News, research & insights
w/c 16 June 2025
£4.7bn for schools announced in spending review
Documents confirm the core schools budget will increase from £64.8 billion this year to £69.5 billion in 2028, but what does the spending review mean for schools?
FSM extension will require annual eligibility review
Following the recent free school meals extension, schools must review eligibility annually from 2026. Newly eligible pupils will not receive pupil premium funding, which is now under review.
Government launches EdTech AI pilot to tackle teacher workload
Ministers have launched a nine-month EdTech pilot with £1m AI funding, inviting schools to test tools to cut teacher workload.
More than 114,000 teachers have left teaching in the last three years
Latest DfE figures show 37,413 teachers left the profession in 2023/24 and early career retention remains an issue, with 1 in 3 leaving within five years.
£1.4m investment to tackle educational inequality in the North East
Tees Valley Education, in partnership with Zarach and the Sleep Charity, are delighted to be one of several partners that have secured lottery investment to tackle inequalities in the North East.
Research & Insights
Children and young people’s reading in 2025
[Clark et al; National Literacy Trust, 2025]
This report is based on 114,970 responses to the National Literacy Trust (NLT) Annual Literacy Survey from children and young people aged 5 to 18 in early 2025.
The report includes findings on reading enjoyment, frequency and motivation and explores responses by age, gender, socio-economic background and geographical region.
The surveys show that the number of children and young people who say they enjoy reading, and read daily, is continuing to decline.
Just 1 in 3 (32.7%) children and young people aged 8 to 18 said that they enjoyed reading in their free time in 2025. This marks a 36% decrease in reading enjoyment levels since NLT started asking about this in 2005.
(Source: Children and young people's reading in 2025; NLT, 2025)
The drop in reading enjoyment over the last year has been especially steep among primary-aged children and boys, particularly boys aged 11 to 16.
Fewer than 1 in 5 (20.5%) 8- to 18-year-olds told NLT that they read something daily in their free time in 2025, again, the lowest levels NLT recorded, with daily reading levels decreasing by nearly 20 percentage points since 2005.
Even among children aged 5 to 8, daily reading rates dropped by 3.4 percentage points in the past year to 44.5%, and have dropped by 9.1 percentage points since NLT started asking this age group in 2019.
Girls continue to read daily at higher rates than boys, with the gender gap widening to 6.2 percentage points – the largest seen since 2023.
More children not receiving FSMs read daily (19.4%) than those who receive FSMs (15.8%).
The report also sheds light on what motivates children and young people to read, and offers a glimpse into what might re-engage those with the lowest levels of reading enjoyment. Explore this NLT Research into Practice resource to explore practical activities for developing reading for enjoyment in classroom settings.
Held back from the start:
The impact of deprivation on early childhood
[UNICEF; 2025]
This latest report from UNICEF UK will be of interest to those of us working to understand and tackle hyperlocal inequalities through place-based work.
Useful heat-maps provided here to explore datasets for your context.
It shows that across England, young children who live in areas with higher levels of deprivation have poorer outcomes across a range of health and developmental measures.
Where babies and children grow up has a significant impact on their early outcomes. Every Local Authority in the top 20% for deprivation is also in the bottom 20% for multiple measures of child health and development.
The most deprived Local Authorities are more than twice as far away from meeting the Government target for 75% children to reach a good level of development, than the most affluent areas.
(Source: UNICEF UK, 2025)
5-year-olds who live in areas with high deprivation are twice as likely to be obese, three times as likely to have teeth removed due to severe decay, and have 55% more visits to A&E, compared to children in the most affluent areas.
While the school-based interventions the Government has announced to reduce child poverty are welcome by UNICEF (and others), the analysis demonstrates that inequalities are already deeply established by the time children start school.
Ahead of the Spending Review, UNICEF UK called on Government to urgently tackle the links between deprivation, poverty, and poor early outcomes by:
- Removing the two-child limit and benefit cap
- Restoring investment in essential early childhood health and support services.This echoes what many other organisations are calling for such as the North East Child Poverty Commission and the Fair Education Alliance.
Schools, pupils and their characteristics
Academic year 2024/25
[Department for Education; 2025]
This latest data release from DfE contains statistics on school and pupil numbers and their characteristics, including age, gender, free school meals (FSM) eligibility, English as an additional language, ethnicity, school characteristics and class sizes.
School leaders will already be familiar with it and I haven’t summarised the data in full, just notable headlines regarding inequality/free school meal data coverage.
The dataset combines information from the January (spring) school census, school level annual school census, general hospital school census and alternative provision census.
