A radical idea for reviving the North

The Head of OFSTED, Sir Michael Wilshaw, warned last week that secondary schools in Liverpool and Manchester were ‘going into reverse’. Too many pupils in Northern towns and cities are simply not prepared for the next phase of their education, training or employment. In Liverpool, for example, four out of every ten schools are judged to be either inadequate or, in the bureaucratic jargon, ‘requiring improvement’, which basically means they are just not delivering the goods. The proportion of children securing five good GCSEs has fallen in many areas of the North.