This afternoon, I met with the Leeds Race Equality Partnership to talk to them about the future as we move into the new children's services world...

Over the last nine wonderful years I have learned so much and we have achieved such a lot together; beginning to remodel the workforce, significantly reducing exclusions and driving up outcomes, standards and the performance of our poorest performing schools. Through our Stephen Lawrence Educational Standard work we have changed the culture, the language and the atmosphere in a significant majority of our schools building aspiration and expectations and narrowing the achievement gap. However, the understandable frustration within the group focuses on the fact that we have been working on this agenda for a long time... too long for all of us and over fifty years for others and despite our best efforts we have struggled to address the issues around poverty, deprivation and disengagement from learning which affect too many of our communities. We all need to redouble our efforts and ensure that this agenda remains a high priority within the new children's services arrangements so that we can target and focus our energies and efforts where they are needed most.
Chris