April 17, 2025 • 14 mins
This week the annual meeting of the National Education Union attracted the ire of Reform's Nigel Farage and millions of parents found out where their children will attend primary school. We discuss the UK's educational landscape and the politics that shapes it with Dani Payne, senior researcher at the Social Market Foundation. Hosted by Yuan Potts and Caroline Hepker.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Ask me my three main priorities for government and I
tell you education, education and education.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
It was Tony Blair's priority. Is it this Labor Government's
number one priority as well? Hello, you're listening to Blueberg
UK Politics. I'm Caroline Hepgift and.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
I'm you and pots Welcome to the program. When Tony
Blair coined that phrase ahead of the nineteen ninety seven
general election, it was meant to signal his determination to
keep classrooms at the very top of the political agenda. Today,
questions about the costs, content and control of education are
a very live debate and perhaps more political than ever.
Today marks the end of the National Education Union's conference,
(00:46):
including a motion pass calling for the union's political fund
to campaign against reform UK candidates. That prompted party leader
Nigel Farage to rail against what he calls the indoctrination
of teenagers.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
It's the first time in Labour's current tenure that education
has taken center stage politically. Adding VAT to private school
fees was one of the party's flagship manifesto pledges a
policy currently facing some challenges and a less noisy but
more perhaps a consequential debate is currently going on around
(01:20):
the national curriculum. The government's Review of the Curriculum has
published its interim report, reviving the Old Row. Some would
see it between progressives and traditionalists. So is education becoming
more politicized? What's the impact, who's in control?
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Who benefits Well Johnny to talk through these questions is
Danny Payne, senior researcher at the Social Market Foundation. Now, Danny,
we've had the ANYU Conference of the Big Teachers Conference
and they wanted to highlight the impact of poverty on
school attainment and teachers dissatisfaction with austin. What's the mood
among teachers, mostly teachers at the NEU, It is fair
(01:57):
to say as sort of labour leaning. Are they please
that the changes coming from the government.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I think that the mood in education at the moment,
as it has been over the past few years is difficult.
I think that we've seen, you know, an erosion of
public services, We've had austerity, cost of living, Brexit, rising
poverty throughout the UK, and that all of those issues
land on teacher's doorsteps when they are teaching in the classroom.
(02:24):
I think that particularly the policy chain that we've had
over the last decade as well. We've had twelve education
secretaries in fourteen years. It's very difficult for teachers, for
school leaders to cope with without the stability of leadership
and policy direction.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
In terms of how well insulated the schools are going
to be from what we know are the funding pressures
in Britain, you know, major ones, not not just kind
of keeping up with debty payments in the UK, but
the kind of idea that we can spend more on defense.
How well insulated do you think schools are going to be?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I think the biggest financial pressure in schools at the moment,
particularly for state schools, for local government maintained schools is
the pressure of send spending. So as the send deficit
rises in local councils, we are seeing local councilors taking
some money away from schools to plug that deficit gap.
I think the biggest thing that government could do to
(03:16):
help the funding sustainability of schools would be to sort
out the send crisis, which is one of Bridget Phillipson's
main aims. There are some elements of reforming the system,
there might also just be a need to wipe those
deficits and to give councils a blank slate.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
So special education needs very much a live issue. I
just want to take the conversation in a slightly more
broad direction. How would you categorize Labour's position towards the
school's debate. Is it one of revolution or is it
more one of sort of gradual transition.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Bridget Phillipson has been talking about evolution, not revolution, and
for example, the interim curriculum report that you mentioned earlier
very much said they want to build and progress that's
already being made. There are some more ambitious language around
kind of breaking the class ceiling, opportunities for aspiration for all,
which are very kind of large ambitions but very politically popular.
(04:10):
Broadly people in Britain do feel that people should have
the same opportunities to do well, and that they should
be based on hard work rather than someone's background. But
I do think from the changes we've seen so far,
most of them have not been particularly radical. It hasn't
been kind of throwing everything out and starting from scratch.
It's very much building on a fairly strong curriculum, fairly
(04:32):
high attainment. But saying that it's only high attainment for
some and some have been left behind. Send children, for example,
children in deep areas of poverty. We've got rising attainment gaps.
