tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88888488043479285712024-03-05T04:07:32.076+00:00Conor's CommentaryA blog about politics, education, Ireland, culture and travel. I am Conor Ryan, Dublin-born former adviser to Tony Blair and David Blunkett on education. Views expressed on this blog are written in a personal capacity.Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.comBlogger1251125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-16965131046280274462018-05-16T08:53:00.001+01:002018-05-16T08:56:26.982+01:00Five favourite facts and findings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">After nearly six years at the <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/five-favourite-facts-conor-ryan/">Sutton Trust</a>, my reflections on some of the research findings that most interested me and helped to advance the policy debate.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Today is my last day at the Sutton Trust after nearly six years in post. It has been a privilege to be involved in commissioning and communicating 100 pieces of research over that time, and I will miss working with such great colleagues. It seems like a good time to take stock too. So, I thought I would share my five favourite findings and facts from those reports, facts chosen because of their symbolism and influence in different stages of the social mobility debate.</span></div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Stop Start: The lost children’s centres</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the week of Tessa Jowell’s sad passing, it is worth reflecting on an important part of her legacy – the Sure Start programme, which brought a range of children’s services, including childcare, education, health, family support and play together under a single roof. Professor Kathy Sylva and her team showed in our 2014 report, <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/sound-foundations-early-years/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Sound Foundations</em></a>, the importance of good quality early years provision to school readiness and giving disadvantaged children a decent start in life. Her research this year brought an auditor’s eye to what had happened to the children’s centres at the heart of Sure Start, and in <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/sure-start-childrens-centres-england/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Stop Start</em></a>, showed that 1000 centres had effectively been lost, nearly a third of all those set up by 2009. While some had been amalgamated, others had been hollowed out. It highlighted the importance of a much clearer early years mission in all parties if we want to address social mobility at the time when the gaps start to widen for poorer children.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Missing Talent: The high attainers who slip back in secondary school</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In 2015, we published a much-cited research brief by Dr Rebecca Allen, which we called <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/missing-talent-disadvantaged-pupil-attainment/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Missing Talent.</em></a> Her research looked at what happened to a cohort of around 60,000 of the highest attainers in the Key Stage 2 tests at age 11 – the top 10% – when they took their GCSEs five years later. She found that 15% of highly able pupils who score in the top 10% nationally at age 11 fail to achieve in the top 25% at GCSE, but the figures were much higher for disadvantaged students, particularly boys, a third of whom fell behind. The report helped to highlight the absence of dedicated provision for disadvantaged high achievers in too many comprehensives, and made the case for the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fund-for-bright-disadvantaged-pupils-launched" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">Future Talent Fund</a>, announced in Justine Greening’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/plan-to-boost-social-mobility-through-education" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">social mobility plan</a> last year.</span></div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Admissions in Context: Giving poorer pupils a break</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The debate on contextual admissions has moved on quite a bit over the last decade, and a report we published in 2017 helped to show that. <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/admissions-in-context-access-gap/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">Admissions in Context </a>not only made the case for selective universities having transparent policies that show any breaks they are willing to offer disadvantaged students who have triumphed against the odds, but maybe don’t have quite the same grades as those who enjoyed a more privileged education. Crucially Dr Claire Crawford and Professor Vikki Boliver showed that a fifth of those from more advantaged backgrounds are being admitted to the more selective universities with two A level grades below the advertised ones. In the media coverage that followed, even columnists on right-wing newspapers traditionally suspicious of contextual admissions accepted that a change was needed to address the gaps that still exist – from, six to ten times – between those from the poorest and best off neighbourhoods at those universities.</span></div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Access in Scotland: Progress in higher education equity north of the border</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I had the privilege to sit on the Scottish Commission on Widening Access, which <a href="http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0049/00496535.