After years of austerity, the government’s plans imply another reduction in funding that public services simply cannot take

The Resolution Foundation has estimated that Labour’s spending plans commit the party to around £18bn of annual budget cuts over the next parliament. As they stand, these would affect “unprotected” areas of government such as the Department for Work and Pensions, the Ministry of Justice, local councils and higher education – and a funding shortfall for a depleted NHS. Ahead of this week’s king’s speech, when the new government will lay out its legislative agenda, five public sector workers give their verdict on Labour’s approach.

Emma Vincent Miller is a solicitor at Osbornes Law

Conservatives had announced end of vocational qualification introduced in 2020, while Labour plans to review it

Gordon Brown has called on the new government to retain the Conservatives’ technical qualifications, which Rishi Sunak had promised to ditch.

In a foreword to a report, Brown argues that T-levels are “one of the few genuinely successful new ideas and initiatives of the last decade” and that scrapping them would be “calamitous and costly”. Labour previously said it would review them after taking office.

First post-pandemic study of attainment gap finds pupils from low-income families have fallen further behind richer peers except in London

The attainment gap between 16-year-olds from low-income families and their wealthier classmates has grown across all regions of England since before the pandemic with the exception of London, research has found.

Disadvantaged pupils are now more than 19 months behind their peers by the time they sit their GCSEs, with the gap having increased at every stage of their schooling aged five, 11 and 16, according to the Education Policy Institute (EPI) thinktank.

James Allen’s girls’ school in London faces industrial action by members of union for low-paid migrant workers

Cleaners at one of the most prestigious private girls’ schools in the country have voted for strike action after being told out of the blue they are to be docked five weeks of work a year.

The dispute has broken out at James Allen’s girls’ school (Jags) in Dulwich, south-east London, founded in 1741, which was the target of strike action by teachers in the National Education Union earlier this year over planned changes to their pensions.

Experts say the next head of the Office for Students must oversee a programme that will protect higher education

The new head of the Office for Students (OfS) will have to oversee rescue plans to avoid a “domino effect” with a number of universities going under, experts have warned.

The new government’s Department for Education (DfE) announced on Tuesday that it had accepted the resignation of the OfS’s controversial chair, James Wharton, a former Tory MP who ran Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign. Lord Wharton, who was given the job of running the independent regulator in 2021 despite having no experience of higher education , did not give up the Tory whip in the Lords and was widely criticised for being too close to the Conservative government.

Independent inquiry into death of Ruth Perry after Ofsted inspection says ‘public excoriation of individuals’ must stop

An independent inquiry into the death of the Reading headteacher Ruth Perry has called for an end to England’s “macho culture” of inspections and school accountability.

The review, commissioned by Reading borough council after Perry’s suicide last year, said the tragedy should “highlight the folly of the macho culture of high stakes accountability” inflicted on England’s schools.

Allegations about monks and staff at North Yorkshire private school were shared with Charity Commission

An inquiry into the running of a prestigious private school said it uncovered a string of “serious abuse allegations” committed against pupils by monks and staff within the last decade.

The Charity Commission’s report found “significant weaknesses” in the safeguarding, governance and management of the two trusts responsible for running Ampleforth College, a Catholic private school in North Yorkshire founded more than 200 years ago by Benedictine monks and Ampleforth Abbey.

Applications for sponsored visas have plummeted since new restrictions brought in, raising financial fears

UK universities face financial turmoil as figures from the Home Office show plunging numbers of international students applying for courses starting in the next academic year.

Applications for sponsored study visas have fallen by 40%, suggesting the visa restrictions applied by the previous government continue to hamper recruitment. The Home Office received 28,200 applications last month, compared with 38,900 in June 2023.

PM tells unions to prepare for disappointment despite warnings of a crisis in staffing and recruitment

Keir Starmer is on a collision course with unions after playing down the chance of real-terms pay increases for public sector staff in negotiations, prompting widespread warnings of a crisis in recruitment and staffing.

While Downing Street is not ruling out some above-inflation settlements, as could happen for junior doctors , Starmer warned unions to be prepared for disappointment ahead of the imminent findings of a series of pay review bodies.