Last Updated on November 4, 2026 by Karl Thompson
The Conservatives governed alone from the May 2015 general election until July 2024, under five prime ministers: David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. Education policy in those nine years had five main themes:
- Finishing the shift to academies, so that most secondary schools left local authority control.
- Tougher exams and new accountability measures: 9-to-1 GCSEs, Progress 8 and the EBacc.
- A squeeze on school spending until 2019, followed by increases, alongside growing concern about the condition of school buildings.
- More free childcare for working parents, starting with 30 hours a week for three- and four-year-olds in 2017.
- Post-16 reform, with T Levels and a planned (but abandoned) replacement for A-levels.
From March 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted everything. That is covered separately in my post on education policy since 2020.
Almost all of these policies apply to England only: education is devolved to the governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Education policy is part of the sociology of education module, examined on AQA Paper 1 (7192/1). For every era of policy on one page, see my education policies summary.
Exams and accountability
Tougher GCSEs and A-levels
The exam reforms begun under the Coalition came through after 2015. New GCSEs graded 9 to 1, with more exams and less coursework, were first awarded in 2017, starting with English and maths. A-levels became linear, with all the exams at the end of the course.
Progress 8
From 2016, the headline measure of secondary school performance became Progress 8. It compares the progress pupils make across eight subjects between the end of primary school and GCSE with the progress made by pupils nationally with the same starting point.
Progress 8 was meant to be fairer than raw results, because it measures progress rather than intake. HOWEVER, Leckie and Goldstein (2019) found that the reported performance of many schools ‘changes dramatically’ once pupils’ backgrounds are taken into account, and concluded that accountability systems which ignore pupil background ‘are likely to reward and punish the wrong schools’. In practice, schools with more disadvantaged intakes tend to look worse on Progress 8. More on league tables and their effects is in my post are league tables good for education?
The EBacc ambition
In 2017 the government set an ambition for 75% of pupils to be entered for the English Baccalaureate combination of GCSEs (English, maths, a science, a language, and history or geography) by 2022, and for 90% to be studying it by 2025. Entries never got close: they peaked at 40% in 2016 and were 38% in 2018. Critics argued that pushing the EBacc squeezed subjects such as art, music, design and technology out of the curriculum. The EBacc’s removal as a measure was announced by the Labour government in November 2025.
Academies: from ‘all schools’ to ‘all schools in trusts’
The Conservatives tried twice to make every school an academy, and both times pulled back.
- Education and Adoption Act 2016 (March 2016). This put a duty on the Education Secretary to make an academy order for maintained schools judged to be failing, and created a new category of ‘coasting’ schools that could also face intervention.
- The 2016 white paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere (March 2016), proposed that every school should be an academy or in the process of becoming one by 2022. Two months later, in May 2016, the government dropped plans to force good and outstanding schools to convert, while saying it still wanted all schools to become academies.
- The 2022 white paper, Opportunity for all (March 2022), set a new goal: every school to be in, or in the process of joining, a strong multi-academy trust by 2030. The Schools Bill meant to carry this through was dropped in December 2022.
Even without compulsion, most secondary schools became academies: by January 2026, 83.9% of state secondary schools were academies or free schools. Primary schools moved much more slowly. The arguments and evidence about academies are in my post on academies, and about free schools in my post free schools: arguments and evidence for and against.
Grammar schools
In September 2016, Theresa May’s government consulted on allowing new grammar schools to open. The plan was dropped after the 2017 general election. Instead, in May 2018 the government announced a £50 million Selective Schools Expansion Fund to let existing grammar schools take more pupils, on condition that they took steps to admit more disadvantaged children.
The evidence on grammar schools is mostly critical. Gorard and Siddiqui (2018), for example, found that once pupils’ backgrounds were taken into account, grammar schools did no better than would be expected, and they recommended phasing selection out. The full debate is on my post on grammar schools: arguments for and against, and selection more generally on selection policies in education.
School funding: the squeeze and the recovery
School spending was protected during the Coalition, but after 2015 it fell. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS):
- between 2015–16 and 2019–20, spending per pupil fell by about 2% in real terms in primary schools and about 9% in secondary schools;
- over the whole decade from 2009–10 to 2019–20, total school spending per pupil in England fell by 9% in real terms, from about £7,200 to about £6,550 per pupil. The IFS called this the largest cut in over 40 years;
- school sixth forms saw especially big reductions.
