Last Updated on November 4, 2026 by Karl Thompson
Labour won the general election of 4 July 2024, and Bridget Phillipson became Education Secretary. This post covers Labour’s education policy in England from then until November 2026:
- the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026
- free breakfast clubs and the expansion of free school meals
- changes to Ofsted and to how struggling schools are helped (RISE)
- the curriculum review and the end of the EBacc
- the 2026 schools white paper: all schools in trusts and SEND reform
- post-16 and higher education: V Levels and tuition fees
- teachers’ pay and VAT on private school fees.
For Labour’s previous period in government, see my post on New Labour education policy 1997–2010. For the years just before 2024, see Conservative education policy 2015–2024.
Education is devolved, so these policies apply to England only. 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.
Labour’s education policies at a glance
| Date | Policy |
|---|---|
| 2 September 2024 | Single-word Ofsted judgements for schools scrapped |
| 1 January 2025 | VAT at 20% on private school fees |
| 3 February 2025 | RISE teams announced for ‘stuck’ schools |
| April 2025 | Free breakfast clubs: 750 early adopter schools |
| 2025/26 | University tuition fee cap rises to £9,535 |
| 20 October 2025 | Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper: V Levels |
| 4 November 2025 | Curriculum review response: EBacc to be scrapped; new national curriculum from September 2028 |
| 10 November 2025 | New Ofsted inspections and report cards begin |
| 23 February 2026 | Schools white paper, Every child achieving and thriving |
| April 2026 | Breakfast clubs: a further 2,000 schools join |
| 29 April 2026 | Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 becomes law |
| September 2026 | Free school meals for every child in a Universal Credit household; limits on branded uniform |
| 1 September 2027 | New teachers in state schools must have, or be working towards, qualified teacher status |
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026
The government’s main education law became an Act on 29 April 2026. Its schools measures include:
- Breakfast clubs: a duty on state primary schools to offer free breakfast clubs.
- School uniform: a limit on how many branded items schools can require: three, plus a tie in secondary schools, from September 2026.
- Children not in school: every local authority must keep a register of children not in school, and there are extra checks before some children can be withdrawn to be home educated, such as those on, or recently on, a child protection plan. See my post on homeschooling in England and Wales.
- Academies: academies lose some of their freedoms. Teachers in all state schools come under one core pay and conditions framework, described as ‘a floor with no ceiling’. From 1 September 2027 new teachers in state schools must have, or be working towards, qualified teacher status (QTS). And academies will have to teach the new national curriculum, expected from September 2028.
- Academy orders: the duty on the Education Secretary to turn failing maintained schools into academies, introduced in 2016, has gone. It was replaced on 29 June 2026 by a power to do so, which ministers can choose whether to use.
- Admissions and school places: schools and councils must cooperate on admissions and planning school places, councils can direct academies to admit a pupil, and councils can open any type of school, not only academies.
- Mobile phones: schools must take account of national guidance on phones during the school day.
These are significant changes to the academy system. Since the first academies opened in 2002, successive governments had used academy status to give schools more freedom from local authorities. This Act keeps academies but brings their teachers’ pay, qualifications and curriculum back towards a single national system. More on this in my post on academies in England and Wales.
Breakfast clubs and free school meals
Free breakfast clubs
Free breakfast clubs started with up to 750 early adopter schools from April 2025. In April 2026 a further 2,000 schools joined, backed by £80 million. Each club must be free, open to every pupil from Reception to Year 6 who wants a place, last at least 30 minutes immediately before school starts, and serve food that meets the school food standards. The Act makes offering one a duty for every state primary school.
Free school meals for all Universal Credit families
From September 2026, every pupil with at least one parent or carer receiving Universal Credit is eligible for free school meals, whatever the household’s income. Before this, families on Universal Credit only qualified if their earnings were below £7,400 a year. The government estimated that more than 500,000 extra pupils would become eligible, at a cost of around £250 million a year.
