Innovation doesn’t happen in Whitehall, the Government needs partners who know how to deliver - Jim O’Neill & Fiona Spellman

When too many young people leave school without strong literacy and numeracy, the cost is not only the loss of individual potential; it is a labour market less able to adapt to technological change and global competition. By promising a “blueprint for opportunity” and committing to halve the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers, the White Paper is not simply setting an educational ambition; it is setting an economic one.

Closing these gaps is essential if the country is to build a workforce capable of sustaining long-term productivity and unlocking the growth the economy urgently needs.

The White Paper contains 41 references to innovation, a striking acknowledgement that the current system cannot solve its biggest challenges by continuing with the status quo. It also commits to improving how deprivation funding is allocated, to ensure more resources reach the children who need them most. If deprivation funding is targeted, it has the potential to bring about real change. But funding reform only achieves its purpose if it is paired with intelligent deployment. Money alone does not close gaps; how it is spent, and whether it supports evidence-based approaches, is what counts.

But while the White Paper sets the right direction, it reveals something else too: government cannot deliver this transformation alone. Its ambitions to redesign deprivation funding, launch targeted regional missions such as Mission North East and Mission Coastal, and fundamentally reform provision for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), all depend on the involvement of partners who understand the realities on the ground.

No legislation, however well drafted, can substitute for the innovation that emerges when teachers and local leaders experiment, adapt, and learn in real time. Schools are complex organisations. They operate within communities shaped by housing, health, employment, and family circumstances. Effective solutions in Newcastle or Bradford may require modification if they are to be equally successful in Scarborough or Carlisle.

Innovation does not naturally originate in Whitehall. By design, government is cautious. It has to be. It is constrained by budget cycles, procurement rules, and political scrutiny. That caution is appropriate, but it has consequences. It means public money is very good at sustaining what already exists, but often slower to test what might work better. Risk-taking is constrained, and failure – an inevitable component of genuine innovation – is politically costly.

This is where strategic philanthropy can play a vital role. Not because it can or should ‘deliver’ government policy, but because it can provide the creative, experimental, innovative thinking that turns policy into progress. It can absorb risk, move quickly, and focus relentlessly on learning. Crucially, it can also operate over a longer time horizon than electoral cycles typically allow.

If innovation is genuinely to shape the future of education, it requires partners who understand the complexity of school life, are embedded in local contexts, can learn quickly from what works, and can help scale ideas responsibly.

The government’s White Paper acknowledges this truth. By calling so frequently for innovation and by placing so much weight on long-term disadvantage, it recognises that the usual levers will not be enough. To achieve its ambitions, government needs a different kind of partnership: one built on trust, shared evidence, and frontline experience of those who understand how children learn and what schools need.

That means working with organisations which have already demonstrated how to nurture and spread effective practice in the communities that need it most.

The stakes are too high for this to become another cycle of reform rhetoric followed by limited impact. Without meaningful innovation, we risk yet another cycle of structural reorganisation with little improvement in outcomes. With the right partnerships, however, this could be the most significant opportunity in a generation to close gaps that have scarred this country for too long.

If we get this right, the prize is not only improved exam results. It is a more dynamic economy, higher living standards, and a society in which opportunity is not predetermined by postcode or parental income. If we fail, we risk entrenching low productivity and diminished prosperity for decades.

Lord Jim O’Neill is an economist and founding trustee of education charity SHINE and Fiona Spellman is SHINE's CEO.