The department recognises the value of music and the arts in supporting wellbeing and engagement, and that participation in the arts can bring a range of benefits for children and young people. Furthermore, the Education Endowment Fund’s teaching and learning toolkit reports that it can have a positive impact on academic outcomes in other curriculum areas, as well as benefits to children’s wellbeing and attitudes to learning.

The government believes creative subjects like music, art and design, dance and drama are important elements of the rounded and enriching education every child deserves. We will revitalise arts education as part of the reformed national curriculum and through high-quality support for teachers of arts subjects.

For secondary schools, the reformed curriculum will strengthen pupils’ subject-specific skills, including critical thinking, creative thinking and problem solving. A strengthened key stage 3 curriculum, alongside a new secondary oracy, reading and writing framework and enrichment entitlement, will help pupils build confidence, develop communication skills and broaden their horizons.

The government's consultation on key stage 4 performance measures included proposals intended to increase recognition of creative subjects within the accountability system, reflecting the important contribution they make to a broad and balanced curriculum. The government is considering the consultation feedback and will publish its response in due course.

These sections of the Act allow, alongside proposals for new academies, for local authorities to invite proposals for other types of school and to put forward their own proposals. Allowing additional routes to delivery helps to ensure that good schools are opened when they are needed, particularly where the right high-quality academy trust is not immediately available. As such, these changes support local authorities in fulfilling their place planning function.

We provide local authorities with capital funding through the Basic Need capital grant to support them to provide school places, based on their own pupil forecasts.

Developer contributions are also an important way of helping to meet demand for new school places when housing developments are driving pupil numbers. While Basic Need allocations can be used for new school places that are required due to housing development, we would expect the amount used to meet this demand to be the minimum necessary to maintain development viability.

The Secretary of State engages regularly with ministerial colleagues, including the Secretary of State for Education, on a range of matters. In line with the practice of successive administrations, details of internal discussions are not routinely disclosed.

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) recognises the importance of ensuring a sufficient choice of early years, school and post-16 places is available to meet the needs of existing and new communities. The Framework makes clear that local planning authorities should give great weight to the need to create, expand or alter early years, schools and post-16 facilities through the preparation of plans and decisions on applications, and work with early years, school and post-16 promoters, delivery partners and statutory bodies to identify and resolve key planning issues before applications are submitted.

Between 16 December 2025 and 10 March 2026, we consulted on a new NPPF. That consultation, which can be found on gov.uk here, included proposals relating to public service infrastructure, including secondary schools. The proposed policy on community facilities and public service infrastructure serving new development (HC3) sets out that planning conditions and obligations should be used to secure the timely delivery of community facilities and public service infrastructure required to serve new development, so that these facilities are available for use when the development (or an agreed proportion of the development) is first occupied or comes into use. We are currently analysing the feedback received to the consultation and will publish our response in due course.

As a core part of our £3.7 billion high needs capital investment between 2025 and 2030, the department will invest in a transformational expansion of inclusion bases so they become a core part of every local education offer. According to the school census, 1 in 13 schools, or 1 in 7 secondary schools and 1 in 15 primary schools, have a local authority commissioned inclusion base. Additionally, in the January 2026 school omnibus survey the majority of primary school leaders (53%) and a large majority of secondary school leaders (85%) said that their school had a separate dedicated space used to support pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

We will introduce new data collection measures which will record which settings are operating a base and the pupils accessing it, to provide additional oversight.

In the SEND reform consultation, we set an ambition that in time, we expect every secondary school will have an inclusion base, with an equivalent number of places in local primary schools.

The department recently published guidance for schools and local authorities to help them set up and deliver high quality provision in inclusion bases, as well as support improvements in existing bases. Ofsted considers the quality of provision in inclusion bases and will use the guidance to help inform inspections.

Initial teacher training (ITT) bursaries are offered to incentivise more applications to ITT courses. As such, we review bursaries annually to take account of recruitment to date, forecast economic conditions, and assess teacher need in each subject. The purpose of the scheme is to target resources to where the evidence shows need is highest.

Between the 2023/24 and 2025/26 academic years, postgraduate ITT recruitment increased by 71% in religious education (RE). Partly due to this improved recruitment and higher retention of existing teachers, the need for new postgraduate RE trainee teachers has reduced for the 2026/27 academic year.

Our ‘Get Into Teaching’ marketing campaign and one-to-one support service for prospective trainee teachers continues to support RE ITT recruitment. We will also continue to assess the need for trainees across all subjects and review the bursaries on offer prior to announcing the bursary offer for the 2027/28 academic year this autumn.

The department is committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity and tackling child poverty. We have announced that free school meals will be extended to all children from households in receipt of Universal Credit from September 2026, lifting 100,000 children across England out of poverty and putting £500 per child back in families’ pockets as set out in our Child Poverty Strategy.

Providing over half a million disadvantaged children with a free, nutritious meal each day supports higher attainment, improved behaviour and better outcomes. This expansion ensures funding is targeted where it is most needed, supporting pupils from low-income families.

The department does not routinely assess the impact of free school meals at constituency level, but national evidence shows the positive effect they have on pupils’ attainment, wellbeing and readiness to learn.

Free school meals are also available to eligible pupils and all infant pupils, alongside programmes such as the Holiday Activities and Food programme.

