Northern broadside: Education chief slams city leaders
THE Government’s chief inspector of education has warned city leaders in Liverpool and Manchester to improve standards, or the Northern Powerhouse concept will “splutter and die”.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, voiced his fears over declining secondary school performance and pupil attainment in Liverpool, Manchester and surrounding areas in a major speech.
Three in 10 secondary schools in Manchester and four in 10 in Liverpool are judged by Ofsted to be inadequate or require improvement.
The proportion of Manchester’s pupils gaining 5 GCSEs grade A* to C, including English and maths, fell from 51% two years ago to 47% currently. In Liverpool the percentage fell from 50% to 48% over the same period.
In his Annual Report published in December, Sir Michael called England “a nation divided at age 11”, referring to the discrepancy between the performance of schools in the North and Midlands and those in the South
Speaking at the nstitute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), Sir Michael said that the extent of this underperformance presents a very real risk to the government’s vision of a Northern Powerhouse.
He said:”Manchester and Liverpool are at the core of our ambitions for a Northern Powerhouse. They are the engines that could transform the prospects of the entire region. But as far as secondary education is concerned they are not firing on all cylinders. In fact they seem to be going into reverse.”
He said local politicians, be they mayors, council leaders or cabinet members must “stand up and be counted”.
“I am calling on them to make education in general – and their underperforming secondary schools in particular – a central target of their strategy for growth.
“Unless they do, I fear Manchester and Liverpool will never become the economic powerhouses we want them to be. We cannot fight for social mobility with political immobility. Politicians need to act.
“It requires grit, imagination, faith and bloody mindedness – qualities that, fortunately, I really don’t think are less common in the North than they are down South.