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">reported</a> in 2016, and subsequently to chair a Framework Development Group which has just commissioned a new access toolkit for Scotland. One thing that surprised me on first engaging with the Scottish debate was the dearth of data compared to England. That was what prompted me to commission Professor Sheila Riddell and colleagues at Edinburgh University to produce the <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/access-in-scotland-university-participation/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">Access in Scotland</a> report. It had an enormous impact on the debate in Scotland, and is still cited regularly. Ironically, the finding we chose to lead on – that 90% of all access places in Scotland had come through colleges rather than directly to university – was overshadowed by a figure we quoted that I (mistakenly) assumed was widely known: that the university access gap was wider in Scotland than England. Either way, there remains a need for more good data and candour about it in the debate. But what is heartening is the progress being made on the policy front – driven by Nicola Sturgeon and Shirley-Anne Somerville (her higher education minister) – not least in the acceptance of commission recommendations. With the redoubtable Professor Peter Scott as Commissioner for Fair Access, acceptance of a minimum threshold for disadvantaged students by all Scotland’s universities and the progress towards better evidence on access, there are real prospects for progress north of the border.</span></div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Real apprenticeships: Improving quality and progression in job-based qualifications</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When we asked the Boston Consulting Group in 2013 to look at how other countries did apprenticeships, we did so at a time when the political consensus on the value of apprenticeships was being undermined by the poor quality of too many of them. BCG’s analysis <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/real-apprenticeships-2/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">Real Apprenticeships </a>has helped move the debate on and has given the Sutton Trust a locus in an area where it had not previously engaged. In their first report, BCG not only highlighted how relatively few British employers were then offering apprenticeships in those pre-levy days (there are other challenges now) but the low quality of what the majority of young people were doing compared to their German or Swiss counterparts. Later BCG research in 2015, <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/levels-of-success-apprenticeships-earnings/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">Levels of Success</a>, showed that those doing advanced or higher apprenticeships had comparable earning power to their A-level or average traditional degree counterparts. And our <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/better-apprenticeships-quality-access-social-mobility/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">Better Apprenticeships</a> research in 2017 by LSE and UCL Institute of Education academics showed how poor the progression rates were from intermediate to advanced apprenticeships. All of which has helped make the case for the Sutton Trust’s 2018 <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/2018-better-apprenticeships-campaign/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">#BetterApprenticeships campaign</a> for automatic progression, improved quality and more higher apprenticeships. Giving young people real choices must be the key to getting this right for the future.</span></div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-75173828645296851012018-02-20T13:56:00.000+00:002018-02-20T13:56:13.874+00:00Under review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>I have blogged on the PM's post-18 education review for the <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/under-review-post-18-funding-review/">Sutton Trust</a> and <a href="http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/opinion/2018/02/student-finance-reviewing-reviews">Public Finance</a>.</i></div>
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It was 16 months before the 1997 election and Conservative
education secretary Gillian Shephard had a problem. It was a time of austerity.
University intakes were growing rapidly. New ways had to be found to fund
higher education that didn’t simply involve the taxpayer. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So she approached David Blunkett, her Labour shadow for whom
I then worked to support her in setting up a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/dearing-called-in-to-review-university-fees-1319896.html">review</a>
– with explicit backing from Don Foster for the Liberal Democrats – under the
late Ron Dearing. The review would <a href="http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/dearing1997/dearing1997.html">report</a>
after the general election and would be wide-ranging in its outlook. But it is
remembered for one thing: it led to the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/134629.stm">introduction</a> by the
new Labour government of tuition fees paid by students (then opposed by the
Conservatives and Liberal Democrats).<o:p></o:p></div>
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In 1998, the decision was also taken to convert all
maintenance grants to loans (some had already been converted), but to
means-test fees. Those who faced new fees also got higher interest-free loans
repaid after graduation for those earning over £10,000 a year. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Since the Dearing review, we have had other big changes to
the system. In 2006, fees were increased to a maximum of £3000 – after a big
argument in the Labour Party against variable fees that led to the plans <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3434329.stm">almost being defeated</a>
