School leaders have been challenged to create cultures where all children feel like they belong, by the chief executive of the sector body for multi-academy trusts.
The Confederation of School Trust’s (CST) Leora Cruddas told the Schools North East Academies conference that the sector needed to challenge itself as “there are some children for whom our schools are not working as well as they should”.
She said this was particularly the case for “our children with special educational needs and disabilities”.
‘Too many don’t feel like they belong in our schools’
She also highlighted international research showing England as an outlier among countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, because “too many of our children in the English education system don’t feel like they belong in our schools”.
“There’s a challenge here for us…how do we create school cultures where everybody feels that they belong?” Ms Cruddas added.
The CST chief executive told the event in Newcastle yesterday that it was important to recognise the overall strength of education in England.
She said: “So the English education system - for the avoidance of doubt - is a really good system, and we are on a journey to great, aren’t we?”
Ms Cruddas told the audience that it was “really important that we recognise that what we do in our English schools is really good work”.
But she added: “I think we also need to be honest. We need to challenge ourselves that there are some children for whom our schools are not working as well as they should, and particularly for our children with special educational needs and disabilities.”
Ms Cruddas also called on the government to take action to tackle child poverty and welcomed the creation of a taskforce co-chaired by education secretary Bridget Phillipson.
She highlighted which said that one million children had faced destitution in the UK.
“That means that those children don’t just suffer from food insecurity, but they suffer from shelter insecurity,” Ms Cruddas said.
“So that means as they come into our schools, they are probably cold, they are probably hungry, and they probably don’t know where they’re going to sleep tonight, [yet] we are the world’s sixth-largest economy - that is a stain upon our national life.”
Action needed on child poverty
She added: “It’s very good that the secretary of state co-chairs the child poverty taskforce and I hope that very quickly we see the state starting to pull the big levers of state that can reduce child poverty.”
She also focused on these issues in a separate speech to the Church of England Education Office’s National Conference this week, entitled Flourishing Leaders, Flourishing Schools.
Ms Cruddas asked delegates whether they believed children, staff and schools were flourishing.
She highlighted the findings of the 2022 Programme for International Students Assessment report about the in England’s schools, as well as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation .
Ms Cruddas also said that data from the Education Support charity’s teacher wellbeing survey and the Department for Education’s surveys were “difficult reading”.
“Our workforce is not in a great place,” she said. “They are stressed, they are anxious. They are worried about coming into work.”
She then asked if schools were flourishing, suggesting that this was more difficult to assess.
Ms Cruddas added: “But I think if you accept it is true that some of our children are not flourishing and some of our workforce are not flourishing, then it is really hard to make the case that our schools are just fine the way they are - so there is a call to action here.”
For the latest education news and analysis delivered every weekday morning, sign up for the Tes Daily newsletter
