SCHOOLS NorthEast praised for role in advocating greater focus on education in the North East at the Education Select Committee
Former Chancellor George Osborne appeared before the Education Select Committee alongside Northern Powerhouse Partnership colleagues on Wednesday, where he called for a closing of the gap in school performance between the North and London by 2022. Mr Osborne was giving evidence as chairman of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, which earlier this year produced a report on raising standards in the North.
Henri Murison, director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, praised SCHOOLS NorthEast for its role in consistently advocating for greater focus and higher investment in education in the North East.
The key points from the evidence session are:
- George Osborne called on the government to make raising schools standards in the North of England “one of its big ideas” and said we wouldn’t see the kind of improvements we need without national government leadership.
- He told the Education Select Committee today that while standards in the North were improving, the gap with the South of England and London remained and needed closing. Henri Murison added the caveat that the demographics of disadvantaged pupils in the North are very different to those in the south.
- Mr Osborne agreed with Gateshead MP Ian Mearns that the North East should be the location for “at least one, if not more” of the Government’s opportunity areas, something SCHOOLS NorthEast has long advocated for.
- Mr Osborne suggested that an overarching Northern Education Board should be created to oversee large multi-academy trusts in the North, giving parents and the public confidence in the wake of high profile scandals involving MATs. He warned, however, that the north should not be put off from embracing the MAT model as he believes it to be successful.
- Henri Murison, director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said he believed the current regional schools commissioner role was impossible because of the size of their areas.
- He said that at the moment a MAT would get a phone call on a Friday afternoon about a school they might want to take on “and it could be anywhere in the North of England”.
Mr Osborne said: “Over my life time there has been a dramatic improvement in the state of London schools. They have managed to take good secondary and primary schools and make them excellent. That, to me, proves it can be done.
“I think the North has not had that focus. It has not had collective effort from national government, local government, private sector, the teaching profession, even though there are some fantastic teachers working in those schools, to really improve the education performance in the North of England, and I really think it can be done.”