– and income contingent loans were explicitly available for fees. By then,
Scotland had already abandoned fees. Means-tested maintenance grants were
reintroduced and the repayment threshold was raised to £15,000.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Peter Mandelson <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/6530502/Lord-Mandelson-launches-tuition-fee-review.html">set
up</a> the Browne Review in 2009, which <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-browne-report-higher-education-funding-and-student-finance">reported</a>
to the coalition government after the 2010 election. It led to a £9000 <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11677862">fee maximum </a>and no more
variability in reality than the 2006 reforms despite the government saying it
expected many students to pay just £6000. Repayments now started at £21,000 – a
hugely expensive concession to the Liberal Democrats that ensured that many
loans would never be repaid – and a real rate of interest was introduced that
would only start to bite when inflation picked up more recently. Tinkering
since then has seen maintenance grants scrapped and – at a cost of £3 billion a
year – the barely noticed raising of the threshold to £25,000.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That’s the background to the latest review <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-43106736">announced </a>by Theresa
May on Monday. But the background also includes rising student numbers –
touching the 50% of young adults entering higher education by age 30 target <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/292504.stm">set </a>by Tony Blair in
1999 – and some narrowing of the access gap between disadvantaged and better
off students. Perhaps more importantly, the political backdrop includes a
popular pledge by Jeremy Corbyn to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/may/21/labour-abolish-university-tuition-fees-jeremy-corbyn-eu-uk-europe">scrap
fees</a> that undoubtedly helped win seats like Canterbury and Reading East for
Labour at last year’s election. So rather than seeking cross-party consensus,
this review is more about neutralising a perceived party disadvantage.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But the confused history of fees is reflected in the
confused nature of the review. A bizarre flurry of weekend briefing – propped
up by the Secretary of State in his <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-43075769">first TV interview</a> on
Marr – suggested that a key outcome of the review might be universities
charging more for courses in expensive STEM subjects and less in humanities.
Given the importance of STEM subjects to the economy this could perversely
discourage students from doing those subjects and <span class="msoDel"><del cite="mailto:Carl%20Cullinane" datetime="2018-02-20T11:37">cold </del></span>harm
social mobility by encouraging poorer students to take cheaper courses. One can
only assume its intention was to distract attention from reports that fees
would fall to £6,000 a year, which ministers feared would raise expectations
that might not be realised.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And the review has not exactly had an auspicious start. It
is good that it is looking at the too often overlooked FE sector and at the
paucity of apprenticeship options – barely 10,000 young people a year start
higher or degree apprenticeships compared with 330,000 freshers at university –
but it will be vital that the review panel feels able to take a hard look at
the whole funding system and the interaction between different levers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/fairer-fees-student-finance-reform/">Modelling</a>
by London Economics for the Sutton Trust in November showed that it would cost
about £1 billion to restore maintenance grants. It was a mistake to remove them,
even if students got higher loans, and this should be the first priority for
the panel. Then if the committee wants to look at fees and variability, they
should be varied according to family income not the cost of the course. A model
that would reduce average fees to £3,500 a year could – with restored
maintenance grants – reduce debts for the 40% poorest students from over
£50,000 to £12,700 and increase the proportion of loans repaid from 55% to 65%.
The total cost of this would be up to £3 billion – about the same as the
threshold change announced last October. Less radical means testing could cost
less. There is also a need to get better value from the £800 million a year
that universities spend on access and outreach in England, building a reliable
evidence base on what works. But the priority should be leveraging this existing
money to achieve better outcomes for young people from disadvantaged
backgrounds, rather than to risk stalling progress with cuts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And then the review should take a long hard look at what’s
on offer for those who go don’t go to university. For all the words about
apprenticeships, the brutal <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/better-apprenticeships-quality-access-social-mobility/">reality
</a>is that less than a third of those taking higher apprenticeships are aged
under 25 (let along being 18 or 19). Most apprenticeships for young people are
limited level 2 programmes with few career prospects and patchy progression to
higher levels. If anything, the apprenticeships levy is reinforcing a bias
towards adults doing higher apprenticeships as the levy lacks the levers to
prevent it being used simply to upskill existing staff. Addressing that issue
and the quality of technical and paraprofessional education in colleges is as
important to social mobility as changing the funding of higher education.</div>
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This week’s review may have had a pretty inauspicious start.
