He’s been tasked by the Centre for Young Lives think tank to put together an “aspirational vision for inclusive schools”. Uttley said the exercise with his heads was to show in the “zero sum game” of school accountability, “those incentives exist”. Each of TEAL’s year 7 cohorts start off at roughly two per cent of pupils with EHCPs, but this more than doubles by year 11 after “in-year transfers [of pupils] from the same few schools”, Uttley adds. DfE’s regions team “takes some unfair flak”, but Uttley defends it as “full of really hard-working civil servants with strong moral compasses”. If Uttley can put that moral purpose front and centre of the schools system again, he’ll feel he has delivered on (at least one) of his purposes.