Justine Greening calls for more opportunity in the North to aid education gap and improve children’s futures

Rotherham-born Former Education Secretary Justine Greening, the architect of the opportunity areas programme during her time in government, made the call as northern education leaders urged the Government to expand her pioneering education scheme, which has raised standards in three areas of Yorkshire, across the whole of the North, exclusively reported exclusively by The Yorkshire Post on Saturday (29 August).

Read the exclusive Yorkshire Post education report here. Ms Greening, 51, told The Yorkshire Post: “Investing in Yorkshire’s young people is one of the best investments that can be made to secure the future of our country.

“To enable them to be able to reach their potential will need more opportunity areas in Yorkshire and it also means the existing opportunity areas working with those new opportunity areas to help them get further faster even then they have been able to.”

Ms Green, who was education secretary for two years under Theresa May, added: “The key thing for me is opportunity areas have to be locally owned… it needs to happen across the Yorkshire region.

“In my mind I called it ‘last mile politics’ - where Whitehall retains some ownership in the sense of having some responsibility, but ultimately it was the local communities that really took the opportunity area idea and made it its own.

“The biggest challenge is almost replicating the alchemy that those existing opportunity areas have been able to create in very different communities and scale.

“It’s not the North gets the power or Whitehall, it’s time for both these tiers of government to come together and find a common view of what is needed on the ground.”

She called for long term investment in Yorkshire’s existing opportunity areas, where children’s reading, writing and maths scores at primary school level increased by 12 per cent above the national average - with Bradford seeing the biggest improvements - 16 per cent, since the original policy was announced in 2016.

“These are long term projects which require sustained work on the ground and almost a ‘patient politics approach’ in order to really get the most out of the investment that is going on,” she said. “Things don’t change overnight although all the three Yorkshire opportunity areas have shown they can get significant benefits in a comparatively short space of time.”

Ms Greening, who left May’s cabinet after she refused to move from the Department of Education, to be business secretary, added: “They do need the long term funding so they can plan some of those longer term projects that can really not only preserve the gains we have already seen but enable them to tackle some of the even more ingrained barriers that are holding young people back from succeeding.”

Founder of the Social Mobility Pledge campaign, a coalition of 450 businesses globally, as well as 50 universities, Ms Green said the role of opportunity areas would be “crucial” in the recovery from covid-19 and should be used to place targeted long-term investment into local communities.

She said: “Education is at the heart of any levelling-up plan for the Government and in this moment it not only needs to get schools open and the education system back up and running it also needs to have a proper plan to help children and young people catch-up, and opportunity areas can play a key role in doing just that.

“They have never been more needed in many respects than they are now. They were always crucial in the levelling-up agenda in my view and they are even more crucial because of covid.”

Ms Greening, a former pupil at Oakwood High School in Rotherham, said: “We knew we had to work hard if we wanted to make something of our lives, we couldn’t expect anything really to be offered up to us on a plate. We were going to have to work really hard at school and then go out and find opportunity.

“What I’ve always tried to do through politics is to see what I can do to make that journey easier if you like, with fewer barriers for the next generation after us now.”

Ms Greening, said there is a real risk that if lessons are not learned by the Government and education is not prioritised in the levelling-up agenda then those who currently face the most disadvantage will eventually pay the highest price and the Government would continue to fail a generation of young people.

“The chancellor said he would do whatever it takes on the economy and given how damaging covid has been for young people’s education he needs to have that same ‘whatever it takes’ ethos when it comes to investing in their future’s otherwise they will pay the long term price for covid because their future’s will be damaged through this, through having their education so badly disrupted.

“Rhetoric is one thing, but in the end this Government will be judged by how it acts and that is including where it puts it’s investment and whether it is able to deliver results on the ground.

“For some time now…I have been pushing for them to do more opportunity areas because it was clear to me that they had real potential to make a big impact on the ground for the communities where they have been started.

“The next step for them is probably to look beyond schools even, to employment prospects of people coming out of local education systems and schools and how we can better connect them up with using their talents once they are coming out of an education system.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said: “Every young person deserves a world-class education, no matter where they grow up or what school they go to. That is why the Prime Minister has announced a transformative 10-year rebuilding programme for schools all over England, with substantial investment in the North and the Midlands, and every school will benefit from the second year of our school funding settlement, worth £14.4 billion over three years - the biggest increase in school funding in a decade.

“We are addressing the impact of lost time in education as a result of the coronavirus pandemic through our £1 billion catch up fund, including targeted funding to support the most disadvantaged pupils and thousands of young people – including in Leeds and Sheffield – will get free nutritious food and enriching activities this summer thanks to our £9 million Holiday Activities and Food programme.

“We are also investing £90 million over four years in our 12 Opportunity Areas – including three here in Yorkshire – to increase opportunities and outcomes for young people and support those hardest hit by the pandemic, with up to £24 million in Opportunity North East to improve outcomes and boost the aspirations of young people in the North East.”

Read the full education report here. _____________________________

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James Mitchinson