So it's saying that the system is working for some,
but it's not working for these, and how can we
ensure that the system works for all children.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Having said that all university campuses, you've got education really
becoming quite deeply politicized.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
How much is that true? Primary and secondary level?
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Now say that people who work in politics with like
all areas to be politicized, and that increasingly whatever topic
we're talking about, you can make arguments that it's becoming
more politicized and more polarized. I think in a school
setting it is less so like teachers care about do
I have the resources that I need to get my
lesson done? And am I able to support the children
in my classroom? That's what they care about. They want
(05:20):
to do a good job for the kids in their classroom.
I think they care less about, you know, which government
is in power, and far more about the policies that
are coming out of that government. So I think, you know,
what we'll see in the national media, what we'll see
in the political conversation will be different than conversations that
teachers are having over lunchtime.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Now, a really big thing that's going on in the
moment is the curriculum of view. I feel like it's
one of those massive changes which has slightly gone under
the national news roadar with all the other stuff going
on at the moment. But we're sort of halfway through
that armory. And I know you've written about this tell
us about Labour's approach to the National curriculum, about what's
going to be taught to kids right across all ages
over the next few years.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Absolutely, so we've just had this interim report for the
curriculum Review. It's important to note that this isn't the
recommendations of the review. It's saying what they've found through
their initial consultation stage, and again it's very much evolution,
not revolution. So they say that they want to build
on the knowledge rich curriculum, that it has been successful
in many areas, that they're happy with the breadth of
content across primary and secondary ages, but that there are
(06:22):
particular subjects that perhaps not up to date enough or
or perhaps have too much content, and that there are
particular groups of young people for whom the curriculum doesn't
seem to represent or appeal to them or engage them.
And you can see this through, for example, absenteeism. How
can we get kids to want to be in school,
to enjoy being in school, to ignite a love for learning,
(06:43):
but whilst maintaining high academic standards, whilst pushing children to
achieve their best, whilst making sure that we are pushing
all children to achieve highly in a way that is
good for their well being, good for building self esteem,
and also good for building skills that they'll need when
when they go into further or higher education or employment.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Are the lessons that can be learned from the Scottish
curriculum changes which have seen certainly in terms of the
international rankings Scotland slide down below England in those rankings.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
The lesson to be learned there would be that when
you make a really significant change to the curriculum in
the way that Scotland did, you have to make sure
that teachers have the correct resources to know how to
teach all of this different content. And I think that
was the mistake in Scotland. Was not necessarily that they
decided to focus more on skills, but was that teachers
(07:33):
weren't prepared, weren't supported to deliver a content which was
very different in nature, and often teachers in Scotland are
reported feeling quite lost and not really sure how to
follow this new version of the curriculum. I think it
also shows the importance of continually reviewing the curriculum. So
what we've had in England and across the UK is
like a few big changes to the curriculum maybe every
(07:55):
decade or so. Most other countries will continually review the
curriculum and then you just have small changes each time
and that's much easier for teachers to adapt to, to
change to. It's an evolution over time of the curriculum
rather than throwing out the old one and bringing in
a whole new one, which is very disruptive for both
schools and for children.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
And yeah, there are pressures on schools, aren't there to
do so many things, not just to teach many things,
but also to deliver for society more broadly. I mean,
what do you make of this idea of educational setting
settings being able to fight radicalization?
Speaker 1 (08:29):
For example, by what the Prime Minister wants to do.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It's just to show you know that TV series Adolescens
to kids at school, and that's that's quite novel. It's
also quite speedy for something in the media to suddenly
land in schools.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yes, I agree, and I think that there's a few
issues that need to be tackled if we're going to
tackle radicalization in schools. One of them is ensuring that
kids have political literacy, which you can see if you
look at the data. Particularly kids who attend state schools
and are in deprived areas are not ricying political literacy education.
