How are school leaders feeling about proposed changes under Labour?

Just before schools broke up for the summer holidays, we ran a survey of school leaders, to find out how they felt about Labour’s manifesto promises for education. 

Here’s a taster of what we learned from our sample of 568 school leaders (or you can download the full set of questions, results and analysis here).

1. Headteachers are keen to embrace Labour’s plans for headteacher mentoring - revealing a lot of trust amongst expertise already within the system

Labour have pledged to launch a “new Excellence in Leadership Programme, a mentoring framework that expands the capacity of headteachers and leaders to improve their schools”.

83% of heads said they would be up for either being mentored (23%), being a mentor (15%), or both (45%) which speaks to the collegiate, supportive nature of the profession - where it’s not necessarily about having someone more experienced than you to support, but sometimes just another (professional) ear to listen and provide a sounding board.

2. Introducing more parental leave for staff would be difficult for schools.

The Labour manifesto promised to “review the parental leave system, so it best supports working families”. Whilst this pledge is not specific to the education sector, we were interested to see how easily a more flexible approach for working parents could be adopted by schools. Teaching is clearly an outlier sector where it’s genuinely difficult to offer flexibility - whether that’s working from home, part time hours, ad hoc time off, or adjusted start and finish times. Given what we know about a lack of flexible working in teaching being a significant cause of staff leaving the profession, this felt like it could be an interesting question to ask about. Unsurprisingly, two thirds (66%) say they would find it “very difficult” or “difficult” to introduce more parental leave for staff.

3. Even fully-funded, introducing breakfast clubs for all primary aged pupils will require more support for at least a quarter of schools

A major part of Labour’s plan is to ensure every primary school runs a free, fully-funded breakfast club for all children who want to attend. They have budgeted £315m for this initiative. However a quarter (25%) of primary school leaders say they are “not ready at all” to introduce breakfast clubs for all, with a further 12% saying they are “not quite ready”. We suspect this group are facing challenges in areas like staffing such clubs; having enough space to accommodate pupils (using the school hall might be problematic if that space is already being used for other activities, or if it can only be used in shifts because of larger pupil numbers); and in some schools, not having adequate kitchen facilities to provide food for all children.

4. Implementing supervised tooth brushing for 3-5 year olds will be difficult

The Labour manifesto includes a plan to introduce supervised tooth-brushing for 3-5 year olds - “targeting the areas of highest need”. We don’t yet know whether this would be funded, or part-funded by deprivation indicators, but practically speaking, nearly half (49%) say they would find this difficult (22% said “very difficult”). What sounds at first glance like a straightforward activity is likely to be made more challenging if, for example, the classrooms where these children are learning do not have easy access to suitable sinks. In addition, the “supervisory” element means having staff (likely TAs or nursery workers) away from other tasks that might be essential for the smooth-running of the classroom, or linked to supporting learning. In addition, there is the challenge of storing a class’s toothbrushes in a way that is hygienic and free from cross contamination. And, as parents of most young children will tell you, this is not an easy activity to manage at the best of times… 

5. School leaders will largely welcome government support to teach about misogyny and consent

Under its Mission to “Take back our streets”, the Labour manifesto also pledged to tackle violence against women and girls. The manifesto said “Violence and abuse against women and girls does not come from nowhere. Misogyny is one root cause, and therefore Labour will ensure schools address misogyny and teach young people about healthy relationships and consent”. Our results suggest they were right to focus on this, with nearly half of school leaders (49%) finding it challenging to teach about misogyny and consent (rising to 65% if we just look at secondary school leaders).

You can see the full results and analysis here.

If you’re leading a school, we hope you find it interesting to compare your own feelings against your peers. If you’re supporting schools, whether as a supplier, a trust central team, local authority or the DfE, we hope this helps you think about the role you can play in meeting leaders where they’re at. Across products and services within The Key Group, we will be helping schools to handle forthcoming change, and offering up this data to the sector will, we hope, enable others to do the same.