There is a particular kind of frustration that comes from being asked to do more with less, and then being praised for managing it.

North East schools know it well. Our region has the highest rate of pupils eligible for free school meals in the country, and the most entrenched long-term disadvantage.

Yet North East schools were second only to one other region for the proportion rated “good” or “outstanding” under the old Ofsted framework. That is not an accident. It is the product of leadership that has learned to stretch every pound further than most.

Leadership under strain

I begin there because, at Schools North East, we have spent recent months documenting just how much that leadership is now being tested - and a clear pattern has emerged.

Start with the demographics. Primary rolls in our region are forecast to fall by 12.7 per cent by 2028-29. These are some of the steepest declines of any English region, with primary budgets projected to lose 9 per cent - again, among the worst-hit nationally.

In places such as Redcar and Cleveland, Hartlepool and Sunderland, the local picture is starker still.

Because school funding follows pupils, falling rolls quietly drain budgets from the very communities least able to absorb the loss, and the closure of schools at the heart of those communities stops being a risk and becomes a forecast.

Crumbling buildings, little funding

Then look at capital funding. When the Department for Education published the outcome of the latest Condition Improvement Fund round, our region received the lowest share of building funding in England.

Only a quarter of North East applicants succeeded, against 40 per cent nationally, and our schools were awarded just 19 per cent of the funding they bid for, compared with nearly 40 per cent in London.

This is not a one-off. The North East has had the lowest levels of successful bids since the DfE began publishing regional data - and ageing buildings with failing roofs and heating do not wait for a fairer formula.

Concerns over PE funding changes

And then consider timing. Mid-budget cycle, with contracts for the coming year already signed, schools learned that the PE and Sport Premium is to be scrapped and replaced with a centrally commissioned partnership model.

More than 150 North East primary schools responded to our recent survey on this, and every single one told us they were concerned; more than 80 per cent were very concerned.

Two-thirds had no confidence that schools serving the most disadvantaged communities would fare as well under the new model. For schools across our region, this funding is not simply an add-on; it is the minibus that gets children to a fixture, or to the swimming lessons in a rural community whose nearest pool is miles away.

In special schools, it pays for the occupational therapists who write bespoke sensory programmes, and the therapy-based physical activity that no central partnership can replicate.

Strip the funding to fund a demand-led model, and the schools most likely to lose out are those in communities that take the longest to engage - exactly the places where the need is greatest and the participation gap widest. 

Talk of ‘maximising value’ creates scepticism 

I set these three out together because, individually, each is a problem. Together, they describe a structural reality: when funding is allocated by formula, by competitive bid, or by centralised commissioning, the North East tends to come last.

That is the lens through which we must read the government’s new Maximising Value for Pupils programme.

To be clear, the programme is genuinely welcome. Caps on the mark-up charged by supply agencies matter when the sector spent £1.4 billion on agency staff in a single year.

Collective buying power should be harnessed where appropriate, and this is shown through the DfE’s energy pilot, which delivered average savings of 36 per cent.

Used well, “maximising value” means equipping schools to spend smarter, so more reaches the front line.

But used carelessly, the phrase becomes a polite way of asking the most disadvantaged regions to absorb pressure that ought to be addressed at source. Given everything above, you will understand why the North East has a level of scepticism.

Efficiency cannot substitute for fair allocation. The savings this programme unlocks must do what the DfE itself says they should - be reinvested where they matter most.

This is precisely why getting school business professionals, leaders and the Department into the same room to talk together matters so much now. The people who actually find these efficiencies are not in Whitehall.

They are the school business professionals reconciling a budget at half past six, and the trust finance leads modelling three versions of next year because none of them quite balance.

Their expertise is the missing ingredient in most national value-for-money conversations, and it is exactly the expertise this region has in abundance.

That conviction is why we have built our upcoming Education Business Conference, in direct partnership with the DfE, around this programme - not as a launch event, but as a genuine two-way exchange.

Chris Zarraga is director of Schools North East

To learn more about the principles behind the DfE’s Maximising Value for Pupils programme and how they can be applied in your school or trust, join Schools North East at The Education Business Conference on 11 June in Newcastle to explore practical approaches to commercial strategy, workforce planning and estate management