The moment for place-based working has arrived. Are you ready?
The Schools White Paper published in February contains a lot. It will take months to fully work through its implications for SEND reform, workforce strategy and the future of academisation. But one signal is clear from the outset, and it matters for every trust leader reading this.
The government is encouraging schools and trusts to become anchor institutions. Both in name and in practice. It wants us to convene local partners, pool resources, share expertise, and take collective responsibility for the children in our communities who are currently falling through the cracks.
That is a significant ask to sit alongside everything else school and trust leaders are already carrying. It also presents a significant opportunity to adapt our approach to meet the challenge of this moment.
Three big shifts
There are three shifts in this paper worth pausing on.
First, the framing of the challenge has changed. Previous white papers put school improvement at the centre: improve teaching, raise standards, build a strong culture. Those things still matter, but this paper is explicit that schools are now absorbing the impact of a frayed social safety net. Council spending on early intervention services fell by 42% between 2010 and 2024 (NSPCC, 2025). One in four children arrives at school not toilet-trained (Kindred Squared, 2024). The white paper does not say this to assign blame. It says it because the educational challenge and the wider public services challenge are now inseparable.
Second, the delivery architecture has changed. The emphasis is less on autonomous schools driving their own improvement, and more on local groups of schools working together and with their wider communities. At The Reach Foundation, we call these formal alliances of schools “clusters.” The proposed SEND reforms are built around this model: the "Experts at Hand" programme brings speech and language therapists, educational psychologists and other specialists into local school groups, funded through pooled resources and delivered at scale. This is not a marginal policy tweak, it is a structural signal about how the government expects support to be organised.
Third, the time horizon has changed. These reforms are framed as a generational commitment. The ambitions in this paper are set for the generation of children being born now, not the children sitting GCSEs in 2030. That is a different kind of challenge. It requires a sustained, multi-phase effort rather than another round of targeted interventions.
Aspiration needs infrastructure
Here is the challenge and the opportunity. The white paper sets out a compelling vision. Schools as anchors. Trusts as community institutions. Local clusters sharing expertise and pooling resources. Support that wraps around children rather than requiring families to navigate disconnected services. Yet, stating that ambition is a world away from building the infrastructure required to make it real.
Most trust leaders already understand that the children they serve would benefit from better-connected support around them, particularly those experiencing disadvantage. They can see where families experience fragmentation. They know the specific transitions that feel most fragile. They recognise the recurring patterns—attendance, vulnerability, unmet SEND need—that no single school can solve alone.
It’s not awareness of these issues we lack, what we need now is a structured space to map the local system, the relationships with partners beyond education, the shared language and the practical first moves that could begin to change things.
That’s the gap that we’re exploring in partnership with 100+ “clusters” of schools around the country. It is the gap our Cradle-to-Career Partnership exists to close.
Closing this gap
Our Partnership brings trust leaders, schools, local authorities, early years settings and community organisations together around a simple, shared question:
What would it take for children in this place to experience support that is coherent, consistent and connected from birth to the start of their career?
Phase One of the partnership (running from October 2026 to May 2027) does not aim to add reams of activities to an already full plate. Instead, it is a structured process that promises partners three things:
First, a shared diagnostic of their local system. Where are children falling through the cracks? Which transitions are most fragile? Which local assets exist but remain poorly connected?
Second, a cohort of peers working on the same underlying challenge in different places. We learn from each other's patterns and practical moves, from every step—and misstep—on the journey towards an integrated cradle-to-career model.
Third, a first-cut theory of change. Not a glossy document, but a working map of where to start, what the first practical move might be, and who needs to be in the room.
Crucially, this is not a model designed to make trusts responsible for everything. It is designed to help them work with others more effectively, so that children and families experience fewer cliff edges and professionals stop duplicating effort.
Why now?
The white paper creates an opening for those committed to improving the everyday experiences and long-term outcomes of our communities. The language of anchor institutions, local clusters and pooled expertise is now in policy.
Local authorities are being empowered to play a more active convening role. The "Experts at Hand" model assumes that school clusters will have the relationships and shared infrastructure to embed specialist support. The place-based missions in the North East and coastal communities are looking for learning partners.
Trusts that have already begun building this kind of local ecosystem will be better placed to lead. Those starting now will have a head start on what is likely to become an expectation, not just an aspiration.
We are not claiming this work is easy or fast. We are not pretending the evidence base is complete. But in places like Wythenshawe, South Solihull and Newquay, trust and school leaders are already doing this work—rebuilding trust with families, mapping local fragmentation, creating shared infrastructure that did not exist before.
If you are leading a school, a trust, or a local authority, and you can see the pattern in your place—where children and families experience a system that is less joined up than it needs to be—we would like to hear from you. We are confirming our next Phase One cohort during the summer term, so if this is something you want to explore, now is the right moment to start the conversation. We’d love to hear from you.
The right starting point is never "how do we transform everything?" It is: where is one place we could create more coherence than exists right now?
