Reuben Moore: Building partnerships across the educational divide

Yorkshire currently has the lowest attainment levels achieved by seven year-olds at key stage one for reading, writing and maths in the country.

Yorkshire and the Humber is the lowest performing region in the country for pupils achieving five A*s-Cs at GCSE.

Only a quarter of adults have level four qualifications (degree equivalent) which is the second lowest rate in the country by region.

While only 25 per cent of those pupils across the region who are eligible to receive free school meals achieved five A*-C GCSE grades including English and maths in 2010, more than half – 56 per cent – of those pupils not on free school meals achieved five A*-C GCSE grades including English and maths.

That’s an educational gap between Yorkshire and Humber haves and have-nots of 31 per cent.

But Yorkshire is not alone. The link between low family income and poor educational attainment is greater in the UK than in almost any other developed country.

But independent charity Teach First has proved that it doesn’t have to be this way.

The charity, which has been working in the region in 2009 and has placed 187 outstanding graduates to teach and lead in schools in challenging circumstances, is creating a movement of leaders who are committed to raising the achievement, aspirations and access to opportunity of children from low socio-economic backgrounds.

We believe that highly-effective teachers and leaders have the power to challenge educational disadvantage, one of the most pervasive and destructive issues in the UK today.

But while there is no magic wand that will provide a quick fix to this well-entrenched problem, we are mobilising a movement that is making a difference.

Teach First has found that by building strong, meaningful partnerships with those across Yorkshire who truly believe that every child, regardless of their background or postcode, deserves the right to a great education, it can make a difference to pupils, schools and communities.

The vital elements are:

Partnerships between schools that have the ambition and foresight to want to improve standards.

Headteachers at schools in challenging circumstances who believe the die has not been cast and that things can be better, and who are confident enough to try something different, even something radical.

Teachers who are relentlessly focused on helping their pupils achieve the three “A”s of achievement, aspiration and access to opportunity.

A business community that understands that it has a moral responsibility to help the most vulnerable in society succeed, not to mention the economic imperative of developing a highly-educated, highly skilled and highly-motivated local workforce.

By harnessing and motivating these elements, the region’s young people will have a chance to excel.

There are currently 134 schools in Yorkshire and the Humber that meet the Teach First criteria – at least half of their pupils living in the lowest 30 per cent of the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index, the lowest 30 per cent of national distribution for GCSE measure, and Teach First is in 40 of them.

By 2014, Teach First aims to place 125 teachers in Yorkshire and the Humber in a third of the region’s eligible schools.

This year for the first time we have Teach First graduates working in primary schools in the region with several placements across Leeds, while we have also sent our first teachers into secondaries in both Hull and Grimsby to help raise standards in schools in challenging circumstances.

The scale of the challenge facing the education community and beyond in Yorkshire and the Humber cannot be overstated, but neither can the desire and commitment of Teach First and its partners in the region to continue to work to identify, train and place ever greater numbers of top graduates as inspirational, high-impact teachers in both primary and secondary schools across the region.

We’re already working in partnership with businesses including HSBC, P&G (Procter and Gamble), Deloitte and PwC.

We’ve recruited Sheffield Hallam University and Leeds Metropolitan University to help us train the next generation of Teach First primary and secondary teachers, but there is much more to be done.

Reuben Moore is the Yorkshire director of Teach First, a charity which sends high-flying graduates into schools serving the poorest parts of the country.