As a south Londoner in exile on the Kent coast, I was pleased to see the White Paper contain a focus on coastal schools and a desire to improve outcomes for their cohorts.

Anyone who has worked in coastal schools will know that while the idea of life by the sea can sound idyllic, the reality is often tough, with communities that face high unemployment and marginalisation, which can manifest in below-average school outcomes.

As such, the government is right to make this a mission area. However, like much of the White Paper, the intentions are good but are at risk of being misunderstood if implementation is poor.

There is the plan for retention payments for headteachers, and those leaders who are recruited and stay in tough schools won’t say no to an extra £15,000. But coastal schools require more than just a hero head.

Breakfast clubs are useful to support children’s health, but there is a much weaker correlation between attendance at these clubs and attainment.

You can’t repeat the past

My sense, based on our experience at Turner Schools, is that those families who you really want to attend just don’t. And so the work to re-engage those families who are hardest to reach is critical, and to date, the sector has had limited success.

From what we can see so far, what underpins the “plan” is a desire to take the lessons of the London Challenge and apply them to the Mission Coastal plans.

It makes sense - the London Challenge was unquestionably a roaring success that deserves the plaudits it receives.

However, the architects of that work spent time carefully considering what would work in London. The coastal challenge deserves just as much thought and deep reflection about what would work there.

For example, as part of the London Challenge, local authorities identified target schools and ensured that settings complied with the support provided.

So, the obvious next - and as yet unanswered - question is: who will broker these partnerships and what levers will be available to bring all key schools together?

Question of tutoring

What about tutoring? This was a key part of the London Challenge’s success and could well be part of the government’s plans for Mission Coastal.

It worked in London because there was a surfeit of tutors who looked similar, spoke the same language as our targeted students and were often young leaders in their communities.

But, in many of the coastal areas, the tutors don’t talk like, look like or even seek to understand their potential tutees. There is no shared experience, and recent research highlights just how important relationships are to white working-class students (Simpson, 2025).

Despite the understandable desire from leaders and policymakers to recreate previous successful strategies, there are far fewer London Challenge-style silver bullets available for the coastal mission.

Furthermore, without further radical curriculum review, it is unlikely we are going to see any meaningful shift in the percentage of young people not in education, employment or training (Neet).

The Neet problem

For example, the drive to limit vocational courses through the proposed key stage 4 progress measures could end up reducing opportunities for more students to transition successfully to level 3 qualifications.

This risks increasing the already significant number of young people who are Neet - it’s baffling why there is not a national scandal that over one in six students drop out of post-16 education.

Ministers could be tempted to try and give more routes to young people - perhaps insisting that grammars (we have a few of them in Kent) give 30 per cent of their places to poorer white British students.

But this obviously only works for areas with grammars.

Perhaps instead, there could be better links between schools and further education colleges to help ensure they are more aware of pathways for young people to meaningful work beyond just university.

SEND changes welcome

One area that should benefit coastal schools - both immediate and long term - is the increased focus on improving special educational needs and disabilities training for teachers.

SEND in coastal schools is often higher than national averages, so ensuring existing staff, and any future hires, have suitable skills - especially amid a push to more inclusion in mainstream schools - is a useful long-term strategy.

None of these is a quick fix, though. That in itself is not an issue if the policies put in place have a clear focus on a long-term benefit. The question now is for policymakers to ensure there is that clarity of vision.

My advice would be for those making these plans to come and spend time in our schools, and those up and down our coast. They’ll see why inner-city approaches cannot simply be lifted and shifted to the coast - and that it’s just as important we get it right for generations to come.

Seamus Murphy is the CEO of Turner Schools, a multi-academy trust with eight schools that is based in Folkestone