Listen to this story Members can listen to an AI-generated audio version of this article. 1.0x Audio narration uses an AI-generated voice. 0:00 0:00 Become a member to listen to this article Subscribe Delayed regional improvement plans will set out how schools should boost finances and use AI when finally published. Officials are hoping to unveil the blueprints this term, having originally targeted an autumn 2025 release date. Douglas Leckie, of the Department for Education, said the “core of the plans” will be to explain how each region will deliver on the government’s national priorities – attainment, attendance, inclusive mainstream and reception-year quality. “The idea is to articulate… what are the attendance priorities in this region and what specifically is this region going to do to address those,” he told the Schools and Academies Show on Thursday. Regional priorities The plans – which are part of Labour’s RISE school improvement programme – will also outline “regional priorities” bespoke to each area. Leckie said these will highlight “what each region is going to be doing in some of those underlying or contextual areas of challenge” to make progress against the national priorities. “We’re talking about things like financial sustainability, AI and tech, and parental engagement,” he added. “There’s significant scope in those sections of the plans for the regions to identify and articulate their own set of additional priorities above and beyond the national ones.” Leaders oversee progress Each region will also appoint its own team of sector leaders – called regional delivery partnerships – to oversee the progress of a handful of these local priorities. They will provide “an extra level of drive, of focus, of pace around the school improvement agenda with respect to those one or two things”, Leckie said. The groups’ memberships are “very much TBC”. Leckie noted it is “conceivable one or more RISE advisers might be part of these groups given their obvious overlap”. How they will be selected “is still being determined” but is “likely to be a combination of appointments and a sort of expression of interest-type process”.