The North East education network, SCHOOLS NorthEast, today welcomed the chief of Ofsted’s calls for London Challenge-style education improvement in the North.
SCHOOLS NorthEast, which represents 1,250 schools across North East England, also backed his calls for greater efforts to tackle the growing teacher recruitment crisis.
However, it did question the rhetoric of a “deeply troubling” divide between the North and South, saying that schools in the North East of England had been on a positive upward trend in inspection outcomes and was only a handful of positive judgements away from the national benchmark.
Mike Parker, Director of SCHOOLS NorthEast, said: “Sir Michael hits the nail on the head when it comes to schools working across local authority boundaries to improve. SCHOOLS NorthEast has long called for a regional initiative to support schools to work together to deliver significant improvement in education standards.
“Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector cites a lack of political will – it’s hard to disagree, particularly in the Department for Education which talks of schools-led change but has yet to back North East schools that want to deliver a solution at scale.”
Speaking on the recruitment issues, Mr Parker said: “Teacher shortages are a national crisis and the Government’s plans for a National Teacher Service are a sticking plaster that won’t be administered until 2017 at the earliest. Nicky Morgan will have to become more creative and more focused to address the problems identified by the head of Ofsted in his annual report.”
And, he challenged the notion that there was a wild disparity between North East schools and their southern counterparts, saying; “I told Sir Michael when he spoke at our annual Summit last month that 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.”
Mr Parker used his opening address at the SCHOOLS NorthEast Summit in Newcastle to say: “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.”
Sir Michael Wilshaw also welcomed efforts of getting a North East Schools Challenge off the ground during his speech at the SCHOOLS NorthEast Annual Summit.
