George Osborne has called on the government to make raising schools standards in the North of England “one of its big ideas”.

The former chancellor told the Commons Education Select Committee today that he believed northern schools could be transformed if a concerted effort was made by national and local government and the private sector.

He said: “You need the national government to say that, ‘One of our big ideas is that we are going to improve education in the North of England as part of building a Northern Powerhouse. And we, the national government, will be judged against this and this is our big plan and we are going to get on with it.’”

Mr Osborne was giving evidence as chairman of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, which earlier this year produced a report on raising standards in the North.

It has called for the government to ensure that as many pupils in the North attend “good” or “outstanding” schools as do in London by 2022. This would mean 430,000 more northern pupils attending “good” or better schools.

Mr Osborne said: “Over my life time there has been a dramatic improvement in the state of London schools. They have managed to take good secondary and primary schools and make them excellent. That, to me, proves it can be done.

“I think the North has not had that focus. It has not had collective effort from national government, local government, private sector, the teaching profession, even though there are some fantastic teachers working in those schools, to really improve the education performance in the North of England, and I really think it can be done.”

He told the Education Select Committee today that while standards in the North were improving, the gap with the South of England and London remained and needed closing.

He suggested that an overarching Northern Education Board should be created to oversee large multi-academy trusts in the North.

Trudy Harrison, Conservative MP for Copeland in Cumbria, said the North of England had seen some of the biggest failures of multi-academy trusts.

Mr Osborne said “the tragedy of the North” was that problems with trusts such as Wakefield City Academies Trust had left people with the view “that we don’t want them here”. 

He said: “That is why we are proposing tougher governance for MATs. That governance happening in the North of England under a schools board, that can have the secretary of state on it or a minister, but its based in the North so people can have more confidence that when there are errors or things go wrong in these multi-academy trusts they are picked up and dealt with.”

He told MPs that they were also proposing having more local and regional coordination of the school system.

Lord Jim O’Neill, vice-chairman of the partnership, said that a Northern Powerhouse Education Fund, created when Mr Osborne was Chancellor, had not been used.

MATs ‘don’t feel well supported’

“After it as created, it was increased and I am not aware of that being spent,” he added. He said some of this funding could be used to support initiatives being proposed by the partnership.

Henri Murison, director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said he believed the current regional schools commissioner role was impossible because of the size of their areas.

He said that at the moment a MAT would get a phone call on a Friday afternoon about a school they might want to take on “and it could be anywhere in the North of England”.

“This is not a suitable way to manage an academy system,” Mr Murison added. He said that, in his experience, the strongly performing MATs did not feel well supported, “never mind those who need more help to improve”.

Lucy Powell, a former shadow education secretary, asked whether metro mayors should have their own school commissioners to hold local schools to account.

The Manchester Central MP said the Northern Powerhouse Partnership report had advocated more local intervention in early years and more of a local place-based approach to school improvement.

Addressing Mr Osborne, she said: “If I might say, these are not the directions of travel that were taken in your time in government. Have you had a change of heart? Is this something you wish you had done more of?”

Mr Osborne said that during his time as chancellor he was moving towards much greater devolution of power, responsibility and resource to local areas.