DBE Services has a powerful regional voice based on its collaborative working across the Northern Province Diocesan Boards of Education. Together as a group we look to identify and speak with a Prophetic Voice into education debates and policies.
Jesus’ teachings emphasize the importance of serving the vulnerable and marginalised in society. For example, in Matthew 25:40, Jesus states “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” This should inspire us to re-imagine the world, to identify and fight injustice, to seek reconciliation and restoration of relationship, and to understand with deep curiosity the structures, systems, policies and attitudes that underlies poverty, hunger, community tensions, ill-health, and inequalities of opportunity and provision.
DBE Services was delighted to sponsor the Diocesan Governance Group Conference. The Conference highlighted he importance of the prophetic voices and covered topics such as the Voice of Children, AI in Education and SEND Governance.
Our CEO was also a keynote speaker at the Manchester Diocesan Education Conference in October 2025. His presentation can be found here.
There is a determined effort across the Northern Province to speak into the current difficulties around SEND Provision. Collectively we have written to the National Society on how best the Church can respond, and various Boards of Education have engaged their local MPs. We continue to work together to find creative and effective responses to enable us to provide high-quality, faith-based special educational provision that would be very much in keeping with Jesus’ teachings and the Church’s mission. A helpful Grove Booklet on SEND Matter can be purchased here.
We are also fortunate that two of the Diocesan Directors of Education who are part of the extended DBE Services family were serving heads in schools that are part of the INEOS Forgotten Forty initiative. The Forgotten 40 Project donates directly to primary schools based in postcodes ranked in the lowest decile of the UK Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). Headteachers are then responsible for the distribution of the funding as they know their children, families, and communities well and are best placed to develop interventions to support and improve the lives of children and families. INEOS believes that by alleviating the impact of poverty, children’s life chances will be improved and we are delighted that our DDEs are linked into this initiative.
DBE Services is also encouraging schools and churches to get involved with TLG – Transforming Lives for Good. TLG is a national Christian children’s charity that helps churches to bring hope and a future to struggling children. As a commitment to encourage schools and churches to engage, DBE Services will contribute to the set-up costs of each TLG Early Intervention partnership.
DBE Services is also working closely with UK Education Research and Innovation to use their specialist dataset across the whole of the Northern Province to identify trends, analyse what is going well and what is not, and to determine how well we are serving our changing and dynamic communities.
DBE Services continues to support the work of The Children’s Society. This year our CEO was planning a continuous 100km walk to raise money for the charity unfortunately this has had to be postponed until 2026. He completed a 50km version in August 2025 as a ‘down payment’ on the full route next summer. If you would like to donate please visit the fundraising page which can be found here.
Our CEO is on the Editorial Board of Grove Books and we recommend that schools review regularly the new titles to help them, particularly in their Christian Distinctiveness.