The Children’s Commissioner has called for a “London Challenge” style programme to boost teacher recruitment in disadvantaged areas in the North of England.
Speaking as part of an accountability hearing with the Commons’ Education Select Committee, Anne Longfield was asked how more teachers could be attracted to work in deprived communities.
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Tom Hunt MP, who sits on the committee, said: “It seems right now that’s more important than ever to try and get the best teachers...into the right schools working with the most disadvantaged kids to help with this catch-up. Have you any ideas about how this can best be done, particularly with regards to maybe specific financial incentives to try and direct teachers into the schools where they are needed?”
Ms Longfield said the Commissioner’s 2018 report, Growing Up North, had found that schools in areas of entrenched disadvantage had the most difficulty in attracting teachers.
She said: “I think what you can see in London, where you have 20 years ago schools that were some of the poorest in the country, who are now the leading schools in the country in terms of the areas of disadvantage - incentives for teachers, wrapping support packages around school, the injection of cash in those areas as well, but really that bigger drive - that this is something which is a strategic mission if you like and it’s got clear objectives and backed up by a clear framework of theirs,” she said.
Asked by Mr Hunt whether she was advocating a London-style challenge for the North, Ms Longfield said: “Yes...a London-style challenge, as in the ingredients of what that means, but delivered in the North in response to the context.”
She added: “What we don’t want is to plan a London challenge in the North and expect it to be the same, it has to be led by the North.”
Ms Longfield also said that issues with pupils being groomed by county lines were reemerging, having decreased during the pandemic. She said vulnerable children were viewed as “commodities” by gangs.
“It is back to normal and the drugs market is as buoyant as ever,” she said.
“The big answer [to solving this] really is you reduce the vulnerability of those kids, because they [gangs] only pick on kids as commodities when they’re vulnerable.
“How you do that is you keep a protective factor around it, keep them in schools, you identify who these kids are in advance, and you help families to be able to support and protect those children if they’re in danger.
“But without that protection then my fear is that there are a group of vulnerable teenagers who are easy targets and sadly seen as quite disposable commodities by ruthless gangs.”
Ms Longfield also said what had got worse in her tenure was the “disadvantage gap”.
“And that might be slightly marred by the fact we’ve had Covid for the last six months but I certainly think that’s the case.”
Asked to clarify whether she meant in education or in terms of food poverty, Ms Longfield said: “I mean a mixture of everything but it’s clearly seen in education and poverty.”