They need to know how to be able to think critically,
(09:05):
how to be able to find safe, trusted sources of information,
particularly online when you know our children have never been
thrown so much information as they as they are now,
and being able to distinguish, for example, when they're scrolling
TikTok between someone who is a trustworthy source and someone
who has kind of another agenda. It's very very difficult
for children. So I think that critical thinking pieces is
(09:28):
really important, and that comes often through studies of humanity
subjects and reading text critically and looking critically at history,
for example. But the key thing here is that teachers
themselves need to be informed, and need to be knowledgeable,
and need to be able to themselves pick out correct
information and to spot misinformation. And we see this in
(09:49):
lots of different areas where someone says you should add
this to the curriculum. That's not a golden ticket if
the teachers aren't ready to teach it. So people talk
about financial literacy for it example, but unfortunately many teachers themselves, yeah, yes,
and unfortunately many teachers themselves are not financially literates. Without training,
we couldn't expect them to teach children that properly. And
(10:10):
it's the same with radicalization. I think. The other thing
with radicalization is that if you look at the academic literature,
one of the biggest drivers of radicalization is poverty, and
we have very high levels of poverty and inequality in
the UK. So you can teach children all you want
about spotting misinformation and why radicalization is dangerous and why
polarization is dangerous, but if the environment that they are
(10:32):
surrounded in at home it's one of desperation, one where
potentially their parents are also being increasingly polarized or increasingly
accessing misinformation and experiencing such depth of poverty, that's a
really hard fire for teachers on their own to fight a.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Huge amount of noise around the imposition of VAT on
private school fees. I'm interested on the impact on state
schools and how much we know yet about what the
influx of children into the state system has done so far.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I'll start with saying that the independent school lobby, it's
very strong, and we've seen a lot of backlash to
this policy in the media that I don't feel is
necessarily representative of public opinion of the policy. And also
when we look at the data, there doesn't seem to
have been an kind of unmanageable influx into schools from
people from parents pulling their children out of private school.
(11:23):
In fact, it seems steady or even an increase in
the amount of parents who are getting.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Their first choice of schools.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
There will always be stories of individual students who have
faced disruption or whose parents have had to pull them
out of school and have had to go to another school,
and that may have been at a time that was
particularly different educationally, and those children should be supported and
should be given additional support in that transition. But I
don't think that there's evidence for this kind of widespread
upcoming crisis to hit state schools, and in fact, many
(11:50):
state schools are concerned about having to close due to
declining people numbers.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
In terms of the delivery, then in the next few
months of the actual curriculum changes. After the any U
conference this week, there is perhaps more concern that there
might be teachers strikes in the public sector in the autumn.
What are you thinking about as we go through the year.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I think that the biggest challenge facing teachers is going
to be pay and that you know, we can see
that this is a big concern. We can see it
through the union. I think more strikes would be very unpopular.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
The issue with these types of.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Strikes is that you can't strike every year on pay,
but you know, people will start to lose public support
as the increasing disruption to children takes place. Now that's
not a comment on the strategy of the union, because
their job is to advocate for their members and if
their members say that we would like to balot and
strike on pay, then then that's what they should do.
It's more saying that there needs to be an agreement
(12:50):
that government, the bridget Phllipson's and her office and the
Department of Education need to be coming to an agreement
with the union that sustainable and long term. Otherwise every year,
for every two years we will have the same issue
of are they going to be more strikes? What will
the disruption for pupils be. And by the way, most
teachers do not want to strike. They see the educational
(13:11):
disruption it has on their children. They have to deal
with that fallout when they return to work and it's
a very unfortunate situation to be in.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Danny fantastic to get your thoughts. Danny Paine, Senior re
searcher at the Social Market Foundation, Karen, so many interesting
issues in this debate, and I think it's something which
is somewhat flying under the radar because we're distracted by
all these big geopolitical things going on in the news,
and Labour is trying to put its mark on education policy.
Of course, all in an environment where there's not a
lot of money to go around, so things like the
(13:40):
curriculum view perhaps is an easy win or be a
politically controversial one, something they can do without spending lots
of money.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Absolutely, this in a week of course, where parents did
find out whether they got their first choice of primary
school for their kids being enrolled across the UK in
the public sector I'm sure we'll be returning to the
story around education, is you say, in focus on both
sides of the Atlantic. That's it from us though for today.
