I retired from my 43 years of work in schools a year ago and, like anyone stepping down after such long service, I have things I’m proud of and others less so. Just as Tony Blair would probably like to remember his role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland, rather than his impact on Iraq, so I prefer to highlight the establishment of Schools NorthEast when looking back on my career, although I am also glad to say that there are no dodgy dossiers in my cupboard.

It was in 2007 that Schools NorthEast began. It was the first and it remains the only regional network run by schools and for schools. I was its first chair, from then until 2015, when John Hardy took over. Interestingly, the impetus for its formation came from outside the education sector. It was the regional development agency (One North East), which saw that education was crucial in regional regeneration, but it had no mechanism for speaking directly with schools, as partners in this enterprise. It commissioned Les Walton CBE to find a way. He brought headteachers together from across the region and sectors and supported us in forming ourselves into a charitable trust.

The qualification for membership of Schools NorthEast was not difficult to achieve; you simply had to be a school in the North East, which meant more than 1,200 could join. That included state-funded and independent schools serving all age groups, sectors and communities in the region. When academies expanded, it included them as well. One North East and the Learning and Skills Council offered pump-priming funding. Ironically, neither of these organisations exists any longer, but Schools NorthEast is still pumping and has been soundly self-financing for many years now.

I sometimes say that my only incontrovertible success as a headteacher was survival (for 17 years as headteacher of Kenton School in Newcastle). Although constantly having to adjust my rhetoric to suit the idiosyncrasies of passing education secretaries, I certainly trumped them on this count, since eight of them came and went during that time; and Schools NorthEast’s survival count is looking promising, with secretaries of state from Ed Balls, through Michael Gove, to Damian Hinds. 

‘Shared learning and innovation’

We always recognised that our confidence in survival and the sources of funding were crucial issues if our project was to prove worthwhile. As our latest chief inspector of schools, Amanda Spielman, may discover, when your funding comes from government, it is difficult, maybe impossible, to be truly independent or to be confident of your future. Our funding came partly from our partner schools and partly from commercial sponsors, who have no influence whatsoever on our policies.

Ms Spielman is Schools NorthEast’s guest at the 2018 Summit, but I like to imagine that her approach to evidence in her new role is already being informed by the conversation that took place when she joined us for a working lunch during her time at Ofqual. When former schools minister Lord Adonis met us at our Summit in 2012, we expressed our agreement with the three priorities of his book Education, Education, Education, but asked him to reconsider the rhetoric of failure that permeated his discourse. Indeed, in his 2013 report, North East Independent Economic Review, a key priority was expressed positively as, “Establish a North East Schools Challenge to accelerate the improvement of North East primary and secondary schools.”

We have worked tirelessly to influence national and local decision-makers with some success, but, as the Trump era shows us, prejudice in power can overturn a mountain of hard-won evidence in an instant.

Our most enduring influence has been on one another, to develop a culture of shared learning and innovation, which is easiest to sustain with colleagues and schools which are near enough to visit frequently, but far enough away to be untainted by deadly sibling rivalry. That is what a regional network enables.

The key to understanding results in our region is the sad underachievement of so many white working-class students and the so-called “skills gap” that follows in its wake.

Many NorthEast businesses are experiencing a serious skills shortage. The skills gap is more than anything a gap in communication and trust: the region also has a proud culture of skilled work that was so manifest among the grandparents and great-grandparents of our young people. Despite this heritage, many families in our less advantaged communities simply do not believe that opportunities are attainable for their children through educational achievement.

When schools and business work together they can break through the gap, as was demonstrated by the recent performance of Studio West, a radically innovative small studio school in west Newcastle, where all students spend a significant part of every week in long-term work placements. It has achieved a significantly positive Progress 8 score with a cohort of over 70 per cent pupil premium students from white working-class backgrounds. 

I must declare an interest. I helped to set up Studio West, as part of our small academy trust, with its inspirational principal, Val Wigham. Its motto is “Learning That Connects”.  

David Pearmain was head of Kenton School in Newcastle for 17 years and was the founding chair of Schools NorthEast. Schools NorthEast’s annual conference takes place next Thursday. Tes is the official media partner