One detail matters for the pupil premium: the newly eligible pupils don’t bring their schools pupil premium funding, which still follows the old income threshold. So free school meals and ‘disadvantage’ as the funding system measures it are no longer the same group of children.
Both policies target material deprivation: hungry children find it harder to concentrate and learn. My post on free school meals for all London pupils looks at the evidence on universal meals.
Ofsted and school improvement
The end of single-word judgements
Ofsted had graded schools with a single word: outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate. A coroner’s inquest found that the Ofsted inspection process had contributed to the death of the headteacher Ruth Perry. On 2 September 2024, after talking to her family, the government scrapped single headline grades for schools with immediate effect.
Report cards
From 10 November 2025, Ofsted inspections give each school a report card instead. Each area is graded on a five-point scale: exceptional, strong standard, expected standard, needs attention, or urgent improvement. There are more areas than before, including a new one for ‘inclusion’: how well a school supports disadvantaged pupils, pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and children known to social care.
Not everyone welcomed the change. The headteachers’ union NAHT argued that more separate grades would increase the pressure of high-stakes inspection, and sought a judicial review. The High Court refused permission in November 2025, saying the merits of the grading system were ‘not matters for this court’.
RISE teams
In February 2025 the government announced RISE teams (Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence) to work with ‘stuck’ schools: more than 600 schools in England with consecutive poor Ofsted judgements, attended by more than 300,000 children. Each stuck school can get up to £100,000 for specialist support, from an initial £20 million. RISE advisers, who work for the DfE, also offer support to all schools.
The Confederation of School Trusts, which represents academy trusts, called RISE ‘a deeply questionable use of public resources’, partly because a school could count as ‘stuck’ because of an Ofsted grade given before it joined its current trust.
The curriculum and the EBacc
The independent Curriculum and Assessment Review published its final report in November 2025. In its response on 4 November 2025, the government said the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) performance measure would be scrapped, and that a new national curriculum would be taught from September 2028. The review also looked at how far pupils see themselves represented in what they learn; my post on policies to combat racism in schools covers that side.
The 2026 schools white paper
The schools white paper, Every child achieving and thriving, was published on 23 February 2026. It is a statement of plans, not law. Its main proposals include:
- All schools in trusts: ‘moving to all schools being part of school trusts’, including new trusts set up by local authorities or area partnerships. No date is given.
- SEND reform: proposals to change how support for pupils with special educational needs works, put out for consultation alongside the white paper. They aren’t law yet.
- Teachers: a plan to recruit 6,500 more teachers.
The trusts proposal means Labour has kept the direction of travel set by the last two governments, which wanted all schools to become academies, while changing who can run trusts. The Confederation of School Trusts backed the aim that all schools join a strong trust, but objected to a proposal that schools could ask the regulator to let them leave one.
SEND is the pressure behind much of this. According to the IFS, the number of pupils with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) rose from 237,000 in 2016 to 434,000 in 2024.
Post-16 and higher education
V Levels
The Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper (20 October 2025) proposed V Levels: new vocational qualifications tied to job standards, replacing many existing vocational courses and sitting alongside A-levels and T Levels. Students would be able to combine V Levels with A-levels. They are still at consultation stage. For how sociologists evaluate vocational education, see my post on sociological perspectives on vocational education.
Tuition fees and maintenance
The cap on university tuition fees rose from £9,250 to £9,535 for 2025/26, the first rise in seven years. The post-16 white paper said fees would rise with forecast inflation for the next two years, with automatic rises after that only for universities meeting new quality thresholds, which would need legislation. It also said targeted maintenance grants would be reintroduced, without yet setting out who would get them.
The IFS welcomed the certainty of inflation-linked fees but noted they wouldn’t reverse past real-terms cuts. It estimated that funding per 16–19 student would rise 3% in real terms in 2026–27, but that school sixth forms would still be about 18% below their 2010–11 level.
Teachers’ pay and private schools
Teachers received a 5.5% pay award for 2024/25, fully funded by the government, and 4% for 2025/26, with schools expected to find about the first 1% from their existing budgets.