But as the panel deliberates over the next year they have the chance to make a
real difference to social mobility – if they get their priorities right.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-51960831986684375052018-01-10T09:52:00.001+00:002018-01-10T09:52:19.172+00:00Ministerial mobility<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">I blogged at the <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/ministerial-mobility/">Sutton Trust</a> on what the reshuffle means for education and social mobility.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Reshuffles are a funny – and brutal – business. For Prime Ministers, they rarely go according to plan, and this week’s was no exception. I’ve been in both the education department and at no. 10 while they have been happening, and seen the drama at first hand. For individual ministers, they may be a personal success – or tragedy. But for the general public, who would be hard placed to name more than a handful of cabinet ministers, any impact is a lot less than those in the Westminster bubble imagine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet they can also tell us a lot about the direction of government, and the choices of minister can make a big difference to how particular issues are treated. That’s as true for social mobility as for any other issue.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Justine Greening has been a doughty champion of social mobility as education secretary, reflecting her own journey to become the first Conservative education secretary to be educated at a comprehensive. Her <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/667690/Social_Mobility_Action_Plan_-_for_printing.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #194275; text-decoration-line: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color, background-color, border-color; transition-timing-function: linear;">social mobility plan</a> allowed her finally to define the issue on her own terms – away from the noises off about grammar and faith schools that dominated the pre-election discourse – and it was generally well-received. To explain her refusal to accept a sideways move to welfare secretary, Greening cited her <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42597785" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #194275; text-decoration-line: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color, background-color, border-color; transition-timing-function: linear;">commitment to social mobility</a>, believing that she could do more for the cause (particularly the role of education) from the backbenches.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Her successor, Damian Hinds, has no silver spoon in his mouth either, but is more representative of the grammar school educated politicians who have played a much more prominent role in Theresa May’s cabinets than those of David Cameron. Hinds <a href="https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2012/05/damian-hinds.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #194275; text-decoration-line: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color, background-color, border-color; transition-timing-function: linear;">championed social mobility </a>as a chair of the APPG in the early 2010s and showed a keen interest in the issue as a member of the education select committee. He is unlikely to dismantle the emphasis that Greening had introduced to the department on social mobility, though some of his solutions may be different.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Those changes were part of a wider reshuffle which has tilted the composition of cabinet meetings a <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/sutton-trust-2018-cabinet-analysis/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #194275; text-decoration-line: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color, background-color, border-color; transition-timing-function: linear;">bit more privately and Oxbridge-educated than before</a> – though still a lot less than in Cameron’s day – and a bit away from the record achieved with May’s first cabinet as having the lowest proportion of privately educated members for a PM’s first cabinet since Clement Attlee in 1945.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But what of policies? In her social mobility plan, Greening set out a number of proposals which it would be surprising if they were not to continue – including the Future Talent Fund and the stronger focus on early literacy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">However, No 10 will also want to see a more robust advancement of the free school programme, as much laxity for new grammar schools as possible – the numbers attending existing grammars continue to rise – and more support for faith schools. The problem Hinds faces is that his room for manoeuvre on these issues is limited to the extent that new legislation is required – certainly the case for new grammars and abolishing Gove’s cap on faith admissions in new schools. He certainly needs to address the <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/chain-effects-2017/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #194275; text-decoration-line: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color, background-color, border-color; transition-timing-function: linear;">uneven performance of academy chains</a> and revisit the rationale for free schools before applying the ‘rocket-boosters’ urged by some commentators.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But legislation is an overrated aspect of policymaking. A lot can be done by exhortation too. A second casualty of the reshuffle – perhaps less remarked than Greening’s – has been Jo Johnson, who was demoted to transport minister a day after gamely defending Toby Young’s appointment in the Commons. Some <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jo-johnson-loses-universities-brief-after-toby-young-fiasco-95nmq3p9s" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #194275; text-decoration-line: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color, background-color, border-color; transition-timing-function: linear;">commentators </a>see his move as connected to the Young business (and Young quit the next morning from his board membership at the Office for Students). But in reality it may have had more to do with Johnson’s reluctance to change the student funding model from that which had been introduced by David Willetts, beyond tinkering with interest rates and a very expensive raising of the repayment threshold.