The school’s work is getting harder, nestled as it is in an area where politics has long failed its residents. Westminster slogans have long been left unmet. In east Durham’s former pit villages, things never got better, they’ve never taken back control and Horden, along with neighbouring Blackhall and Easington, was never levelled up. A once proud, close-knit community has been left to the vagaries of absentee landlords, rising deprivation and residents who often don’t want to be here.