Policy Roundtable builds on Manifesto for North East Education

Policy Roundtable builds on Manifesto for North East Education

Yesterday, Schools North East held the first in its new series of policy roundtable events. We invited Head Teachers and educational professionals from across the region to discuss our Manifesto for North East Education, published last year in response to the general election, and put detail behind the recommendations contained within the Manifesto.

The discussions focused particularly on the first recommendation: Recognise the regional context. We were delighted to welcome Anthony Conlin from the Schools Data Company and Professor Stephen Gorard from the Durham University Evidence Centre for Education, who spoke about the contextual issues in the North East, and the implications of this on educational outcomes and practice.

When the contextual issues discussed by both Anthony Conlin and Stephen Gorard are taken into account, educational performance in the North East is not worse than anywhere else in the country, which is the prevailing media narrative.  This only reinforced the ambition of Schools North East to influence policy and ensure that it enables our schools to provide the very best outcomes possible for the region’s children

The roundtable discussions explored the everyday issues of deprivation facing our schools at the chalkface, as well as other regional issues such as access to transport links, and employment opportunities in the North East, with a need for a more joined up approach to addressing these contextual challenges rather than treating schools as the only solution.

Alongside this focus on the first recommendation, we looked into recommendation 2 (promote a positive narrative) and recommendation 4 (evidence-based policy making).

While the North East faces many challenges when it comes to education, there are also many success stories that need to be celebrated more widely.  The debate highlighted the need to shine a light on these positive news stories to help raise aspirations and encourage teachers to stay in the profession in the region.

Evidence-based education was seen as crucial to properly understanding the true situation of education in the North East.  Moving forward, we will use the issues discussed to put more detailed recommendations into the Manifesto and increase our efforts to ensure that policymakers, as well as politicians of all political stripes, create policy ‘fit for purpose’ across the North East.  Our next policy roundtable event, coming soon, will further explore the other recommendations in the Manifesto.