The department is committed to securing an excellent education for every child and your person. We recognise that GCSEs will not be the most appropriate route for every young person. While most pupils at key stage 4 work towards GCSEs or Technical Awards, alternative routes, including Functional Skills Qualifications and post-16 study programmes tailored to prior attainment and intended progression, can play an important role for some learners, including some with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Functional Skills Qualifications are used primarily for post-16 students because they are designed for work and life and to be taught in an applied manner, depending on the needs of the learner during their post-16 study. Under departmental policy, learners continue studying either GCSEs or Functional Skills depending on their prior attainment and their chosen pathway with the aim of helping them make progress towards Level 2.

We are also introducing a new Level 1 qualifications are aimed at 16 to 19 learners resitting English and/or maths with a GCSE grade 2 or below. We expect that there will still be a role for Functional Skills qualifications for some learners, including those with SEND. Functional Skills qualifications will therefore remain a valuable qualification for adult learners and we will consider how the new qualification will sit alongside them.

During key stage 4, most pupils work towards national qualifications, usually GCSEs or Technical Awards. GCSEs are longstanding, credible and well-respected. They rigorously assess the knowledge acquired by pupils during key stage 4 and are in line with expected standards in countries with high performing education systems.

High-quality teaching is the in-school factor that has the biggest positive impact on a child’s outcomes, and recruiting and retaining expert teachers is critical to the government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child.

We have now achieved over 70% of the 6,500 additional teachers target. There are 4,654 more teachers, including 3,008 more teachers in secondary and special schools in 2025/26, and 1,646 in further education (FE), compared to the 2023/24 baseline.

We are making progress where teachers are needed most based on changing demographics, with the number of secondary school pupils now starting to fall, and more young people in FE. In secondary schools, pupil-teacher ratios remain stable with a small drop to 16.7 pupils per teacher, meaning there are slightly more teachers per pupil in secondary school in 2025/26 than there were in when this government took over. Leaver rates have also dropped to one of the lowest on record (8.5%).

The future pipeline is also positive, this year (2025/26) we saw a 13% overall increase in secondary ITT applications, and a 22% increase in STEM applications, exceeding our STEM target for the first time.

At the Autumn Budget 2025, £5 million was announced for books and reading materials for secondary schools in England to support reading for pleasure.

This funding will be split between all state‑funded secondary schools in England with key stage 3 and key stage 4 cohorts. The department has been engaging with the sector and industry to consider how best to distribute the funding and support schools maximise value for money.

The department intends to issue the funding during the National Year of Reading 2026. Schools will have autonomy and flexibility over when to spend their allocation. The department recognises the importance of certainty for schools and librarians and will provide further information as soon as decisions on distribution and allocations are finalised.

Following the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review, work is underway to deliver a new curriculum and assessment system that is ambitious for every child, rich in knowledge and strong on skills.

The reformed curriculum will provide a clear framework to ensure that pupils acquire the essential skills and knowledge they need to be active, informed and responsible citizens. In line with the recommendations of the review, we will ensure that citizenship education is tightly focused on the essential content pupils should know at primary and secondary, encompassing the vital threads of government, law and democracy, climate education, financial and media literacy.

Working closely with the sector, we are working towards a first teaching of the new curriculum from September 2028 and a phased approach to new GCSE teaching from September 2029.

Following the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review, work is underway to deliver a new curriculum and assessment system that is ambitious for every child, rich in knowledge and strong on skills.

The reformed curriculum will provide a clear framework to ensure that pupils acquire the essential skills and knowledge they need to be active, informed and responsible citizens. In line with the recommendations of the review, we will ensure that citizenship education is tightly focused on the essential content pupils should know at primary and secondary, encompassing the vital threads of government, law and democracy, climate education, financial and media literacy.

Working closely with the sector, we are working towards a first teaching of the new curriculum from September 2028 and a phased approach to new GCSE teaching from September 2029.

The PE national curriculum makes specific reference to swimming and water safety, stating that all primary pupils must learn to swim competently and confidently over a distance of at least 25 metres, use a range of strokes effectively and perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations.

Our reforms to the PE curriculum will ensure there is a clear emphasis on swimming and water safety, and our new PE and School Sport Partnerships Network will bring the expertise of national governing bodies including Swim England directly into schools.

In addition, we have made changes to statutory requirements for relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) in both primary and secondary to ensure all pupils are taught about the water safety code, supporting them to be safe in different types of water.

Oak National Academy offers swimming and water safety units as part of its PE curriculum, developed in partnership with Swim England for all age groups. We also work closely with sector organisations like Swim England and the Royal Life Saving Society UK, supporting all schools to provide swimming and water safety lessons through teacher training and resources.

All state funded schools are required to teach first aid as part of the statutory health education set out in the relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) statutory guidance. Independent schools are required to cover health education as part of their responsibility to provide personal, social, health and economic education.

The RSHE guidance requires primary schools to teach basic first aid, such as dealing with common injuries. In secondary schools, pupils learn about CPR, defibrillator use, the law on knife crime, how to manage personal safety in increasingly independent situations including around roads, and drug misuse. Schools have flexibility in how they deliver this content.

All state funded schools are required to teach first aid as part of the statutory health education set out in the relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) statutory guidance. Independent schools are required to cover health education as part of their responsibility to provide personal, social, health and economic education.

The RSHE guidance requires primary schools to teach basic first aid, such as dealing with common injuries. In secondary schools, pupils learn about CPR, defibrillator use, the law on knife crime, how to manage personal safety in increasingly independent situations including around roads, and drug misuse. Schools have flexibility in how they deliver this content.