If you like the program, don't forget to subscribe. You
can give it five stars so that other people can
(14:08):
find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or whatever you listen.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
This episode was produced by two at a bio and
our audio engineer. It was Shawn Grastomachia, I'm you and
Potters and I'm Caroline Hepget.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
We'll be back with more next week. This is Bloomberg.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Ask me my three main priorities for government and I
tell you education, education and education.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
It was Tony Blair's priority. Is it this Labor Government's
number one priority as well? Hello, you're listening to Blueberg
UK Politics. I'm Caroline Hepgift and.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
I'm you and pots Welcome to the program. When Tony
Blair coined that phrase ahead of the nineteen ninety seven
general election, it was meant to signal his determination to
keep classrooms at the very top of the political agenda. Today,
questions about the costs, content and control of education are
a very live debate and perhaps more political than ever.
Today marks the end of the National Education Union's conference,
(00:46):
including a motion pass calling for the union's political fund
to campaign against reform UK candidates. That prompted party leader
Nigel Farage to rail against what he calls the indoctrination
of teenagers.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
It's the first time in Labour's current tenure that education
has taken center stage politically. Adding VAT to private school
fees was one of the party's flagship manifesto pledges a
policy currently facing some challenges and a less noisy but
more perhaps a consequential debate is currently going on around
(01:20):
the national curriculum. The government's Review of the Curriculum has
published its interim report, reviving the Old Row. Some would
see it between progressives and traditionalists. So is education becoming
more politicized? What's the impact, who's in control?
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Who benefits Well Johnny to talk through these questions is
Danny Payne, senior researcher at the Social Market Foundation. Now, Danny,
we've had the ANYU Conference of the Big Teachers Conference
and they wanted to highlight the impact of poverty on
school attainment and teachers dissatisfaction with austin. What's the mood
among teachers, mostly teachers at the NEU, It is fair
(01:57):
to say as sort of labour leaning. Are they please
that the changes coming from the government.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
I think that the mood in education at the moment,
as it has been over the past few years is difficult.
I think that we've seen, you know, an erosion of
public services, We've had austerity, cost of living, Brexit, rising
poverty throughout the UK, and that all of those issues
land on teacher's doorsteps when they are teaching in the classroom.
(02:24):
I think that particularly the policy chain that we've had
over the last decade as well. We've had twelve education
secretaries in fourteen years. It's very difficult for teachers, for
school leaders to cope with without the stability of leadership
and policy direction.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
In terms of how well insulated the schools are going
to be from what we know are the funding pressures
in Britain, you know, major ones, not not just kind
of keeping up with debty payments in the UK, but
the kind of idea that we can spend more on defense.
How well insulated do you think schools are going to be?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I think the biggest financial pressure in schools at the moment,
particularly for state schools, for local government maintained schools is
the pressure of send spending. So as the send deficit
rises in local councils, we are seeing local councilors taking
some money away from schools to plug that deficit gap.
I think the biggest thing that government could do to
(03:16):
help the funding sustainability of schools would be to sort
out the send crisis, which is one of Bridget Phillipson's
main aims. There are some elements of reforming the system,
there might also just be a need to wipe those
deficits and to give councils a blank slate.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
So special education needs very much a live issue. I
just want to take the conversation in a slightly more
broad direction. How would you categorize Labour's position towards the
school's debate. Is it one of revolution or is it
more one of sort of gradual transition.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Bridget Phillipson has been talking about evolution, not revolution, and
for example, the interim curriculum report that you mentioned earlier
very much said they want to build and progress that's
already being made. There are some more ambitious language around
kind of breaking the class ceiling, opportunities for aspiration for all,
which are very kind of large ambitions but very politically popular.
(04:10):
Broadly people in Britain do feel that people should have
the same opportunities to do well, and that they should
be based on hard work rather than someone's background. But
I do think from the changes we've seen so far,
most of them have not been particularly radical. It hasn't
been kind of throwing everything out and starting from scratch.
It's very much building on a fairly strong curriculum, fairly
(04:32):
high attainment. But saying that it's only high attainment for
some and some have been left behind. Send children, for example,
children in deep areas of poverty. We've got rising attainment gaps.
So it's saying that the system is working for some,
but it's not working for these, and how can we
ensure that the system works for all children.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Having said that all university campuses, you've got education really
becoming quite deeply politicized.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
How much is that true? Primary and secondary level?
