‘Fund state schools at the level of private ones’: what sort of levelling up do headteachers want?

John Barnes, executive head at Seaton Valley Federation in Blyth Valley, a marginal ‘red wall’ seat, says politicians never ask what he needs. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Headteachers John Barnes and Andrew O’Neill have both a lot and little in common. Both are successful leaders grappling with the impact of the pandemic as well as the usual challenges facing 21st-century schools.

But Barnes leads a small trust, the Seaton Valley Federation, in the heart of Blyth Valley, Northumberland, one of the most marginal “red wall” seats in the country, at a time when the government is under huge pressure to explain what its levelling up agenda means for longstanding Labour constituencies that switched to the Conservatives in 2019.