(Source: DfE, 2025)
Number of pupils has decreased. There has been an decrease of 59,600 (0.7%) pupils across all school types from the previous year, with a total of over 9 million pupils. The number of schools has increased slightly, by 26 to 24,479.
FSM eligibility continues to increase. 25.7% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, up from 24.6% in 2024. This represents almost 2.2 million pupils.
1.6 million infant pupils were recorded as taking a free school meal on census day. Of those, almost 1.3 million are not normally eligible for FSM through the criteria above and received them under the Universal Infant FSM policy. This is a similar pattern to previous years.
The average class size for infant pupils (reception, year 1 and year 2) has decreased. A decrease slightly to 26.2 from 26.6 in 2024, this is the lowest infant class size since 2009.
It’s recommended to explore what this data means in your specific context. For example, the North East Child Poverty Commission (NECPC) has produced this excellent summary for the North East region.
The latest analysis by Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) suggested that there are as many as 900,000 pupils across England living below the poverty line but not eligible for free school meals under the current narrow qualifying criteria (which have been unchanged since 2018).
Obviously, this is one of the reasons organisations such as NECPC and many others have welcomed last week’s FSM extension news.
Breaking the cycle:
How schools are defying the odds in the face of child poverty
[Teach First; 2025]
This latest report from Teach First explores how schools are responding to the challenges of child poverty and what systemic changes are needed to support these efforts. Key findings include:
Schools are overextending themselves: Staff are working beyond capacity to support disadvantaged pupils through academic and pastoral interventions, but without broader support, these efforts risk being unsustainable.
Funding matters: Targeted funding, particularly pupil premium, is effective when used strategically, improving attendance, attainment, and wellbeing.
Teacher shortages hinder progress: Recruitment and retention, especially in disadvantaged areas, remain major barriers; quality teaching is still seen as key lever for change.
Poverty-related barriers extend beyond school: Issues like food insecurity, housing instability, and mental health needs are frequently presenting at schools, which struggle to fill the gap left by under-resourced public services
Holistic development is vital: Schools are offering enrichment (sports, arts, trips) to build confidence and wider skills, not just academic outcomes.
Teach First outlines nine evidence-based calls for government action, including:
(Source: Teach First. 2025)
The ‘C’ Word
Crafting a curriculum with poverty and inequality in mind
[Harris; 2025]
Did you spot my curriculum series recently?
I have been hugely encouraged by the number of readers engaging with my recent series on the theme of equitable curriculum.
The blog builds on research I have been doing the past two years thanks to generous funding from SHINE and through partnership with the Chartered College of Teaching and Evidence Based Education.
Part 1: I explore the value of context and care as part of making sure curriculum does not make assumptions about serving those in low income contexts.
Part 2: I examine how curiosity and co-production can help to shape both the design and delivery of an equitable curriculum in schools.
Part 3: I look at how challenge and compassion can underpin the delivery of a curriculum that serves pupils facing poverty-related barriers to learning.
I’m delighted to be presenting some of the key principles behind this work at Tees Valley Education to the House of Commons’ Education Committee’s evidence session this week so please do continue to share the posts with your network and provide feedback/challenge :)
Opportunities
🛌 Don’t sleep on this opportunity! 💤
Come and help us in tackling sleep inequality across the Tees Valley…
You may have heard that Tees Valley Education and partners were successful in securing a significant amount of investment into Teesside!
With thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund, we have partnered with Zarach and the Sleep Charity to tackle sleep inequalities in the region.
Zarach is expanding its vital work in the Tees Valley and is recruiting a Family Engagement Officer to join the team.
This role offers an exciting opportunity to help shape and grow a dynamic local service supporting families in hardship across Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, and Stockton-on-Tees.
The successful candidate will need experience in case management, partnership working, and charity operations, and must be able to travel locally.
Applications close at 5pm on 22 June 2025, with interviews taking place in Middlesbrough on Wednesday, 09 July.
🎉Summer Sale! 🎉
Summer’s nearly here, and Bloomsbury are celebrating with a brilliant Bloomsbury Education sale - and yes, Tackling Poverty and Disadvantage in Schools is included!
Readers can now get 30% off all Bloomsbury Education titles.
It’s the perfect chance for schools to stock up on inspiring reads (including ours!) before the new school year.
Remember, all royalties from the our book go back to Tees Valley Education with projects supporting children facing poverty-related barriers to learning.
“Help! I need some reading on the topic of….”
There’s now a landing page of FREE resources and quick-links on my Substack
You can access it in the tabs on my homepage or by visiting this link
Please do share with those working to better understand and tackle inequality