Case Studies

White pupils eligible for free school meals are the lowest attaining of all major groups in our education system. This session will explore myths and wrong turnings in current approaches to raising their attainment, and suggest alternatives – the key areas where school leaders might want to focus their efforts.

Strategy is about leadership in the future.

If the only constant is change, then to earn our leadership in the future, we must adapt. The pace of artificial intelligence and the emergence of unconventional competition have created an environment where the transformation of the education system is essential if it is to survive.

Educational leaders are faced with a crucial decision point.

Dan Fitzpatrick shared the Three Box Solution to innovation so that you can create non-linear solutions for your organisation and develop your future leadership. Dan spends his time helping educational leaders, teams, and organisations around the world to embrace an uncertain future, so that together, we can build a better education system together.

Nationally, a third of pupils leave school without grade 4 or above in Maths and English GCSEs, yet these qualifications have been made essential for many vocational pathways. This issue is compounded by stark inequalities in life chances based on region and class. London, despite its huge advantages of job opportunities and role models, consistently receives far higher funding per-pupils than regions like the North East. As a result, many working-class kids in provincial England leave schooling condemned to highly restricted employment opportunities.

Leading economist Paul Collier will challenge these systemic failures – from the mismatch between qualifications and vocational routes, to the consequences of centralised policymaking and short-term thinking. Drawing on international models, from Finland’s teacher-led approach to Switzerland’s vocational training, Paul will argue for a renewed focus on practical, non-cognitive pathways, stronger links between schools, further education, and local employers, and a culture of rapid learning across the education system.

Lee will cover:

-What to expect in the run-up to November and beyond, and the support schools will see. 

-The major changes that make up the reforms, including: new inspection report cards, the five-point scale and more streamlined evaluation areas.

-How we are putting inclusion at the heart of the changes.

The task of leading contemporary schools is hugely demanding, raising concerns around sustainability. At one level this is a succession planning issue, leading to practical questions about how school leaders might best be supported, developed, deployed and rewarded. At another level, a focus on sustainability raises more fundamental questions, around how leadership and schooling should be conceptualised and whether our current models are fit for purpose. Toby will draw on his extensive research into school and system leadership, focusing on two recent studies, both of which include a core focus on place.

The first is exploring sustainable school leadership across the UK, including the factors that drain and sustain leaders and the different possibilities for developing and supporting leaders in role. The second study focused on how leaders in nine different localities across England – including the North East – work to forge local coherence in support of improved outcomes for children. Toby will argue that local coherence is critical for successful, sustainable and inclusive educational systems in turbulent times; but coherence is never ‘done’, so requires continuous attention and effort, focused on developing collective moral purpose, a common cause, and integrated ways of working.

The education system is undergoing a fundamental reset—from curriculum reform to inspection and SEND. But how do we ensure that change is driven by those who know schools best?

This panel brings together North East school and trust leaders with national education figures—including former Secretaries of State for Education—for a bold, honest discussion on what system reform should look like, who it should serve, and who should be shaping it.

We’ll ask:
– What needs to change, and how?
– What can we learn from past reforms—what worked, and what didn’t?
– How do we ensure that the next phase of reform is done with schools, not to them?

From policy to practice, this session will explore how we can collectively reboot education in a way that empowers professionals, improves outcomes, and reflects the needs of our pupils and communities.

The session will discuss the opportunities and challenges now facing schools following decades of reform. How do schools influence what happens in their own schools and beyond?

The stats showing the underachievement of working class white boys won’t be new or surprising to anybody in the education system. But the Centre for Social Justice has taken a deeper look into the lives of boys growing up in the UK today, to see where some solutions may lie. CSJ Chief Exec Andy Cook looks at some of the research findings and the answers they point to.

If there were a Forrest Gump of British education — someone who has walked through every great reform, every upheaval, every ministerial brainstorm and meltdown — it would be Les Walton.

From advising John Major on the creation of Ofsted, to shaping policy with Estelle Morris, Ed Balls, and Michael Gove, and most recently across the U.K. and internationally, Les has been at the table — and often under it — for the biggest shifts in how our schools are led, inspected, and imagined.

Les had made a major impact on the North East and the U.K. For example:

• Principal of Norham Community Technology College
• Executive Director North Tyneside Council
• Principal of Tyne Metropolitan College
• Founder chair of the Young People’s Learning Agency
• Founder chair of the Education Funding Agency Advisory Group
• Founder chair of Northern Education Academies Trust
• Founder chair of the Association of Education Advisers

…and conceived of Schools North East.

This presentation is a vivid, sometimes shocking, always enlightening journey through fifty years of school improvement, seen from the inside — from a time when local authorities ruled and teachers had full autonomy, to today’s hyper-accountable, data-driven world. Les has witnessed the pendulum swing — from freedom to control, from professional trust to compliance — and now asks the question that matters most: Can we rebuild a system that trusts its leaders again?

Drawing on decades of frontline insight and his work with the Association of Education Advisers (AoEA), Les will show why structural change without systemic renewal never works — and how genuine, sustainable improvement comes from the middle out, not the top down.

This is the story of someone who’s been everywhere — from the corridors of power to the classrooms of chaos — and still believes, passionately, that the future of education rests in the moral courage and creativity of headteachers.

This isn’t theory — it’s lived history.

And it ends where it began: with leaders like you, ready to shape the next great chapter.