A LEADING North-East educationalist has urged high-performing teachers to apply for jobs in the most challenging regional schools in a bid to push up standards.

Becky Earnshaw, director of the Schools North East network, made her plea as more than 40 school heads and deputy heads from across the region gathered for the annual Schools North East summit in Newcastle.

Ms Earnshaw said: “In London, teaching in a more difficult school has a high status. We need to look at how we can incentivise teachers to work in the more challenging schools in the North-East.”

The Schools North East director said the quality of teaching was the most important factor in improving outcomes for school students but too many North-East teachers opted for less challenging schools.

“Good teachers make more of a difference to those young people who have less support at home. They need this support more than others,” she added.

Mrs Earnshaw said North-East schools should be proud of the progress they had made in recent years but some schools needed more help to succeed.

“We are number one nationally in terms of the percentage of our primary schools rated as good or outstanding but there is still some way to go with our secondary schools,” she added.

She was speaking a few days after the publication of a major new report by Social Mobility ‘tsar’ Alan Milburn which urged weaker schools with poor results to learn from other schools which have a similar intake but better results.

The former Darlington MP is the keynote speaker at the Newcastle event and he will ask the question whether schools can make England fairer.

The event will open with the first major speech in the region of the new Regional Schools Commissioner for the North, Jan Renou, who will address the main issues facing North-East schools alongside Ofsted’s Nick Hudson and North-East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) vice chairman Andrew Hodgson.

Other sessions will tackle the region’s looming leadership crisis in schools, improving outcomes for disadvantaged pupils and how schools can form effective partnerships.

The summit will also call on the region’s school leaders to share good practice to inspire others.

Schools North East chairman, David Parmain, said: “North-East schools have much to be proud of, but there are big questions we need to face such as how we help improve the social mobility and life chances of all our pupils.”