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Now say that people who work in politics with like
all areas to be politicized, and that increasingly whatever topic
we're talking about, you can make arguments that it's becoming
more politicized and more polarized. I think in a school
setting it is less so like teachers care about do
I have the resources that I need to get my
lesson done? And am I able to support the children
in my classroom? That's what they care about. They want
(05:20):
to do a good job for the kids in their classroom.
I think they care less about, you know, which government
is in power, and far more about the policies that
are coming out of that government. So I think, you know,
what we'll see in the national media, what we'll see
in the political conversation will be different than conversations that
teachers are having over lunchtime.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Now, a really big thing that's going on in the
moment is the curriculum of view. I feel like it's
one of those massive changes which has slightly gone under
the national news roadar with all the other stuff going
on at the moment. But we're sort of halfway through
that armory. And I know you've written about this tell
us about Labour's approach to the National curriculum, about what's
going to be taught to kids right across all ages
over the next few years.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Absolutely, so we've just had this interim report for the
curriculum Review. It's important to note that this isn't the
recommendations of the review. It's saying what they've found through
their initial consultation stage, and again it's very much evolution,
not revolution. So they say that they want to build
on the knowledge rich curriculum, that it has been successful
in many areas, that they're happy with the breadth of
content across primary and secondary ages, but that there are
(06:22):
particular subjects that perhaps not up to date enough or
or perhaps have too much content, and that there are
particular groups of young people for whom the curriculum doesn't
seem to represent or appeal to them or engage them.
And you can see this through, for example, absenteeism. How
can we get kids to want to be in school,
to enjoy being in school, to ignite a love for learning,
(06:43):
but whilst maintaining high academic standards, whilst pushing children to
achieve their best, whilst making sure that we are pushing
all children to achieve highly in a way that is
good for their well being, good for building self esteem,
and also good for building skills that they'll need when
when they go into further or higher education or employment.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Are the lessons that can be learned from the Scottish
curriculum changes which have seen certainly in terms of the
international rankings Scotland slide down below England in those rankings.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
The lesson to be learned there would be that when
you make a really significant change to the curriculum in
the way that Scotland did, you have to make sure
that teachers have the correct resources to know how to
teach all of this different content. And I think that
was the mistake in Scotland. Was not necessarily that they
decided to focus more on skills, but was that teachers
(07:33):
weren't prepared, weren't supported to deliver a content which was
very different in nature, and often teachers in Scotland are
reported feeling quite lost and not really sure how to
follow this new version of the curriculum. I think it
also shows the importance of continually reviewing the curriculum. So
what we've had in England and across the UK is
like a few big changes to the curriculum maybe every
(07:55):
decade or so. Most other countries will continually review the
curriculum and then you just have small changes each time
and that's much easier for teachers to adapt to, to
change to. It's an evolution over time of the curriculum
rather than throwing out the old one and bringing in
a whole new one, which is very disruptive for both
schools and for children.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
And yeah, there are pressures on schools, aren't there to
do so many things, not just to teach many things,
but also to deliver for society more broadly. I mean,
what do you make of this idea of educational setting
settings being able to fight radicalization?
Speaker 1 (08:29):
For example, by what the Prime Minister wants to do.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
It's just to show you know that TV series Adolescens
to kids at school, and that's that's quite novel. It's
also quite speedy for something in the media to suddenly
land in schools.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yes, I agree, and I think that there's a few
issues that need to be tackled if we're going to
tackle radicalization in schools. One of them is ensuring that
kids have political literacy, which you can see if you
look at the data. Particularly kids who attend state schools
and are in deprived areas are not ricying political literacy education.
