At 12:30pm on Tuesday 23rd July 2019, Boris Johnson was elected leader of the Conservative Party. To the surprise of absolutely no-one.   

By consequence he is now Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.  But what does that mean for the future of UK education?

Money

Let’s start with the biggy: it’s no secret that schools are feeling stretched financially, and this is hardly surprising. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that spending on schools has fallen by 8% since 2010. 

During initial campaigning, Boris promised to ensure all schools would return to the peak annual £5,000 per pupil funding seen in 2015.  However, a bit of digging revealed that as 75% of schools already receive this much funding, this only amounted to a promised investment of £50million – i.e. a paltry 0.1% increase in funding. 

As a result, he’s increased that funding promise to an extra £4.6 billion by 2022 (a figure suggested by think tank Onward as the real amount required to return to 2015 levels, including the increase required for the rise in pupil numbers).

Boris has also suggested raising the threshold of the 40% higher rate tax from £50,000 to £80,000, as well as increasing the threshold for National Insurance contributions to £12,500.  

Increasing the higher rate tax threshold will instantly remove 2.5 million households from the 40% tax (as well as benefiting another 1.5 million above the new £80,000 threshold) at a cost to the treasury of £9 billion.

Likewise, the rise in NIC floor level will remove 2.4 million workers from paying any National Insurance contributions, at a cost of £11billion.

In summary, somewhere between an extra £50 million and £4.6 billion has been pledged to schools while taxes will be lowered at a cost of £20 billion.  Isn’t it wonderful being able to make campaign promises you don’t have to keep!

Grammars

The creation of new Grammars is currently banned under Labour’s School Standards and Framework Act 1998.  Although Theresa May’s move to change this law was dropped following her ‘failed’ 2017 election, there are sneaky ways that new grammars have been appearing – as satellites or expansions of existing grammars.  Boris has always been vocal about his support for Grammars, so we can probably expect to see more of this going forwards, or perhaps an overturn of the ban in the event of another election.

Politics

Shortly after the announcement of Boris’s ascension, Education Minister Anne Milton resigned over “grave concerns about leaving the EU without a deal”.  (For more on our take of the potential impact of Brexit on education see here).  She is replaced by former Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, who was sacked from said post by Theresa May over a National Security Council leak.  

This adds to a growing list of resignations:  Sir Alan Duncan, Foreign Office Minister, David Gauke, Justice Secretary, and Rory Stewart, the Secretary of State for International Development.  It would appear that having such a hardline brexiteer at the helm is not to everyone’s liking, and according to professors Robert Hazell and Meg Russell from the constitution unit at UCL, this could be disastrous for Johnson.  A lack of cabinet support makes it improbable he will command a commons majority on the return from summer recess. 

The upshot of this could be a snap election this Autumn (currently being offered at 13/8 by the bookies).  While this doesn’t necessarily mean handing power to Labour (Corbyn’s approval is currently at an all time low, not to mention a perceivable shift towards four / five party politics), we thought it might be a nice chance to look at Labour’s current education manifesto.  Y’know, just in case. 

Labour have promised to create a National Education Service (NES) providing cradle-to-grave learning that is free at the point of use.  This includes promises of reversing the Conservative education funding cuts, allowing free life-long access to Further Education as well as abolishing university tuition fees. 

Sounds great?  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: isn’t it wonderful being able to make promises campaign promises you don’t have to keep!