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If you were the new education secretary, what would you do first from an overflowing in-tray?

There’s a lot to choose from.

For a start, there’s a massive programme of special educational needs and disabilities reforms to be delivered. There’s an ongoing row with unions - including ASCL - about schools being asked to make savings (aka cuts) to afford the cost of the teachers’ pay award. There’s a raft of reforms to the national curriculum and Progress 8 in the offing, and a suite of new V levels to deliver.

Everywhere you look, there’s change galore. Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto was emblazoned with the word “change” and - for better or for worse - Sir Keir Starmer and Bridget Phillipson weren’t kidding.

Labour education priorities

Then there’s the almighty mess that is Ofsted’s new inspection framework. It is a barely comprehensible, quivering mound of descriptors, colour-coding and evaluation areas. All the evidence suggests it is putting even more pressure on school leaders than the previous system of widely discredited single-word judgements, and is penalising schools serving disadvantaged pupils.

And finally, there are the objectives signalled by the new boss. Andy Burnham pretty clearly - and absolutely rightly - wants to prioritise reducing the more than 1 million young people not in education, employment or training. It is a simply staggering statistic, behind which lies a generation who feel they have no future and no stake in our society.

He wants to promote genuine parity between academic and technical routes, and give every young person great opportunities.

Lucy Powell’s to-do list

So, back then to the original question: what would you do first?

In truth, Lucy Powell will need to quickly get to grips with all of these issues and more, keep track of how they’re progressing and have an excellent radar for the unforeseen problems that will inevitably arise - what the late Donald Rumsfeld would have called the “unknown unknowns”.

She’ll have a team of ministers to help her do that, as well as the civil service, special advisers and the hopefully helpful contributions of ASCL and others.

But I think there are three relatively quick things she could do that would make a real difference.

1. Review the inspection system

Ofsted’s new inspection system was meant to do two things: improve the information available to parents, and reduce the wellbeing pressures on school leaders and teachers - which, as we know, resulted in an appalling tragedy a few years ago.

I’m not convinced that it has achieved either objective. Its much-heralded report card just seems to me to have increased the number of hurdles over which schools must jump.

I really can’t understand how that is better than, say, a narrative judgement. And on the second point - the impact on wellbeing - the feedback we’ve received suggests that, if anything, it is actually worse than the previous system.

In particular, it appears to result in more negative judgements for schools serving disadvantaged areas, making their circumstances even harder.

There’s a great opportunity, a year on from the introduction of the new framework and before inspections resume in the new academic year, to review the system before it does any more damage.

2. Develop a government-led wellbeing strategy for the education workforce

Rising expectations on schools and colleges, alongside diminishing resources and punitive accountability, can only have one outcome in terms of the workforce - and that is what we are currently seeing.

People are on their knees. This is the very same workforce that will, of course, have to deliver all those changes that I mentioned earlier.

Of these, the delivery of the SEND reforms is of obvious and overriding importance. We simply must get this right. But all these plans will come to naught if the workforce is running on empty.

We have to take teacher and leader wellbeing more seriously. In all the reams of policy that pour out of Whitehall, this is an area that is shamefully neglected.

So, I’d prioritise a government-led wellbeing strategy on how we can better support the education workforce, introduce more empathetic accountability, address a spiralling complaints culture that is completely overburdening schools, and ensure that Department for Education directives and updates are clear, timely and succinct.

The 2026 edition of Keeping Children Safe in Education, for example, runs to nearly 200 pages. It is supposed to be implemented on 1 September, but was published close to the end of the academic year, giving schools no time to digest the information and organise staff training. This is an entirely needless extra pressure.

3. Reinvest the money from falling rolls back into education

The new education secretary, like all of her predecessors, is likely to run into the brick wall that is the Treasury from time to time.

It is never an easy argument to win, and much will depend on the priorities of the prime minister and chancellor.

But I think there are two arguments that need to be made early in this administration.

The first of these is to rethink the funding arrangements over the teachers’ pay award. Asking schools to fund part of the cost from savings will just mean more restructures, job losses and cuts to provision. This is surely the last thing that a government committed to improving outcomes for all young people wants to see.

The second argument is over falling pupil rolls. The number of pupils in England’s schools is forecast to fall by 726,000 over the next five years. As funding is allocated on a per-pupil basis, that represents a potential “saving” of sorts. Policymakers could choose to spend that money in various ways, but the approach I think they should take is to reinvest it back into schools to make them more financially resilient.

Without that money, a bad situation is likely to get much worse, not least because one of the impacts of falling rolls is a loss of income to the schools affected but no reduction in the breadth of expectations and requirements.

The issue has already hit many primary schools, and we will only see this problem deepening and expanding to secondary schools over the next few years. By committing now to putting the money from falling rolls back into schools, we can give them more stability and financial assurance for the future.

Time for action

OK, I know that all of this is easy to write but harder to deliver when you are in the hotseat of being the actual education secretary.

But my final observation is that we are here to help. Educators will want her to succeed, and to help her and Andy Burnham to shape a fairer future. That’s why we became teachers. So I am sure I speak for us all when I wish Lucy Powell every success.

Pepe Di’Iasio is general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders

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