The start of a new academic year always brings change, but schools returning this September are doing so against a particularly busy education landscape, and one where capacity is becoming an increasingly important question.
There is a new Education Secretary, the government is beginning to set out the next phase of its education agenda, curriculum reform is moving towards implementation, SEND remains one of the biggest challenges facing the sector and attendance continues to prove stubbornly difficult to improve.
Each brings its own demands, but together they raise a bigger question for schools and trusts: how do leaders create the capacity to respond to all of this while continuing to run their organisations, support their people and improve outcomes for pupils?
That question is likely to run through much of the year ahead. So, what exactly are schools coming back to this September?
The appointment of Lucy Powell as the new Education Secretary inevitably brings questions about what will change and what will remain.
For schools, however, many of the priorities are already well established:
Teachers and leaders want pay increases to be properly funded rather than absorbed by existing school budgets. They want greater stability from the Department for Education after several years of significant policy change, and they want SEND provision to be properly resourced
There are differences between phases too: Primary leaders are looking for greater curriculum clarity, more teaching assistants and manageable class sizes, while secondary schools are grappling with questions around broader pathways, GCSE reform, behaviour and teacher retention
There are also parts of the current system that teachers and leaders don't want to lose, for example the focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum, and the progress that has been made around flexible working
For the new Education Secretary, the challenge will be balancing those priorities with the new government's wider ambitions for reform, and doing so in a sector where capacity is already stretched.
Curriculum reform will remain prominent this year, although it is important to note that the Curriculum and Assessment Review is not being reopened. Instead, attention is beginning to turn towards what comes next, including plans for new technical and vocational pathways for pupils from the age of 14, expected to launch from September 2028.
There appears to be an appetite for greater choice. Research over the summer suggested that around two-thirds of teachers who had seen the proposals felt positively about them. The bigger question (as ever, for the sector) is how those ambitions will be delivered...
New technical pathways will require specialist teachers, appropriate facilities, funding and potentially much closer relationships between schools, colleges and employers. At a time when recruitment and retention remain difficult, introducing new opportunities for pupils will also require the creation of a workforce with the capacity to provide them.
SEND & Inclusion
Few issues demonstrate the capacity and implementation challenge more clearly than SEND.
Schools are already experiencing growing pressure to support more children with additional needs within mainstream classrooms, and the government's direction (as laid out in February's white paper) increasingly points towards a more inclusive mainstream system.
Over the summer, further detail emerged around plans for a national SEND continuing professional development framework across early years, schools and further education. The programme could eventually be worth up to £800 million, with an initial £200 million training package already committed and further funding dependent on future spending reviews.
That investment could support training, delivery, quality assurance and digital learning for teachers, leaders, teaching assistants and further education staff.
For schools, professional development forms one part of a much bigger picture. Successful inclusion requires expertise and confidence among staff, but it also requires sufficient people, time and resources.
As expectations of mainstream education increase, ensuring schools have that capacity will be central to whether SEND reform succeeds in practice.
Schools also return to a challenge that has persisted since the pandemic: getting pupils into school.
Overall absence reached 6.93% in 2025/26, while persistent absence stood at 19.05%.
Those headline figures also conceal significant inequalities.
Absence among pupils eligible for free school meals reached 11.6%, compared with 5.6% for other pupils, while persistent absence among FSM pupils reached 36%
Pupils eligible for free school meals and those with SEND continued to experience considerably higher absence than their peers
The persistence of absence across the year points to a much broader challenge. Schools are continuing to rebuild relationships and expectations around attendance following the pandemic, while supporting families facing increasingly complex barriers to getting children into school.
Another developing policy story worth watching this year is devolution.
The government's emerging approach could give mayors and regional leaders greater influence over areas such as post-16 funding, skills provision and the development of new 14–16 technical pathways, with other functions potentially becoming more locally focused over time.
It also fits with the broader direction of travel set out in February's White Paper, which placed greater emphasis on schools working together locally, stronger collaboration between trusts and, potentially, more schools becoming part of larger MATs.
Taken together, these developments could point towards an education system in which the DfE takes a less hands-on role and greater responsibility sits with schools, trusts and regional partners.
For school and trust leaders, that could mean developing new partnerships, collaborating more closely with neighbouring schools and trusts, and taking greater collective responsibility for improvement across their local area.
There is still plenty of detail to come, but the direction is worth watching. If greater responsibility is going to sit closer to schools, trusts and communities, those organisations will also need the capacity and resources to take it on.
All this, then, brings us back to the question that schools and trusts are likely to face repeatedly this year: how do you create the capacity to respond?
Curriculum reform requires capacity. Greater inclusion requires capacity. Improving attendance requires capacity. Greater local collaboration and responsibility require capacity, too.
All of this runs alongside the everyday work of running a school or trust, supporting staff, engaging families, managing budgets and, ultimately, improving outcomes for pupils.
For leaders, creating capacity is about more than saving time. It means having the right information available when decisions need to be made, reducing unnecessary administrative workload, making better use of the expertise available across an organisation and getting specialist support where it is needed.
Whether that means giving leaders a clearer view of what is happening across their schools, helping staff spend less time on administration, supporting school improvement or providing expertise in areas where internal capacity is limited, the goal is the same: creating more capacity for schools and trusts to focus on the work that matters most.
It is also at the heart of our JoinUp ambition: getting the right information, to the right person, at the right time, so leaders can make better decisions with greater confidence.
Click here to read the latest blog from Juniper Education's CEO, Sarah Barton, exploring how listening to schools, and building relationships grounded in real trust, can ensure schools get the most out of their relationships with their improvement partners.
There will undoubtedly be more policy announcements and changes over the academic year ahead. But with the right information, support and capacity, schools and trusts can be better placed to respond and keep their focus where it belongs: improving outcomes for children.