Cogs in the machine

So, I thought I would turn the attention of this blog away from that strand of the Standards, Performance & Inspection’s (SPI) Policy Committee’s work and concentrate on Regional Improvement and Innovation Alliances (RIIA), something that our policy committee also has oversight of.

Officially at least, the function of the RIIA went live just over four years ago. I say officially, because as we all know, the history of local authorities working within a spirit of mutual aid dates back far longer than that.

Back in 2019 we probably all asked, and indeed faced, questions about the need to formalise something that we had been honing and quite happily working with for nearly 50 years. But at that point the advent of the RIIA probably gave us two key advantages. It re-established the voice of the regions within Whitehall, something that had been waning in recent years. They also established a vehicle by which we could receive funding on a collective basis. Both of these were good opportunities, and I think we have used the benefit well over the last few years, evidenced by the fact that Ofsted and the DfE have realigned their structures to match those of the regions.