The Centre for Young Lives think tank and education charity SHINE have published a new report, calling on the incoming Prime Minister to scrap Progress 8 and support schools to build an education system around communities.
The report, authored by Centre for Young Lives Visiting Fellow, SHINE trustee, and former MAT leader Jonny Uttley, argues that a new Burnham government should move beyond the 40-year-old education model focused on competition between schools and build a system that judges success by whether communities help every child thrive.
The report says that while reforms since 1988 have helped raise standards and improve many schools, England's biggest challenges today are no longer primarily school-level problems. Persistent absence, the SEND crisis, youth mental health challenges, child poverty, regional inequality, and rising numbers of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) are fundamentally place-based challenges requiring collective solutions.
The report warns that England has developed a successful theory of school improvement but no theory of place improvement, leaving schools expected to solve problems that extend far beyond the school gate.
It argues that Andy Burnham's long-standing support for devolution creates a unique opportunity to reshape education around communities rather than institutions, with schools acting as civic anchors at the heart of local partnerships. It calls for new place-based education partnerships bringing together trusts, schools, colleges, employers, local authorities and health services around shared outcomes for children and young people.
Among its recommendations are replacing Progress 8 with a more flexible "Progress 5" accountability measure to create greater space for technical, vocational, and employer-linked pathways from age 14.
It call for a new local outcomes framework measuring attendance, exclusions, wellbeing, economic participation, employer engagement, and NEET rates alongside attainment.
The report also calls for statutory local education and skills partnerships with shared responsibility for improving outcomes across an area, and reforming accountability so schools and trusts are recognised for their contribution to wider community outcomes, not just individual institutional performance.
The report highlights examples of place-based innovation already emerging across England and points to international evidence from countries such as the Netherlands, where stronger vocational pathways and local coordination are associated with substantially lower NEET rates. It argues that education reform should be viewed not only as a social policy but as a critical driver of economic growth.
Jonny Uttley said: "The central challenge of the late twentieth century was improving institutions. The central challenge of the twenty-first century is improving places.
"For forty years we have organised education around the question of how institutions compete. The next forty years must be organised around how communities thrive.
"The challenges facing children today cannot be solved by schools acting alone. They require schools, trusts, employers, councils, health services and communities working together around a shared mission for young people."
