6 big challenges for education reformers

There are obviously a huge range of critical success factors that shape the unfolding reform of our education and skills system. I've identified 6 key questions that I think (and hope) reformers on all sides of the political spectrum will focus on moving ahead.

In my view we need to move beyond sterile debates about structures versus standards, knowledge versus skills and focus on practical measures to improve the quality of teaching, the status of teaching and the relevance of our curriculum and qualifications to the challenges and opportunities of c.21.

Anyway my thoughts on 6 big challenges in a nutshell:

1. How can schools give teachers the right to personalised CPD in a tight spending climate? How do we give the Teaching School Partnerships rocket boosters while preserving the root-level autonomy necessary to making them genuinely innovative?

2. How can we make Teaching a profession with a higher bar of entry that highly capable and ambitious people stay in without being able to throw bucket loads of cash at the problems?

3. How do you instil a no-excuses culture of continous improvement and stretch and challenge across the whole education system without being de-railed by a media, political or sectoral backlash against elitism?

4. How do we re-mould Ofsted to be an inspection regime that teachers and leaders in schools and FE genuinely respect and want to engage with? How do we reform Ofsted to move from remote inspectorate to 'agent of improvement' without making it another national improvement agency?

5. How can state schools incorporate the 'DNA' of the best SME employers in terms of recruitment and retention and professionalise the 'talent development' role of middle and senior leaders in education?

6. How do we ensure much needed reforms to restructure and enhance the rigour of GCSEs and A Level works are implemented coherently and don't harm aspiration and participation beyond the age of 16?