Your Association: Our 2025 Annual Report to ASCL Members

Labour
Politically, a great deal has happened since Labour won the 2024 General Election, and ASCL representatives have been busy developing constructive relationships and working with the new ministerial team. Our voice is listened to and respected, and while we may disagree with policymakers from time to time, there is a high regard for the views of school and college leaders.
 
Our sense is that there is genuine determination within government to fix problems – such as narrowing educational gaps, improving teacher supply, and reforming the special educational needs system. However, this is not always communicated well, and good intentions are not helped by a financial situation that continues to be extremely difficult for schools and colleges.
 
Ten asks
Ahead of the General Election, we set out our ‘ten asks for education’ and we continue to be guided by these priorities. They are:
 

1. End child poverty.
2. Take immediate action to rescue the special educational needs system.
3. Address the education funding crisis.
4. Invest in support services for children and families.
5. Tackle teacher shortages.
6. Fix school and college buildings.
7. Improve the fortunes of ‘the forgotten third’.
8. Stop the bonfire of the BTECs.
9. Improve the inspection system.
10. Celebrate schools, colleges, and our fantastic education staff.

Please do visit our website to see the latest situation under each heading.

While there has been progress, or at least signs of progress, in a number of areas, one of our biggest concerns is over inspection reform. The welcome decision to scrap single-word judgements soon after Labour took office was subsequently undermined by proposals for a new framework that we believe are a recipe for chaos and stress. We continue to lobby strongly for a rethink of these plans.
 
Funding
ASCL campaigns for sufficiency of revenue and capital funding for every school and college. Visit our campaign page for the latest information at www.ascl.org.uk/fundingcampaign
 
This work includes linking with other education organisations as part of the Stop School Cuts campaign. The coalition provides a powerful and united voice, bringing together school and college leaders, teachers, governors, trustees, and parents in a common cause.

Protect Student Choice
We are also part of Protect Student Choice, which campaigns for applied general qualifications (AGQs) to continue to play a major role in the future qualifications landscape. Our view is that these are popular qualifications, providing an established route to higher education, apprenticeships, and careers, and that they should be retained alongside T levels. You can see more information at www.ascl.org.uk/ProtectStudentChoice
 
Pay awards
ASCL presses for action to address long-term pay erosion and improve teacher supply, and we emphasise the importance of sufficient funding for schools and colleges to be able to afford the cost of pay awards. While the government allocated additional funding to partially cover the 4% school teachers’ pay award in England for 2025–26, and the 3.2% for support staff, we continue to highlight the impact of the shortfall on budgets. College staff pay has been hit severely in real terms because of financial pressures and we are calling on the government to provide more support.
 
Business leader pay
We lobby for fair pay for our business leader members whose pay falls under the support staff pay framework and who lose out in comparison with their colleagues in senior leadership teams. This is a clear inequity and we believe they should be brought into the scope of the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document. We have argued for this in our response to the government’s consultation on its planned new pay body. See our submission here.
 
Wales
ASCL Cymru has highlighted the working hours of school leaders, the need for protected leave to be incorporated into pay and conditions, and the pressure on resources and capacity. Our team has also articulated concern to the Welsh government over the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, particularly in Welsh-medium schools. We’ve been an active member of the pay partnership forum, reporting to the Welsh pay review body, and have secured the movement of additional learning needs coordinators to the leadership pay scale, with the ongoing cost to be fully funded by government. We also work closely with the inspection and qualification regulators, ensuring that the voice of leaders is heard. For more information about our work in Wales, visit www.ascl.org.uk/cymru
 
Northern Ireland
ASCL Northern Ireland has been active across all areas of education policy, including, most notably, helping to shape Education Minister Paul Givan’s TransformED strategy. We have contributed to work on the new Northern Ireland curriculum and statutory key stage assessment and discussions regarding school uniform. On your behalf, we have worked with the independent reviews of workload and baseline funding panels, and we are now represented on the Northern Ireland Teachers’ Pension Scheme board. We meet regularly with all statutory bodies to communicate your views on policy, and we engage on an ongoing basis with the education representatives from each political party and Stormont Education Committee. For more information about our work in Northern Ireland, visit www.ascl.org.uk/ni
 
VAT on school fees
ASCL proudly represents many colleagues in the independent sector, and we submitted a robust response to the limited consultation, which took place ahead of the introduction of VAT on school fees in January. We urged the government to delay implementation until September 2025 and to undertake a full impact assessment and consultation. Regrettably, this did not happen, and the government pressed ahead with a timetable that did not give schools sufficient time to prepare for this significant change. We continue to monitor the impact.
 
Annual Conference
Our Annual Conference in March attracted a great deal of media and political attention. Our then ASCL president, Manny Botwe, spoke powerfully about the impact of social media on young people, saying that it is time to bring these platforms to heel and force them to police their own spaces (read Manny’s speech here. ASCL General Secretary Pepe Di’Iasio, in his speech, called for a renewed social contract between schools, the government and parents (read Pepe’s speech here.

You can book for Annual Conference 2026 at www.ascl.org.uk/AnnualConference
 
ASCL budget 2025
The association’s total budgeted income in 2025 is £8.78 million. Most of this comes from membership subscriptions, projected at approximately £7.47 million this year, but we also derive income from other sources such as investments and partnerships. This means that we are able to spend more on our member services.
 
The majority of our expenditure – just under 70% – is spent on staffing. Other items include our office in Leicester, which we use for many of our meetings and events, enabling us to keep down the costs of hiring venues. We also hold three meetings of ASCL Council each year, our policymaking body of serving school and college leaders, ensuring that the association is run by members for members. And we distribute regular newsletters with all the latest updates from the world of education.