Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of Opportunity North East funding.

The funding for Opportunity North East (ONE) ended in 2022. The programme aimed to improve 28 secondary schools in the region through the ONE Vision school improvement programme. ONE also delivered projects that aimed to improve transition from primary to secondary, teacher recruitment, and post-16 outcomes.

18 of the 28 schools that were in the ONE Vision programme now have Ofsted judgements with single headline grades of good or better or, where schools have been inspected since September 2024, sub-judgements that are all good or better. However, it is hard to establish the cause and effect of this programme in isolation from other changes and government interventions that have happened over time. Of the remaining ten ONE Vision schools, four schools have not been inspected in their current structure, and six schools that have not yet improved their Ofsted performance are all part of the targeted regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) programme.