From 1 January 2025, VAT at 20% applies to private school fees. The government linked the money raised to its plans for state schools, including the 6,500 extra teachers. The details and the arguments are in my post on arguments for and against private schools.
Evaluating Labour education policy since 2024
Most of these policies are too new to judge by results. The new curriculum won’t be taught until 2028, the QTS rule starts in 2027, and the expanded free school meals began in September 2026. What you can do in the exam is assess them against the theories and against the evidence on what they are trying to fix.
A social democratic turn?
Breakfast clubs, free school meals for all Universal Credit families and limits on uniform costs all target material deprivation, which fits the social democratic perspective: the state should spend to give poorer children a fairer start. The starting point is a wide gap. The Education Policy Institute found that in 2023, disadvantaged pupils finished secondary school 19.2 months behind their peers, the widest gap since 2012.
Two limits are worth noting. The meals extension covers only families on Universal Credit, and the newly eligible pupils bring their schools no pupil premium. And meals and breakfasts can’t on their own close a gap rooted in family income, housing and the labour market.
Less marketisation, or more of the same?
The Act reverses part of the market model. It removes the automatic route to academy status, brings academies’ pay, qualifications and curriculum back towards national rules, and gives councils more say over admissions. New Right thinkers would see this as reducing the freedom and competition they believe raise standards. The Confederation of School Trusts’ objections to RISE and to schools leaving trusts reflect that concern about autonomy.
But the market structure largely stays: academies and trusts remain, the white paper wants every school in a trust, and parental choice and Ofsted judgements remain central to the system. Report cards change how schools are judged, not whether they are judged and compared. So a Marxist or a critic of neoliberal education policy might argue that this is a softer version of the system Labour inherited, rather than a break from it.
Accountability and wellbeing
The Ofsted reforms began as a response to concerns about the human cost of high-stakes inspection. The NAHT, backed by the NEU and ASCL, argued that the new report cards add to that pressure rather than removing it. On the other side, parents now get a grade for each area rather than a single word.
How this comes up in the exam
Recent policy is useful 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]. The Act’s limits on academy freedoms and the ‘all schools in trusts’ aim are both 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 2024: Conservative education policy 2015–2024 and education policy and the pandemic.
- Labour’s previous government: New Labour education policy 1997–2010.
- For every era on one page: education policies: a summary.
Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com
Sources
- Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (c. 21); DfE Education Hub, ‘The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act: what parents need to know’, 12 May 2026; National Governance Association, ‘From the Commons to the classroom’, 30 April 2026.
- Confederation of School Trusts: briefing on RISE, as reported by Tes, 28 March 2025; response to the schools white paper (Leora Cruddas), 2026.
- Department for Education (2024) ‘Single headline Ofsted grades scrapped in landmark school reform’, 2 September 2024; ‘Government confirms above-inflation pay award for teachers’, 29 July 2024; ‘Higher education reform to back opportunity and protect students’, 4 November 2024.
- Department for Education (2025) ‘Government sets out plans to target stuck schools’, 3 February 2025; Regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE); Free breakfast clubs: guidance for schools and trusts for phase 1 of the national rollout from April 2026, 20 November 2025; ‘Universities to deliver better outcomes in return for full fees’, 20 October 2025; ‘New curriculum to give young people the skills for life and work’, 4 November 2025.
- Department for Education (2026) Every child achieving and thriving, CP 1508-I, 23 February 2026.
- Education Policy Institute (2024) Annual Report 2024.
- Institute for Fiscal Studies (2025) Schools and colleges in the 2025 Spending Review; Ogden, K. and Tahir, I. (2025) Funding, finance and reform: an analysis of the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, November 2025.
- Ofsted (2025) ‘Ofsted confirms changes to education inspection and unveils new-look report cards’, 9 September 2025.
- Schools Week, ‘Free school meals extension: what schools need to know’ (2026); ‘High Court rejects NAHT’s Ofsted report card challenge’ (November 2025).
- Tes, ‘Teachers get 4 per cent pay rise’, 22 May 2025.