What current educational issues do I need to know about

[Redwineistasty]

I have interviews this month for pgce2018, and I’m required to have knowledge of current issues surrounding education.
But I’m struggling!

Besides Toby Young being a twat and Justine Greening potentially losing her role, I can’t really find anything suitable.

It’s for secondary education. Would the currently issues surrounding social media be okay?
Anything else that’s more/equally important?

Mental health

Well the changes to the GCSE curricula are still fairly headline news I would think.

Primary or secondary? Ofsted released a new report about Reception in December which those of us in eyfs are very about. It fits with the huge changes to the KS1 and 2 curriculum and assessment. Safeguarding is always huge too and would be discussed at an interview for a teaching post so I would imagine also for a PGCE.

It’s for secondary.

Thanks. I did wonder if the gcse changes were still talked about.

Yeah I’ve read a bit about mental health recently.
Just trying to figure out what’s appropriate

GCSE changes
Progress 8 having a bias towards science, does this limit the education of arty/crafty/drama children? What about school rankings?
PISA scores, do they matter?
Mental health/self harm/social media
Free schools/academies and unqualified teachers
New tech
SEND / mainstream

What is your subject? There may be specific changes eg ICT being faded out but not everyone being suitable to sit GCSE Computing / computer science

Safeguarding - Social media, child exploitation, FGM. Unpleasant but rife and very high on our radars currently.

Workload, retention. Gcse changes to grading, tiered papers and the fact that no one knows what the hell is going on.

PUPIL PREMIUM
MENTAL HEALTH

sorry for shouting!

Plus

recruitment and retention
Ebacc
New GCSEs/ A Levels
more money for school if students do A level maths
grammar school debate reignited
Exam pressure