On 28th March 2024 a message was released to schools from The Rt Hon Gillian Keegan MP

Dear colleagues

As another term comes to an end, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for the work you’re doing to support our children and young people.

One of the best things about being Secretary of State is having the opportunity to visit schools across the country. On those visits, I’m always impressed by your skills, professionalism, and dedication.

What we’re doing to support you

Teaching is an incredibly rewarding career, but I’ve heard from you about some of the challenges you face. In January, we announced a range of measures to help tackle those challenges.

A £1.5 million investment to deliver a 3-year mental health and wellbeing support package for school and college leaders. This will provide professional supervision and counselling to at least 2,500 leaders.

We committed to publish new guidance for schools on how to prevent and tackle bullying and harassment of school staff. We expect to publish this next term.

We published the early recommendations from the workload reduction taskforce to help reduce teacher workload. This includes a commitment from the department to remove performance-related pay in schools by September 2024, following a rapid review of the current appraisal and under-performance processes and guidance. The taskforce's final recommendations will be published in the summer term.

Recruiting fantastic teachers

Our fantastic teachers are helping shape the future of our country. However, like many highly skilled professions, becoming a teacher can feel out of reach for some people. That’s why we’ve introduced the new teacher degree apprenticeship, opening a new route where you can earn and learn, and allowing even more people to get into the profession.

As someone who has completed a degree apprenticeship, I know just how beneficial they are. They provide an opportunity for young people to avoid the debt that comes with university and earn whilst they gain their degree. This will also be open to our fantastic teaching assistants too, who may choose this as a way to progress in their career.

Moments matter, attendance counts

Since the pandemic, we’ve seen a worrying trend of more children being absent from school. That’s why solving the attendance problem is my top priority. However, we can’t do this alone, and I want to thank you for the work you’ve been doing to get our young people back in the classroom. Just last week, new data showed that there are over 400,000 fewer children persistently absent or not attending school than last year. That is thanks to you.

On my regular visits across the country, I’ve seen some of the innovative ways that schools are helping to tackle the attendance problem. Earlier this year, I visited a primary school in Speke, near Liverpool, where each class gained a body part of a Mr Potato Head for high levels of class attendance. The class with the highest attendance received a treat. This might sound trivial to us, but to the kids it was inspirational and many of them even knew how many lessons they’d miss for every day they weren’t in school.

A secondary school in Luton runs a football themed attendance league, which caught my eye as a Liverpool supporter. Classes compete against one another to be top of the league and announcements are made in the weekly newsletter.

There are plenty of other examples, but what’s common amongst them all is that school leaders are paving the way for these ideas, teachers are innovating and it's getting our young people talking about the importance of attendance.

In January, I spoke to the education minister in New Zealand about how their overall absence rates had increased from 8% in 2019 to 12% in 2023.

Even now they have over 40% of children persistently absent from school.

Access to data is critical and that’s why we’ve revolutionised ours. Making it some of the most comprehensive daily attendance data collected anywhere in the world.

It’s the data that we’re receiving from 89% of schools which is helping us overcome this challenge. That’s why from September, all schools will be required to share daily data, providing 100% coverage and ensuring that more targeted support can be put in place as early as possible.

I’ve also appointed Rob Tarn, CEO of Northern Education Trust, as our national attendance ambassador. Rob founded our first attendance hub and will be helping to roll-out the programme nationally. As a department, we’ve supported Rob by updating the working together to improve school attendance guidance which will become statutory next school year, and launching our ‘moments matter, attendance counts’ campaign.

Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC)

I’m also pleased that, thanks to your hard work supporting our questionnaire and survey programme, all settings with RAAC are delivering full time face-to-face education for all pupils.

Only around 1% of our 22,000 schools and colleges in England were found to have RAAC. We have a plan to permanently remove RAAC from all school and college buildings across England and we’re funding this through grants or the School Rebuilding Programme.

Mobile phones in schools

At the start of the year, we published our mobile phones in schools guidance, giving you the tools to prohibit the use of mobile phones during school hours. I know that many of you are already doing this, but this guidance ensures that we have a consistent approach across the country. As you know, removing mobile phones from classrooms and playgrounds gives pupils the headspace to learn and staff the quiet and focus to teach.

Ofsted and the ‘Big Listen’

I want to make sure you’re all aware of Ofsted’s Big Listen, which is a wide-reaching and comprehensive effort to hear from the full range of people they work with as they look to relieve the undue pressures felt by those they inspect.

Open to professionals, providers, parents and children until 31 May, through the ‘Big Listen’, Ofsted wants to receive your feedback, accept your criticism and hear your views on reform.

Thank you

Finally, I want to say thank you, we can’t do these things alone and it’s only with your support that we’re able to improve school standards for our young people.

I hope you have a fantastic Easter break and when you’re back, I’d like to invite you to join me for my start of term live event on 24 April at 4pm.

I hope to see as many of you as possible to update you on my focus for the coming term, hear about your priorities and answer your questions on a range of topics.

Once again, thank you for your hard work and for everything that you do.

Yours sincerely,

The Rt Hon Gillian Keegan MP

Secretary of State for Education