Missions impossible? The flagship policy due in September

A flagship policy to turn around outcomes in left-behind areas risks “sounding bold but changing nothing”, ministers have been warned.

The warning comes after Labour fleshed out its vision for two place-focused programmes, mission north east and mission coastal, to tackle entrenched disadvantage.

A September start date has been announced, but questions continue to hang over central elements of the scheme as leaders urge the government to learn from the mistakes of the past.

What do we know?

The missions were first unveiled in the schools white paper in February, with the aim of transforming “outcomes for young people locally and provide a blueprint for change nationally”.

In the north east, its focus will be on boosting results for white working-class children in “communities where attainment gaps are too often accepted as inevitable”, the white paper said.

On the coast, efforts will be focused on Hastings and Scarborough. The white paper noted these were areas where “opportunity can be limited by geography, fragile local infrastructure, and the compounding effects of disadvantage”.

The government stressed it will over time “look to form a wider alliance of other coastal areas with similar challenges” that could “benefit from the approach being taken in Scarborough and Hastings”.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, said: “For too long, children living in these areas have grown up without the opportunities that they need and deserve to be able to achieve and thrive.

“That is not a matter of ability. It is a matter of justice. Mission north east and mission coastal are our commitment to change that postcode lottery for good.”

Experts and boards

For both, partnership boards will be established that draw “on expertise from teachers, local leaders, and the wider public so that the whole community takes shared responsibility for change”. Schools will also work together in local clusters.

“Expert practitioners” will work directly with leaders to build teacher capacity and boost standards. No information was provided on who these practitioners will be.

Schools will be expected to forge “new partnerships with employers,  while sports clubs, faith groups and youth organisations will provide vital mentoring, careers’ support and cultural enrichment”.

Phillipson said she grew up in the north east and knew the challenges families faced.

“I want every child there, and in coastal communities like Hastings and Scarborough, to have the same opportunities I was lucky enough to have.”

Why these areas?

Government officials said the “stark” data showed the north east had the lowest exam results of any region in England at 1.9 points below the national average of 46 in attainment 8.

FFT Education Datalab analysis, published three years ago, showed just 54 per cent of 22-year-olds from long-term disadvantage were in employment or education in the north east.

Chris Zarraga, the director of Schools North East (SNE), said the region faced one of the “worst structural deficits” in local services outside school gates. It was also facing the “steepest projected fall” in pupil rolls.

Education Policy Institute research found the number of primary school children in the area is projected to fall by 12.7 per cent by 2028-29. Funding is expected to drop by 9 per cent as a consequence.

The Department for Education also said in Hastings disadvantaged children averaged just 26 in attainment 8. In Scarborough, the figure stood at 27.

Russell Hobby, the chief executive of the Kemnal Academies Trust, which runs one Hastings school and another in neighbouring Bexhill, said coastal communities included some of the most neglected towns and neighbourhoods in the country.

They have “weak job markets, struggling services and alienated communities”.

“The revitalisation of Britain as a whole will begin with a solution for these towns,” Hobby argued. “If they remain left behind, our politics will further spiral and fragment.”

What don’t we know? 

But even though the missions are due to begin in less than four months, much remains unknown.

The DfE has promised to release details on “funding arrangements, specific scope and structure” as the programmes develop.

It said activity would be “targeted at the communities and schools where need is greatest”, with specifics set to be published “in due course”.

And, crucially, officials haven’t yet set a timeframe for the missions, so it is not known how long these areas will be supported.

When approached by Schools Week, one council declined to comment “not least because we simply don’t know enough about the project”.

An academy trust operating in one of the mission areas was also unable to send over a statement as it “do[es] not have any details surrounding the plans”.

Potential pitfalls? 

Amid the uncertainty, sector leaders have warned against several potential pitfalls.

A spokesperson for north east council Hartlepool cautioned against “short-term funding approaches” as they could “limit sustainability”.

They also said a “lack of local flexibility” could restrict the ability “to respond to the specific needs of communities”.

Zarraga agreed, but said the missions also required “a sustained approach that lasts beyond election cycles, and a genuine multi-agency approach”.

Without these elements, the same conversations would be had again in 2032, he warned.

And Hobby was keen to “push back” on the plan for expert practitioners to be drafted into the areas.

“The gap is not a lack of knowledge or will. It is a lack of resource and the weakness of surrounding services and systems. Well-meaning advice is really not the answer.”

‘Revolutionary’ London Challenge

The department has said the missions will seek to build on the “revolutionary impact” of the London Challenge.

Launched in 2003 as a secondary school improvement programme, it was expanded to primaries five years later. It ended in 2011.

At its peak, the initiative had an annual budget of £40 million, with advisers and DfE officials jointly brokering additional support for underperforming schools.

An Institute for Government (IfG) report said it also “invested heavily” in leadership, including development programmes and consultant heads to help those running struggling schools.

Over the period, secondary performance dramatically improved and local authorities in inner London went from the worst performing to the best performing nationally.

Estelle Morris, a former education secretary who helped to pioneer the challenge, said it would be “crucial” for those leading Labour’s missions to build enough capacity to understand the local barriers to success and communicate them clearly.

“I always felt that one of the things that contributed to the success of the London Challenge was that the relationship between the politics and the education was right and the initiative was given time and space to flourish,” she said.

‘Mixed’ rollout

Morris’s successor, Charles Clarke, said in an interview five years ago that attempts to replicate the challenge – which he described as “essentially locally led” – in other parts of the country “didn’t really succeed”.

The IfG found its rollout in Greater Manchester and the Black Country had “mixed” results. This was “in part because they had less time for these practices to properly embed”.

The Conservatives later launched their opportunity areas scheme. Between 2017 and 2022, 12 areas were given £72 million in total. Controversially, this did not extend to the north east.

“Opportunity North East” was then created to channel £12 million towards dozens of schools across 12 local authorities over three years.

Alan Wood, who was involved in the London Challenge while director of education at Hackney, said the opportunity area cash “didn’t touch the surface”.

“There have been numerous interventions designed by the centre which have not worked.”

Top-down fears

The opportunity areas then morphed into the education investment area programme, in which 55 parts of the country prioritised funding as part of the levelling-up agenda.

But Schools Week analysis in 2023 found the extra cash equated to just £50 per child. The scheme was binned last year.

Leaders have cautioned that the issuing of “slow” money through lengthy bidding processes and loss of institutional memory between past programmes limited some of the schemes’ chances of success.

Henri Murison, the chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, urged ministers to “learn from what has worked previously”.

He said proper local involvement with governance to target how available funding is spent was crucial.

“I hope government decides to go down that road and not try and determine top down what is needed in communities in the north east or in coastal towns from Whitehall.”

‘Biggest risk’

Wood believes many of the struggling schools in the mission areas will have a problem with the recruitment and retention of skilled teachers.

“Nothing will work unless you’ve got a sufficiency of good teachers. How you get the expertise in the school is imperative.”

And Zarraga warned the “single biggest risk” was the programme “sounding bold but changing nothing”.

He said it would only be “transformational” if it tackled “the whole system around children, not just the schools they sit in”.

“Schools are being asked to deliver structural change in communities that have faced long-term deprivation while… wider services around schools – health, police, and social care – continue to retreat as they have continued to be squeezed.

“As the secretary of state has acknowledged ‘no school is an island’. Schools alone cannot solve problems they didn’t create.”