SCHOOLS NorthEast Director Mike Parker’s speech at the 2015 Summit:

Good morning Ladies & Gentlemen,
It gives me enormous pleasure to be here today, addressing you at my first SCHOOLS NorthEast Summit – the 8th Summit in the organisation’s history.

This is a truly unique organisation that reaches to all four corners of the North East and engages across all sectors and school types. From Berwick to Saltburn, both primary and secondary and across state-maintained, acadamies, independents, UTCs and free schools, our driving purpose of being schools-led and for all schools, is one that endures.

I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to my predecessor, Beccy Earnshaw, and to David Pearmain who stepped down as Chairman at our AGM on October 1st. Beccy and David were a formidable partnership who, along with a talented supporting cast have led SCHOOLS NorthEast to become the strongest, most relevant and financially robust organisation of its kind in the region. More than 1,200 school leaders engaged with SCHOOLS NorthEast across a programme of events and support in the past 12 months alone.

The presence today of so many of you – a record turnout for an education conference in this region – is testament to that fact. Working alongside our new Chairman, John Hardy and his fellow Trustees, we look forward to moving the network forward for the benefit of you all.

The reach and impact of this organisation extends beyond regional boundaries.
With my SCHOOLS NorthEast hat on, I attended the Conservative Party Conference last week, where I met Brian Lightman, the General Secretary of ASCL.
Brian spoke in glowing terms about the role and uniqueness of SCHOOLS NorthEast. I asked why, when he felt a regional schools network was such a powerful thing, had no other region established a similar organisation?

His response was mindset. In no other region are head teachers quite so willing to work together, to get behind one another and share the best of what they know.
This unique and pragmatic approach is at the core of school leadership in this region and we should embrace it.
It is the Power of Collective Ambition that makes us stronger than other regions. In the current climate of ever more fragmented school structures, I firmly believe it is this strength that will serve us well.

The current Government has set a course for education which, whether we agree with it or not, will continue to change the landscape in which we operate. David Cameron’s message was clear at Conference last week: “local authorities running schools (will be) a thing of the past”. As the region with the second lowest percentage of academies that is a significant statement.

Fundamentally though, while the Government is obsessed about structure, we are more concerned about improvement.
I was heartened to hear the Regional Schools Commissioner, Jan Renou, tell the SCHOOLS NorthEast Advisory Board earlier this month that her focus is on improving standards and not on academy conversion.

The fact is, the North East region is improving and has consistently improved over the past 5 years. There are more good or outstanding schools than ever before – at all levels.
The transformation of primary schools is well documented – with the number of Good or Outstanding primaries increasing by 16% to 90% and the number of RI or inadequate schools dropping from 1 in 4 to 1 in 10. A phenomenal achievement.
At secondary level, we have seen Good & Outstanding School numbers rise from 62% to 69%. And let’s put this in context – the North East lags national averages by 2% at RI and 1% at Inadequate in secondaries. We only have 170 secondaries in the region so an upwards shift of just 5 schools would bring parity.
This isn’t a race for the bottom, nor is it an apologist’s view on performance – but it is context we should keep at the forefront of our minds as we move forward through today.

My predecessor fought for six long hard years to galvanise the region behind a North East schools challenge. One of its core aims was that every child in the region be taught in an excellent school. You need only look at the performance of London and Manchester to see the impact that Challenges can bring to areas.
As school leaders, you have been supportive of such a move. But, despite several false dawns, the window of opportunity has never quite been open to us.

The reality is that there isn’t the structure in place to deliver a Challenge in the way they were delivered in London and Manchester, and smaller challenges that continue to this day are built on single authority mandates that bear little correlation to this region.
We are in a perverse dichotomy where the rhetoric of the Government is not matched by support for solutions. Nicky Morgan is desperate to see the end of regional educational disparity – as are we. And yet, the Government is blind to the opportunity to that exists to put schools in the driving seat of change across boundaries.
It would appear that Devolution offers the next opportunity to drive this change and I would urge the Department for Education to visibly engage with this process.

