Opportunity North East (ONE) was a major programme of investment and support for schools in the North East between 2019 – 22, backed by £12m of new government funding.
The wider project had five strands of activity, focusing on
- transition from primary to secondary;
- supporting targeted secondary schools;
- teacher recruitment and retention in maths;
- facilitating student career progressions; and
- progress to HE.
The second of these challenges, dubbed ‘ONE Vision’, identified 28 secondary schools across the region with a history of ‘Requires Improvement’ Ofsted ratings and put in place an intensive programme of support with the joint aims of getting ‘Good’ (or better) Ofsted judgements and improved Progress‑8 GCSE scores. Just over half the total ONE funding was invested in the ONE Vision Challenge.
In the time since ONE began, the policy focus on the challenge of ‘stuck’ schools – those with persistent less-than-Good ratings – has become more prominent. A 2020 Ofsted report identified 415 schools across England that had never been Good in the 13 years that a typical pupil attends school.
Towards the end of last term, ONE held its wrap-up / lessons-learned / celebration meeting, where ONE Vision school leaders were invited to reflect on their experiences, what they had gained and learned from the programme, and what could have been improved.
Evidence locked-in
At the start of the ONE project, each participating school began with a thorough diagnosis of need, including financial and governance audits.
The schools produced development plans that were subjected to constructive scrutiny and challenge from a group of local headteachers and MAT leaders, along with the DfE team. All these meetings focused on the evidence underpinning the planned strategies and steered them towards ‘best bets’. Training for the school leaders in the interpretation and application of research evidence was provided by EEF staff.
Although most of the schools’ development plans changed significantly as a result of this input, there was a general perception among the headteachers that ONE Vision gave them a lot of autonomy over spending. This may reflect the relatively constrained nature of other funding streams that often seem to require square pegs to be brutally rounded-off to fit.
But it also suggests that the process of developing these plans in collaboration with a group of supportive experts was seen by heads as helping them make better choices, and building their knowledge and expertise about effective school leadership.
Coupling-up with NLEs
One of the strongest reflections in the lessons-learned meeting was the importance of the partnership with a National Leader of Education (NLE) in helping schools move forward. These partnerships were a key element of ONE Vision, but are by no means unique to it: many similar programmes have used this approach, though the impact can be variable.
What seems distinctive here is the care that went into getting the right partnership. A striking memory for me was sitting in the meetings with the local heads of successful schools, discussing good matches for each ONE Vision school.
They were clear that the designation ‘NLE’ carried no weight: many people with that label were judged, based on their local knowledge, to be unlikely to offer what was needed; others, who were not officially NLEs, but had successfully turned around similar, challenging schools, were approached and asked to support.
DfE staff then carefully managed a ‘chemistry check’ to ensure that both partners saw value in working together, and actively reviewed partnerships that did not seem to be delivering as the project continued. This emphasis on the expertise and fit of the NLE, and the importance of the relationships, appears to have been crucial.
Many of the ONE Vision heads had powerful stories to tell about the impact their NLE had on their journey. Some had taken coachloads of staff to visit the NLE’s school, returning with transformed perspectives about what might be possible ‘in a school like ours.’ One described how ‘RI makes you insular’, but then feeling they could hold their heads up when teachers from the Outstanding partner school found things they wanted to copy.
Most had regular visits of the NLE to their school, providing coaching and support: one head described how this relationship relieved the ‘loneliness of leadership.’
Many talked about the wisdom and expertise their NLE passed on, helping them, for example, to focus more effectively on a small number of issues, rather than trying to juggle everything.
Sustainability
Another key element of ONE was the constant reminder to do nothing that could not be sustained beyond the life (and funding) of the project. Lord Agnew, the Minister who led the project at the start, was a stickler for this. Of course, it is still too early to tell what practices and impacts may be sustained, but the discipline of this mindset really shaped the project.
Evaluation
A focus on evidence goes hand-in-hand with thinking about how to evaluate the impact of the programmes, and learn about what could be improved in future versions.
We were still finalising much of this when Covid changed everything. In particular, the main outcome measures (national assessments and Ofsted ratings) were suspended, disrupted, or otherwise problematic to interpret: many aspects of the evaluation will be much more limited than planned.
Meanwhile, there are some encouraging indicators.
For example, of the 28 ONE Vision schools that all began with less-than-Good Ofsted ratings, 12 have been inspected since inspections resumed in September 2021: eight are now Good, one has gone from Inadequate to RI, three have stayed RI.
These numbers are slightly above national patterns for similar schools, but it is hard to interpret them as a clear improvement, much less to attribute any change to ONE Vision.
A more dramatic change can be seen in the proportion of secondary schools in the North East rated Good or Outstanding, which rose from 58% in September 2019 to 72% in July 2022 – the largest rise for any region.
Of course, we cannot say how much (if any) of this rise may be attributed to ONE, or whether it will be sustained, but, for now at least, it is a very welcome turnaround.