IF the government is serious about levelling up the North East – and it needs to be - education must be at the heart of its agenda, writes Dr Helen Rafferty, Interim Chief Executive of SHINE, a North of England education charity.

It is an unpalatable truth that a child’s future can be determined by where they grow up.

We know that many children from more disadvantaged backgrounds start school already well behind their peers and that gap in attainment only continues to grow throughout their education.

The problem is particularly pronounced in parts of the North East where disadvantaged children leave school a full two years behind their peers. In contrast, the gap is only 6 months in some London boroughs.

This inequality is compounded by the fact that the North East has the highest percentage of children on free school meals, at 26.3 per cent, compared to 15.1 per cent in the South East.

And the region also has a far higher concentration of children experiencing the highest impact, long-term disadvantage.

This stark disparity is deep-rooted – it existed long before Covid - and its effects are far-reaching. Children leaving school so far behind their peers can be playing catch-up for the rest of their lives and this has a knock-on impact on the region’s economy and productivity.

There has been a long-standing over-simplification of the regional differences in education, with the quality of teaching in the North East often being given as the reason for its under-achievement.

Yet research by experts, such as Durham University’s Professor Stephen Gorard, show that once the impact of long-term deprivation is considered, North East schools perform as well as any in the country. In fact, nursery and early primary children in the North East achieve as well as their peers in other regions, and in some cases better.

Additional resource is necessary to make sure children in the North East are supported throughout their school years, and it must be targeted in those areas of most need, such as those parts of the North East blighted by long-term deprivation.

And it must be spent on in a way that can deliver real change for children in these areas, backing methods that are shown to be most effective with disadvantaged students.

There needs to be an increase in the Pupil Premium and a more geographical approach to its distribution. A survey this week found that more than a third of head teachers use the funding to cover holes in their budgets.

These budgets have already been stretched to breaking point by the pandemic and the support provided by schools to their most disadvantaged students. And in a further blow, the government recently quietly changed a rule about how the premium is allocated, resulting in an effective cut for many schools. It is estimated that North East schools have lost out to the tune of between £5m and £7m.

And while the decision impacts upon schools across the UK, it is regions like the North East that will be hit the hardest.

Sustained long-term investment is required if we are to fix the deep-seated inequalities that hold our children back. For too long our education system has been dominated by short-term thinking which penalises children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

If the North East is to truly level up, its children need to be given the same opportunities to succeed as those from anywhere else in the UK.