A funding crunch, a cost-of-living crisis, acute recruitment challenges and looming strikes. It’s tempting to hunker down and focus on keeping our own house in order, but now more than ever we need to work together to meet the scale and complexity of the challenges ahead for schools.
Our capacity as a sector is vast, yet for all our efforts to create a self-improving system the truth is we’ve failed to leverage this latent potential. Instead, we’ve developed some collective bad habits that prevent us from developing resilience and improving sustainably. These are not insurmountable, and doing so is absolutely essential.
In 2022, England had the widest disadvantage gap for key stage 2 SATs on record and key stage 1 attainment is the lowest it has ever been. This national picture hides stark regional and local disparities, and that is just as true within our trust as it is across the country.