From 2019 the government increased school funding. By 2024–25, according to the IFS, spending per pupil was back to the same real-terms level as in 2010. HOWEVER, because schools’ own costs (such as staff pay) rose faster than general inflation, their spending power was still about 4% lower than in 2009–10.
This produced long-running arguments about statistics. Total school spending can reach a ‘record high’ simply because there are more pupils, while spending per pupil is no higher than it was 14 years earlier, and schools’ spending power is lower. Which figure you quote depends on which measure, which age groups and which years you choose. That makes school funding a good example of how official statistics can be used selectively (see my post on official statistics in sociology).
School buildings and RAAC
Capital spending (on buildings and repairs) was squeezed too. In June 2023 the National Audit Office (NAO) reported that:
- around 700,000 pupils were in a school that needed major rebuilding or refurbishment, and about 24,000 school buildings (38%) were past their estimated design life;
- the Department for Education (DfE) had assessed the risk of a building collapsing and causing death or injury as ‘critical’ since summer 2021;
- the DfE had said it needed £5.3 billion a year to maintain school buildings, but the Treasury allocated an average of £3.1 billion a year.
The best-known problem was RAAC (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete), a lightweight form of concrete used in some public buildings in the past, which can weaken and fail. The DfE had been considering the risk since late 2018, after a safety incident in a school. Just before the September 2023 term began, after new cases reduced its confidence that affected buildings were safe, the DfE told 104 schools and colleges to stop using spaces known to contain RAAC.
Critics argued that the problem was the result of years of underinvestment in school buildings, which the NAO’s figures on funding against assessed need appear to support. The government’s case was that it acted on new evidence as soon as it had it, which is how the August 2023 guidance describes the decision. For sociologists, it’s a reminder that education policy is about money and buildings as well as curriculum and exams, and that the pupils most affected by poor buildings are often in the areas with fewest resources.
Teachers’ pay and the 2023 strikes
Teacher recruitment and retention became a major problem during this period. In 2023 teaching unions took strike action in a dispute over pay and workload. In July 2023 the government accepted its independent pay review body’s recommendation of a 6.5% pay increase for teachers and school leaders, which raised starting salaries to at least £30,000. The NEU, NAHT and ASCL unions then called off their planned industrial action.
The dispute centred on whether teachers’ pay was keeping up with inflation, and on workload. Strikes are also a useful example for the Marxist view of the conflict between workers and the state as an employer.
Early years: 30 hours of free childcare
From 1 September 2017, working parents of three- and four-year-olds in England could claim 30 hours a week of free childcare, 38 weeks a year, instead of the 15 hours every child already received. To qualify, each parent has to earn at least the equivalent of 16 hours a week at the National Minimum Wage, and neither parent can have an income of over £100,000 a year. The offer has since been extended to working parents of children from 9 months old.
The policy was designed to help parents work, not mainly to narrow the gap in children’s development, and that is the main criticism of it. A 2021 report for the Sutton Trust found that 70% of the children eligible for the full 30 hours were in families in the top half of earners, and only 13% were in the bottom third, where many families can only claim the universal 15 hours. Critics argued that this gives the most free early education to children who need it least, which could widen the gap before school starts. Supporters argued that the policy did what it was designed to do: help parents work, which brings its own benefits for families.
Post-16: T Levels, maths to 18 and the Advanced British Standard
- T Levels, two-year technical qualifications for 16–19 year olds, were first taught in September 2020 in three subjects. They are covered in my post on vocational education.
- Maths to 18. In a speech on 4 January 2023, Rishi Sunak set an ambition for all pupils in England to study some form of maths until 18. The government said it did not intend to make A-level maths compulsory.
- The Advanced British Standard. In October 2023 the government proposed a new 16–19 qualification that would bring A-levels and T Levels together into a single qualification. The plan was dropped by the incoming Labour government in July 2024.
Behaviour and mobile phones
In February 2024 the DfE published guidance backing head teachers who prohibit mobile phones throughout the school day, including at break times. Schools could choose how to do this, for example by keeping phones off the premises or collecting them in. Questions about phones and social control in schools are discussed in my post on education and social control.
The pupil premium and the disadvantage gap
The pupil premium continued throughout the period (see my post on the pupil premium). The DfE’s disadvantage gap index, which measures the gap in GCSE English and maths between disadvantaged pupils and the rest, was 3.70 in 2019. After the pandemic it widened, to 3.94 in 2023.
| Year | Disadvantage gap index (0 = no gap) |
|---|---|
| 2011 | 4.07 |
| 2014 | 3.74 |
| 2019 | 3.70 |
| 2020 | 3.66 |
| 2023 | 3.94 |
Results in 2020 and 2021 were based on teacher assessment rather than exams, so they aren’t directly comparable with other years.
