Nicky Morgan’s Speech about Education in the UK

The Education Secretary speaks at Policy Exchange about the government’s reforms to promote educational excellence everywhere.

There has been a transformation in English Education over the past five years, but the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan believes it has been worth it. There have been 29,000 extra 11-year-olds who are entering secondary school able to read, write and add up properly, able to access the opportunities at the next stage of education.

“I want to make our schools and colleges places where young people achieve more, and I want to continue to increase the number who stay on in education or an apprenticeship to 18 and beyond.”

New, more rigorous SATs are already being introduced at the end of primary school, and the new ‘reception baseline’ assessment has been introduced in primary schools this year. This was put in place to try to increase the number of children leaving primary school able to do basic maths and english.

In a speech Nicky Morgan gave for the Department Of Education , she said that it must be right that every child studies a strong academic core up until the age of 16. Therefore every child should study maths, English, history or geography, a language and the sciences up until the age of 16. The English Baccalaureate was introduced in 2010 to help increase the numbers of students studying these ‘core’ subjects. However, still just 39% of young people are now studying the EBacc – in some areas it’s as low as 20%. The Conservative manifesto has said that they aim to have 90% of young people studying the EBacc in the next few years.

The National Teaching Service will play a key part in solving the problem of ‘coasting’ schools. By 2020 it will have deployed 1500 outstanding teachers and middle leaders to underperforming schools. These outstanding teachers will be employed by these schools for up to 3 years. They will not only be expected to bring outstanding teaching into the classroom, but also to improve the quality of teaching and leadership right throughout the school.

For the whole speech or more information visit www.gov.uk/government/speeches/nicky-morgan