They need to know how to be able to think critically,
(09:05):
how to be able to find safe, trusted sources of information,
particularly online when you know our children have never been
thrown so much information as they as they are now,
and being able to distinguish, for example, when they're scrolling
TikTok between someone who is a trustworthy source and someone
who has kind of another agenda. It's very very difficult
for children. So I think that critical thinking pieces is
(09:28):
really important, and that comes often through studies of humanity
subjects and reading text critically and looking critically at history,
for example. But the key thing here is that teachers
themselves need to be informed, and need to be knowledgeable,
and need to be able to themselves pick out correct
information and to spot misinformation. And we see this in
(09:49):
lots of different areas where someone says you should add
this to the curriculum. That's not a golden ticket if
the teachers aren't ready to teach it. So people talk
about financial literacy for it example, but unfortunately many teachers themselves, yeah, yes,
and unfortunately many teachers themselves are not financially literates. Without training,
we couldn't expect them to teach children that properly. And
(10:10):
it's the same with radicalization. I think. The other thing
with radicalization is that if you look at the academic literature,
one of the biggest drivers of radicalization is poverty, and
we have very high levels of poverty and inequality in
the UK. So you can teach children all you want
about spotting misinformation and why radicalization is dangerous and why
polarization is dangerous, but if the environment that they are
(10:32):
surrounded in at home it's one of desperation, one where
potentially their parents are also being increasingly polarized or increasingly
accessing misinformation and experiencing such depth of poverty, that's a
really hard fire for teachers on their own to fight a.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Huge amount of noise around the imposition of VAT on
private school fees. I'm interested on the impact on state
schools and how much we know yet about what the
influx of children into the state system has done so far.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I'll start with saying that the independent school lobby, it's
very strong, and we've seen a lot of backlash to
this policy in the media that I don't feel is
necessarily representative of public opinion of the policy. And also
when we look at the data, there doesn't seem to
have been an kind of unmanageable influx into schools from
people from parents pulling their children out of private school.
(11:23):
In fact, it seems steady or even an increase in
the amount of parents who are getting.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Their first choice of schools.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
There will always be stories of individual students who have
faced disruption or whose parents have had to pull them
out of school and have had to go to another school,
and that may have been at a time that was
particularly different educationally, and those children should be supported and
should be given additional support in that transition. But I
don't think that there's evidence for this kind of widespread
upcoming crisis to hit state schools, and in fact, many
(11:50):
state schools are concerned about having to close due to
declining people numbers.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
In terms of the delivery, then in the next few
months of the actual curriculum changes. After the any U
conference this week, there is perhaps more concern that there
might be teachers strikes in the public sector in the autumn.
What are you thinking about as we go through the year.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
I think that the biggest challenge facing teachers is going
to be pay and that you know, we can see
that this is a big concern. We can see it
through the union. I think more strikes would be very unpopular.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
The issue with these types of.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Strikes is that you can't strike every year on pay,
but you know, people will start to lose public support
as the increasing disruption to children takes place. Now that's
not a comment on the strategy of the union, because
their job is to advocate for their members and if
their members say that we would like to balot and
strike on pay, then then that's what they should do.
It's more saying that there needs to be an agreement
(12:50):
that government, the bridget Phllipson's and her office and the
Department of Education need to be coming to an agreement
with the union that sustainable and long term. Otherwise every year,
for every two years we will have the same issue
of are they going to be more strikes? What will
the disruption for pupils be. And by the way, most
teachers do not want to strike. They see the educational
(13:11):
disruption it has on their children. They have to deal
with that fallout when they return to work and it's
a very unfortunate situation to be in.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Danny fantastic to get your thoughts. Danny Paine, Senior re
searcher at the Social Market Foundation, Karen, so many interesting
issues in this debate, and I think it's something which
is somewhat flying under the radar because we're distracted by
all these big geopolitical things going on in the news,
and Labour is trying to put its mark on education policy.
Of course, all in an environment where there's not a
lot of money to go around, so things like the
(13:40):
curriculum view perhaps is an easy win or be a
politically controversial one, something they can do without spending lots
of money.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Absolutely, this in a week of course, where parents did
find out whether they got their first choice of primary
school for their kids being enrolled across the UK in
the public sector I'm sure we'll be returning to the
story around education, is you say, in focus on both
sides of the Atlantic. That's it from us though for today.
If you like the program, don't forget to subscribe. You
can give it five stars so that other people can
(14:08):
find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or whatever you listen.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
This episode was produced by two at a bio and
our audio engineer. It was Shawn Grastomachia, I'm you and
Potters and I'm Caroline Hepget.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
We'll be back with more next week. This is Bloomberg.
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