We, as leaders, have a choice about how we engage with the new education landscape. Undoubtedly, you are being asked to do more with less. Undoubtedly, there is a pressure and accountability like never before. Undoubtedly, you are being asked to bring transformative change without all the necessary tools in the box. Teacher shortages, leadership capacity issues and increasing competition are just some of the issues in front of you.

I would take a moment at this point to add that schools are not islands. It is naive to lay sole responsibility for the performance of North East children at your door. The sooner stakeholders in this region join up strategies for adult literacy, parental ambition and improved early years education, the greater the opportunity our schools will have of concentrating on teaching and not on backfilling the foundations that children in other parts of the country can take for granted.

My focus since taking post has been to get out into the network to meet as many head teachers in as diverse a range of schools as possible to understand the issues that prevail.
Of the 50 or so school leaders I have met to date, I am left in no doubt that you are focused on driving your schools forward. Yes, you identify the problems, but you’re meeting them head on with a positivity and purpose that I have found incredibly invigorating. 

SCHOOLS NorthEast is the wrapper that fits around all schools activity. It is an enormous privilege to have Sir Michael here with us today. I sense, like a stern father he may have some strong words for us that at one level will be hard to swallow. I hope that we meet this challenge positively. We cannot do that in isolation.  Only through the power of collective ambition will we make the wholesale changes that can shift our regional outcomes up to, and beyond, national expectations.

The stronger SCHOOLS NorthEast is, the more we can support you and the focus for the future has to be on how we can support you better. I have been handed a phenomenal platform on which to build and a talented team which is dedicated to you.

So what are we going to do to deliver that will make a difference for you?
Through our Advisory Board, which has representatives at primary and secondary from across all 12 local authorities as well as special schools, and our Partner Schools Programme, we have developed a calendar of activity that meets a range of classroom need. By strengthening our team, we now have additional capacity to bring a wider programme of events and workshops that spotlight best practice within the region and brings national speakers to the North East. Some of these are detailed in today’s hand book.

Later today, we will be officially announcing a major mental health initiative –  a North East Schools Commission on Mental Health – that will address a growing issue that school leaders tell me keeps them awake at night.

Recruitment and retention is consistently identified as an issue, so later this term we will be announcing details of our plans that will provide practical support for you in this area.

We also remain strongly committed to providing a North East voice in regional and national strategies.

Those of you who have engaged with our recent work on Exam Board Performance will recognise the important role we can play in bringing evidence to the Government’s door to demand change.

I’m not sure how many of you had the pleasure of sitting through the House of Commons Education Select Committee session yesterday? SCHOOLS NorthEast was referenced more than a dozen times throughout the session and our submission was described as “punchy” by one committee member.

The upshot of that submission – made possible by a significant number of secondary heads sending incredibly detailed information to me – is that the Chief Regulator at Ofqual, Glenys Stacey, has committed to come to the North East to meet with heads next month.

We cannot let Ofqual become distracted by the forthcoming curriculum changes when they are not currently holding exam boards to account.
Likewise, we have reports of issues at primary school level and I can announce today that it is our intention to widen our Call for Evidence to primary heads to understand if there is a role to be played in taking the Standards & Testing Agency to task.

At a regional level, Devolution is at the forefront of the agenda and we will continue to engage with this on your behalf. SCHOOLS NorthEast has also been supporting the North East LEP and the Gatsby Foundation on a two-year national careers advice pilot.

Today is the jewel in the crown of our annual activity. Our focus for the Summit 2015 is all about the future.

Working with you, we want to shape a Vision for 2020 that considers the big issues affecting education in the North East.

What will it take? Is the question posed. Our speakers, national and regional,
will be discussing how to establish strong relationships between schools and employers, develop a positive approach to mental health, get parental engagement right, develop great teaching and much more.

Before we hear from our keynote speaker, I would like to invite our conference sponsors, Muckle LLP, to the stage. They, alongside our other commercial supporters, are vital in enabling us to host national conferences here in the North East at a fraction of the cost. I would like to welcome onto the stage someone who is well known to schools around the region, who has supported many of you and attended every summit. Please put your hands together for Tony McPhillips, Partner & Head of the Education Team at Muckle LLP