Evaluating Conservative education policy 2015–2024
A market without local control?
By 2024 most secondary schools were academies, run by trusts that answer to the DfE rather than to elected councils. From a New Right point of view, this is a success: schools are freer to run themselves and compete for pupils. Critics see a fragmented system with less local democratic oversight, and point out that the government itself ended up running a large part of the system from Whitehall.
Standards
Supporters point to tougher exams and a more knowledge-rich curriculum as evidence that standards rose. Critics argue that Progress 8 and the EBacc narrowed the curriculum and increased the pressure on pupils and teachers, and that league table measures that ignore pupils’ backgrounds (Leckie and Goldstein) penalise schools serving poorer areas.
Equality of opportunity
On equality, the record is weak. The disadvantage gap stopped narrowing before the pandemic and widened after it. Spending per pupil fell for most of the decade, sixth forms and school buildings were squeezed, and the main new early years policy gave most to better-off families. Sociologists who stress material deprivation would also point out that child poverty outside school works against anything schools can do.
Neoliberalism continued?
Most sociologists see this period as a continuation of the neoliberal policies that began with the 1988 Education Reform Act: marketisation, academies, league tables and restraint in public spending. HOWEVER, some policies don’t fit that picture neatly. Free childcare, the pupil premium and the expansion of grammar school places all involved the state spending money or making choices for parents, rather than leaving things to the market.
How these policies come up in the exam
Recent policies are useful as contemporary evidence in Paper 1 questions on marketisation, diversity and choice, and equality of opportunity. For example:
- AQA June 2022, Question 04: “Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate the view that marketisation policies have increased diversity and choice in the education system.” [30 marks]. Academies, free schools and grammar school expansion are all relevant.
- AQA June 2023, Question 02: “Outline three criticisms of marketisation policies in education.” [6 marks]
- For a practice essay, see assess the view that education policies since 1988 have improved equality of educational opportunity.
Sociology of Education Revision Bundle
If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my sociology of education revision notes bundle, written by Karl Thompson, who taught A-level sociology for eighteen years and spent twelve as an AQA examiner, marking all three papers on the current specification.
Signposting and Related Posts
This post has been written for students studying the education module as part of AQA A-level sociology. Education policy is usually taught in historical order:
- Before 2015: Coalition education policy (2010–2015).
- The pandemic years: education policy since 2020.
- For every era on one page: education policies: a summary.
Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com
Sources
- Department for Education (2017) ’30 hours free childcare launches’, 31 August 2017; 30 hours free childcare eligibility (gov.uk).
- Department for Education (2022) ‘Next steps towards a stronger school system with all schools in strong trusts’, 25 May 2022.
- Department for Education (2023) ‘New guidance for schools impacted by RAAC’, 31 August 2023.
- Department for Education (2023) ‘Joint statement on teachers’ pay’, 13 July 2023; ‘Teacher strikes: everything you need to know’, DfE Education Hub, 13 July 2023.
- Department for Education (2023) A world-class education system: the Advanced British Standard, 4 October 2023.
- Department for Education (2024) ‘Government launches crackdown on mobile phones in schools’, 19 February 2024.
- Department for Education, Schools, pupils and their characteristics 2025/26; Key stage 4 performance (disadvantage gap index time series).
- Education and Adoption Act 2016 (legislation.gov.uk).
- Gorard, S. and Siddiqui, N. (2018) British Journal of Sociology of Education 39(7).
- House of Commons Library, The English Baccalaureate, SN06045.
- Leckie, G. and Goldstein, H. (2019) ‘The importance of adjusting for pupil background in school value-added models: a study of Progress 8 and school accountability in England’, British Educational Research Journal 45(3): 518–537.
- National Audit Office (2023) Condition of school buildings, HC 1516.
- Prime Minister’s Office (2023) ‘Prime Minister sets ambition of maths to 18 in speech’, 4 January 2023.
- Sibieta, L. (2021) School spending in England: trends over time and future outlook, IFS Briefing Note BN334; Institute for Fiscal Studies (2024) School spending in England: a guide to the debate during the 2024 general election.
- Sutton Trust (2021) A fair start? Equalising access to early education (Pascal, Bertram, Cole-Albäck and Farquharson).