BRITAIN'S top school’s chief today raised concerns about declining secondary school performance in Liverpool and Manchester and warned the Northern Powerhouse will splutter and die if young people in the two cities lack the skills to sustain it.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, chief inspector of Ofsted, said four in 10 secondary schools in Liverpool and three in 10 in Manchester are judged by Ofsted to be inadequate or require improvement.

In a major speech he called for education to be central to Liverpool and Manchester’s strategies for growth, and he called on local political leaders to stand up and be counted.

Sir Michael spoke out amid concerns about declining secondary school performance and pupil attainment in the two cities and many of their surrounding towns.

The proportion of Manchester’s pupils gaining 5 GCSEs grade A* to C, including English and mathematics, declined from 51pc 2 years ago to 47pc currently. In Liverpool the percentage fell from 50pc to 48pc over the same period.

In today’s speech in London to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), Sir Michael said that the extent of this underperformance presents a very real risk to the government’s vision of a Northern Powerhouse.

He said:  “Manchester and Liverpool are at the core of our ambitions for a Northern Powerhouse. They are the engines that could transform the prospects of the entire region. But as far as secondary education is concerned they are not firing on all cylinders. In fact they seem to be going into reverse.

Comparing the performance of secondary schools in London with those in Liverpool and Manchester, Sir Michael said:  “Yes, London has advantages that other cities lack, but what of Liverpool or Manchester? Are you really telling me that they lack swagger and dynamism? That they cannot succeed in the way London has succeeded? These are the cities that built Britain. They pioneered a modern, civic education when students at certain other universities spent most of their time studying the New Testament in Greek.”

Sir Michael called on all those with power and influence to make a real difference in galvanising change and supporting much-needed improvements in secondary education across Manchester and Liverpool.

He said:  “I am calling on local politicians, be they mayors, council leaders or cabinet members, to stand up and be counted, to shoulder responsibility for their local schools, to challenge and support them regardless of whether they are academies or not.

“I’m calling on them to be visible, high-profile figures that people can recognize as education champions. I am calling on them to make education in general – and their underperforming secondary schools in particular – a central target of their strategy for growth.

Unless they do, I fear Manchester and Liverpool will never become the economic powerhouses we want them to be. We cannot fight for social mobility with political immobility. Politicians need to act. It requires grit, imagination, faith and bloody mindedness – qualities that, fortunately, I really don’t think are less common in the North than they are down South.”

Ofsted’s regional director for the North West, Chris Russell, echoed Sir Michael’s concerns in an open letter to those responsible for education provision in Knowsley, where there is not a single good or outstanding secondary school.
In 2015, almost two thirds of Knowsley’s school leavers failed to achieve 5 or more GCSE grades A* to C, including English and mathematics.