What does 2009 hold for education?

With schools being warned of the credit crunch hitting them,  I wondered what 2009 may bring for English education generally.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

• More pupils. It has been predicted that people who would otherwise send their children to private school will cut back by sending their children to state schools instead.

• Less money for building. Building works are often initially financed by the private sector, which is finding it difficult to get credit these days.

• Another potential disaster regarding SATs marking. Although this is wishful thinking on my part as the prediction is that if Edexcel muck up in the same way as the previous contractors did, then SATS may be dumped altogether.

• Reviews of potential changes to the primary curriculum. Personally, I find this really exciting, so long as it will allow greater flexibility. At last, it seems that the people in charge are looking at skills as well as content.

• Moving towards on-line, real time reporting to parents. Secondary schools should really be getting going with this in 2009. (My previous blog was on this topic.

• Change in legislation to give schools the power to search pupils for drugs and alcohol.

• School reports. By this I mean giving schools grades. There is talk of giving schools an overall grade of A-F as a means of giving parents another way to judge schools (as opposed to just looking at exam results). The grade will cover all aspects of school life such as exam results, attendance, wellbeing of pupils, progress of pupils etc.

• Developments in getting parents more involved in their children’s learning. This seems to be an important issue to Jim Knight, and not before time in my humble opinion. I’m looking forward to seeing how schools will do this.

• Changes to governing bodies. I remember hearing rumours last year that GBs will become smaller and be more answerable to schools’ stakeholders
  

• I am absolutely sure there is more. Feel free to add anything I’ve missed.