Education’s North-South divide needs tackling - now

The leader of the North East’s largest Catholic education trust is determined to tackle a growing North-South divide that threatens the future prospects of thousands of pupils across the region.

According to Nick Hurn OBE, CEO Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust (BWCET), teachers have a ‘moral imperative’ to provide transformative education to vulnerable pupils.

But that vital mission requires key curriculum development, greater support for parents of pre-school children and a relentless focus on narrowing historic attainment gaps.

Mr Hurn oversees 48 schools spread across four local authorities: Northumberland, Gateshead, Sunderland and Durham. And he is keen to understand why children in London and the South East continue to have access to better education, appear more aspirational and continually outperform peers in our region.

“How can school communities in one part of the country manage to produce such amazing outcomes for their students,” asks Mr Hurn.

“What have these students, with the help of their parents, school and community been able to do that so many pupils from other areas in the country from equally deprived and disadvantaged backgrounds fail to do?

“Are there perhaps additional factors at work here that could not be replicated in a predominantly white working-class area outside of our capital with similar deprivation indices?”

In a bid to find the answers, Mr Hurn proposes an effective and comprehensive strategy to support and engage parents at the earliest stages of a child’s development.

He reveals more and more children are starting school with poor language and communication skills and, as a consequence, are struggling to keep pace with their peers. And Mr Hurn wants to empower North East families with comprehensive support packages after insisting ‘parents are the first educators of their children’.

Revisiting and re-energising the national curriculum is top of the Trust leader’s agenda — a task charged to Professor Becky Francis under the new Labour government.

But Mr Hurn, while celebrating the achievements of several Trust schools rated by Ofsted as outstanding in the past year, is looking beyond traditional academic indicators as he looks to inspire the next generation to realise their potential and aim higher.

“A well crafted and fully funded character development curriculum will undoubtedly raise any child’s confidence, aspirations and motivation,” he insists. “The development of curriculums to address deficits in cultural capital is a must for all children, but particularly for groups that suffer from impoverishment of aspiration.

“Our work as a Trust has focused intensively on this area — creating a deeply knowledge-rich curriculum which supports our most disadvantaged pupils to develop the same breadth of language and knowledge as their peers.”

Keen to shine a light on some of the biggest talking points affecting education, Mr Hurn is penning a series of blogs designed to spark debate and encourage action.

Narrowing the North-South divide is a long held ambition and he adds: “We have a moral imperative to provide transformative education for our most vulnerable pupils.”

To read the full blog please visit https://www.bwcet.com/news-and-community/raising-the-achievement-of-all-of-our-children/