A pattern is emerging.

During the Covid pandemic, headteachers had to become overnight experts in airborne disease transmission while learning about online teaching methods.

Now we’re asking them to become experts in civil engineering amid fears that some school infrastructure is at risk of, literally, crumbling.

At the same time, schools are juggling the demands of providing a good education alongside coping with the leap in mental health problems among young people and an exponential increase in the number of children facing multiple vulnerabilities.

Many school staff are taking on additional social care responsibilities as they support children beset with difficulties originating outside the school gates.

The RAAC crisis is just the latest physical manifestation of a failure to invest in the UK’s most valuable commodity - its children and young people.

We must use this crisis as a clarion call, put aside political differences, step outside our organisational boundaries and prioritise the UK’s most precious asset.

Some schools are at breaking point, and our society and economy will pay a terrible price if these warnings are not heeded. Something is going badly wrong.

The question is: how can each of us help schools give children the very best possible start in life as they battle with these challenges?

Fair investment across the nation

The Child of The North All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) report, published today, identifies the structural problems undermining our public services and, importantly, provides pragmatic solutions.

It highlights the incredible work undertaken by staff within educational settings and shows how working with and through schools can allow public services - such as the NHS - to deliver more effective care.

The report shows what happens when we fail to adequately support children within educational settings. The pressures soon mount elsewhere in other public services. These downstream costs are crippling our public finances.

A failure to provide early support results in chronic poor health - physical and mental - with greatly increased risks of social care need and involvement in the criminal justice system for the nation’s children.

The report argues that we need to start using our world-class research assets to solve these problems, just as we did when developing the Covid vaccination.

The APPG report involves nine universities making nine recommendations and proposals, forged and trialled across northern England but offering national solutions. It identifies inequity as one major problem, illustrated well by the North-South divide in average educational attainment.

Perhaps its most shocking statistic is the disparity in funding, where schools in northern England have historically received less funding per child than those in the south despite the greater challenges they face.

The geographical inequality reflects the higher preponderance of disadvantaged communities within northern England - the same inequality plays out within regions across the UK.

These inequalities are bad for everyone, and everyone would benefit from “levelling up” education funding so that it properly reflects the wider challenges faced by disadvantaged schools.

Health barriers that hinder education

The APPG report also shows the health barriers to education.

Many schools are already supporting their children’s health needs and helping disadvantaged families, but we need to better support them to do so, as well as recognising the extent to which schools have become anchor institutions.

We need to seize the opportunity to provide health services through educational settings.

Creativity and innovation are needed to find solutions to perennial problems.

The APPG report shows how society can benefit from harnessing the research and development expertise of our public universities, such as identifying autism early, addressing the special educational needs and disabilities crisis, and ensuring children are “school ready”.

It shows how connected data could transform public service delivery.

It highlights how information sharing across health and education could improve children’s life chances. Most importantly, it encourages the voices of a young person and school leader to be listened to.

Failure to invest for the future will do huge damage

Imagine a nation where the population failed to invest in pensions. It would constitute a reprehensible failure to anticipate future need and - rightly - create a demand for change.

Simple economic modelling shows the colossal societal costs that result when a child’s needs are not met in a timely fashion.

We hope the APPG report will start a new debate about building the best possible environment for the next generation in the North - and across the whole of the UK - to equip young people with the skills needed to address the economic, social and climate crises we face.

There is nothing more pressing than the need to invest in our future generations.

Mark Mon-Williams is professor at the University of Leeds and Bradford Royal Infirmary, and co-author of the report

Anne Longfield is chair of the Commission on Young Lives and former children’s commissioner for England