutions that should carry

them from childhood into adult economic and civic life.’ Preventing young people from becoming NEET – 2026-09-01.pdf – Google Drive

While I am not a fan of academies, mainly because of the absence of local democratic involvement, it doesn’t mean that I don’t respect the work many within that sector undertake.

This briefing note is one example of what I think is a great summary of how the risk of becoming a NEET starts on day one of schooling. Along with Sir Nick Clegg when he was Deputy Prime Minister and concerned about progress of under-fives, I would also argue that the risk of a journey to becoming a NEET begins even earlier. It is interesting to re-read a blog post written more than a decade ago in January 2015. Ending child illiteracy by 2025 | John Howson

The closure of Sure Start centres was, in retrospect, one of the worst decisions of the coalition government. Sadly, like the Academies Act 2010 that produced the ‘hell for leather’ race to academisation, I wonder if the Liberal Democrat part of the Coalition Government could, perhaps, have fought harder to prevent both outcomes.

My two current suggestions are: monitor absence from day one of school or nursery and identify where any undue amount of absence starts to affect the acquisition of the fundamental building blocks of learning to read, write (if still considered necessary) and learn the basics of numeracy.

The primary system of teacher and class-based progress allied to an aim of measuring outcomes by eleven and transfer to secondary school might be worth re-considering. What percentage of those that fall behind with the basics ever catch up? How successful are interventions and the use of support staff, or are many of them just childminding? Of course, both won’t have immediate results, but we have to do more than firefighting when someone reaches sixteen.

In one of my earliest posts on this blog, in 2013, Quality Assurance v Quality Control | John Howson I discussed the issue of how you deal with failure to reach an expected standard in terms of making cars. Some of those industrial techniques apply to the learning process. Don’t wait until measurement points to remediate, but diagnose where the block to progress is taking place and intervene effectively at that point. NEETs mostly don’t want to be NEETs, and we need to find ways after 150 years of state education to ensure all that have the capability to success can do so.

The problem of ensuring enough jobs for all is someone ese’s problem. Let’s make sure the state school system no longer produces NEETs that are not capable of entering adult life and the workplace.

PISA 2025: Teachers still matter

Posted on September 9, 2026 by John Howson

The recent release of the 2025 international PISA study results has already received a lot of comment. PISA publications | OECD. This section of the OECD’s PISA Study report caught my eye, as you might imagine if would do, if you are a regular reader of this blog.

How is school life in the United Kingdom? PISA 2025 Results (Volume I): United Kingdom

Perceived shortages of human and material resources

In 2025, 48% of students in the United Kingdom were in schools whose principals reported that instruction was hindered, at least to some extent, by a perceived lack of teaching staff (OECD average: 39%); the corresponding share for a perceived lack of assisting staff was 39% (OECD average: 39%). The prevalence of perceived teaching staff shortages in the United Kingdom did not change significantly compared to 2022. However, principals’ concerns about inadequate or poorly qualified teaching staff increased from 19% in 2022 to 31% in 2025 (OECD average: 25% in both years).
PISA 2025 data reveal that perceived shortages of material resources remain a concern in most countries and economies. Some 24% of students in the United Kingdom attended schools whose principals reported that a lack of educational material (e.g. textbooks, IT equipment, library or laboratory material) hindered instruction, at least to some extent, and 34% were in schools where a lack of physical infrastructure (e.g. buildings, grounds, heating/cooling systems, lighting and acoustic systems) was perceived to hinder instruction. In 2022, the corresponding shares were 13% and 24%, respectively. PISA 2025 Results (Volume I): United Kingdom

So, the United Kingdom as a whole had a percentage of principals reporting that ‘instruction was hindered, at least to some extent, by a perceived lack of teaching staff (OECD average: 39%)’. I wonder what the figure might have been for just England? The difference between the United Kingdom and the OECD average was 9%. Interestingly, there was no difference for what OECD called ‘assisting staff’.

The issue became even worse when principals were asked about ‘inadequate or poorly trained staff’. Here the concerns rose from 29% in the 2022 survey, to 31% in 2025. This compared to an OECD average of 25% in both surveys.

Does the fact that the United Kingdom has a free market for teachers, with most vacancies advertised, and any teacher able to apply for any post make any difference to the scores? Assuming the PISA survey has a representative sample of schools across the United Kingdom, then the presence of a significant number of private schools in England, able to recruit qualified teachers more easily that state funded schools may skew the distribution of scare resources, such as physics teachers.

By chance the Education Policy Institute has just produced a report on recruitment versus retention of teachers. Recruit or Retain. Microsoft Word – EPI_RetrainRecruit_September2026

I will discuss that report in another post.

I think the obvious outcome of the PISA findings, is that the effect of a long period of teacher shortages. In the case of England, from between 2014 and 2025 in some subjects, is now being recognised in international surveys, such as PISA.

Hopefully, falling rolls, a changing labour market for graduates and better pay for teachers might mean the position improves in terms of teaching by specialist teachers by the next PISA study. However, it might take longer in an open labour market to close the gap between different types of schools and schools serving different socio-economic areas.