Inside Your Ed

The Government’s consultation on their proposed reforms to the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, or SEND, system closed on May 18th.
Yet among the 39 consultation questions spread over 136 pages, one issue was notable by its absence: school admissions.
Judging by the analysis in a new report by the Sutton Trust called ‘Selective Inclusion’, ignoring state school admission policies within discussions of the SEND system is potentially a worrying oversight.
Their report finds that the top 500 state secondary schools take in half as many disadvantaged pupils with SEND as the average comprehensive school, and they admit 36% fewer than live in the school’s catchment area.
So why are some state schools admitting far fewer pupils with SEND than other schools? Is it the job of headteachers, government ministers or Ofsted inspectors to tackle this problem? And what do teachers and school leaders say they need from government to make sure that they can offer the best possible support to every pupil who needs it?
My guests are Charley O’Regan, the School Engagement Lead at the Sutton Trust and one of the authors of their new report, and Jonny Uttley, an education leadership consultant and a former headteacher and CEO of a school trust.
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It has been over 3.5 years since then opposition leader Keir Starmer announced that a Labour government would give businesses the flexibility they need to train their workforce by turning the Conservative Party’s apprenticeships levy into a ‘Growth and Skills Levy’.
After waiting a very long time to hear anything meaningful about the Growth and Skills Levy, we have suddenly been inundated in the opening months of 2026 with a raft of hugely significant - and hugely contentious - changes in quick succession.
So what have been the big changes to apprenticeships since the start of this year? Why has the Government decided to take such an active role in the apprenticeship system when its predecessor shied away from this approach? And will these recent changes help tackle the rising concerns about rising unemployment among young people?
My guests are Stephen Evans, the Chief Executive at the Learning and Work Institute, and Ben Rowland, the Chief Executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP).
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With exam season just around the corner, hundreds of thousands of students in schools, colleges and universities are making their final preparations as they aim for a successful outcome and possibly the very top grades.
But, as we know, for many children, young people and adults, rather than experiencing success in the coming weeks and months, they will instead find themselves encountering failure.
This failure can easily lead to a loss of motivation, lower expectations, lower self-esteem or even giving up altogether.
So, instead of helping learners of different ages to study better or revise better, perhaps we should spend more time helping them to fail better?
That’s the thinking behind a new book called ‘Fail Better’, which was released in March. It explores a whole range of concepts, ideas and strategies that try to turn something as seemingly negative as failure into something more positive. 
So, what exactly do we mean by failure? Why are some students better able to cope with failure than others? And, most importantly, what advice and guidance could be given to students as well as their teachers and parents to help them grapple with failure as it arises?
I’m delighted to be joined by Mark Roberts, the author of Fail Better and also the Director of Research and an English Teacher at Carrickfergus Grammar School.
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“We have concluded the disadvantages are such that we do not support a graduate tax”
So said Lord Dearing in his landmark review of Higher Education, or HE funding in 1997, shortly before tuition fees were first introduced.
Over a decade later, Lord Browne’s review of HE funding in 2010 also rejected calls for a graduate tax before going on to propose a significant uplift in tuition fees.
Here we are, over a decade on from the Browne Review, and yet again a graduate tax is being proposed by some commentators as the solution to the financial woes facing the HE sector, particularly as opposition to the current student loan system grows by the day.
A graduate tax would essentially mean that rather than a graduate paying back the cost of their HE course through student loan repayments when they are in work, graduates would instead pay an extra tax on top of their income tax and these extra payments would depend purely on their income level rather than the actual cost of their HE course.
So what makes a graduate tax look appealing relative to a student loan system? Would students, universities and the government be better or worse off if a graduate tax was implemented? And, crucially, do the reasons that led to a graduate tax being rejected in the past still hold true today? 
My guests are Professor John Blake, director of the Post-18 project, and Jonathan Simons, a Partner and Head of the Education Practice at Public First.
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SEND reforms to 'strip away' children's legal protections, charity says. That was according to a recent headline on the BBC website.
Needless to say, the Department for Education, or DfE, disagrees, claiming that their planned reforms to the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities system in England represent “a clear expansion of children’s rights”.
When so much money, time, effort and emotion is poured into the SEND system every day, any attempt to change the system was likely to prove controversial. The DfE’s consultation on their proposed changes is open until May 18th, and there is plenty at stake for everyone concerned.
So what reforms has the DfE put forward in their consultation? Are children’s legal rights going to change, and if so, are they changing for the right reasons? And how confident can we be that children and young people, their families, teachers and school leaders will be better off as a result of the DfE’s reforms?
My guests are Sam Freedman, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government and a former advisor at the DfE, and Jim Lauder, who works in a school trust and is also the parent of a child with an Education, Health and Care Plan, or EHCP.
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