How the North East can transform education together

On Friday, LES WALTON, former North East headteacher, founder of Schools North East, the Northern Education Trust, the Association of Education Advisers and a long-time champion of regional education, spoke at the Schools North East annual summit. These are his thoughts

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ACROSS the North East, schools are navigating a perfect storm of pressures: political turbulence, economic instability, social complexity and rising expectations from every direction. Yet Les Walton believes the region holds the key to its own renewal.

His message is simple and urgent: the future depends on collaboration.

"Collaboration requires us to spend time listening," says Mr Walton, "both to ideas we love and to a bunch of annoying, disagreeable and otherwise unappealing rubbish.

"It also means facing uncomfortable truths. For years, well-meaning national policies have been 'transported, not translated' - imposed from the outside with little understanding of local context. Quick fixes have come and gone, but the deep-rooted challenges remain."

Mr Walton calls for a reset: a shift from externally driven reform to sustainable, self-initiated improvement grounded in the region's own realities.