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And it is here that there may be more room for movement. The Sutton Trust has published a series of reports in recent months on higher education, with several important policy recommendations. There are three that could make a big difference: much greater use and transparency over <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/admissions-in-context/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #194275; text-decoration-line: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color, background-color, border-color; transition-timing-function: linear;">contextual admissions</a>; moving the sector towards <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/rules-of-the-game/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #194275; text-decoration-line: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color, background-color, border-color; transition-timing-function: linear;">post-qualification offers</a>; and introducing <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/fairer-fees/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #194275; text-decoration-line: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color, background-color, border-color; transition-timing-function: linear;">means testing for fees</a> as well as restoring maintenance grants. Sam Gyimah, the new universities minister, should take a fresh look at higher education access and funding, and surely has some licence to do so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A second area where the new education secretary should focus urgently is on apprenticeships – in addition to implementing the technical skills reforms. The apprenticeship levy – a brave policy for a Conservative government – is in danger of being squandered. As our major pre-Christmas report <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/better-apprenticeships/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #194275; text-decoration-line: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color, background-color, border-color; transition-timing-function: linear;">Better Apprenticeships</a>showed, the quality of too many apprenticeships is poor; too few are taken young people; too many are accrediting existing skills; and progression for young people to apprenticeships that may be of some use is dismal. Done well, apprenticeships should be a route to social mobility for many; as they are now, they will be for too few.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And finally, Damian Hinds should look at what’s happening in the early years. A lot of headlines focus on the closure of Sure Start children’s centres – and that’s worrying – but the bigger issue is the quality of experience for disadvantaged toddlers in early education across all settings. They need the very best, but if the cash is spread too thin – as our <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/closing-gaps-early/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #194275; text-decoration-line: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color, background-color, border-color; transition-timing-function: linear;">recent report</a> showed – the poorer kids will continue to start school at a distinct disadvantage and things will go downhill from there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damian Hinds may have had a few reporters searching urgently for his Wikipedia profile. But if he takes the bold steps needed in higher education, apprenticeships and early years, he has a chance not only to make his name; he can also make a big difference to social mobility.</span></div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-1070386177758379722017-12-07T09:15:00.001+00:002017-12-07T09:16:47.204+00:00Social mobility after Milburn<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>I've blogged at the <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/after-milburn/">Sutton Trust</a> on the aftermath of Alan Milburn's weekend resignation as Social Mobility tsar</i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyone who thought Alan Milburn would go quietly underestimated the doughty champion of social mobility who first gained the ‘tsar’ role through his political nemesis Gordon Brown. Milburn brought his characteristic energy to publicising the challenge under Brown, and was appointed to head the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission in 2012 by the coalition. Last weekend he showed the same energy and determination in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/02/alan-milburn-government-not-comitted-to-social-mobility" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">manner of his going</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But despite the fanfare of last week’s <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiSqY3G6fLXAhVjC8AKHYvKAxcQFgguMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gov.uk%2Fgovernment%2Fpublications%2Fstate-of-the-nation-2017&usg=AOvVaw1P_hLUQ3lzqb91jD4QbkNN" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">State of the Nation</a> report – where the Commission again adapted a model developed by the Sutton Trust in our pioneering Mobility Map – the truth is that the Commission has faced a gradual emasculation since the 2015 election.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It first <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/20/work-on-child-poverty-continues-despite-units-closure-says-no-10" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">lost</a> its child poverty role. Then the Scots <a href="https://beta.gov.scot/news/tackling-child-poverty/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">bailed out</a>. Commissioners who left weren’t replaced so that by last weekend, there were only four left to resign. And them, as Fraser Nelson <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi53MGm6vLXAhUBD8AKHSaeCBYQFgguMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fblogs.spectator.co.uk%2F2017%2F12%2Fno-10-should-have-seen-alan-milburns-resignation-coming%2F&usg=AOvVaw05QDhTTwtgfY4uUrZ1u-BP" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">noted</a> at the Spectator, Milburn was effectively sidelined. His term came to an end in the summer and he wasn’t reappointed but three was no agreement on who should replace him. With characteristic chutzpah, Milburn delivered his final State of the Nation and persuaded his deputy, Gillian Shephard and the other remaining commissioners to resign with great fanfare through the Sunday papers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Clearly Downing Street was caught off guard by the weekend’s events. But that didn’t stop some of its supporters getting their revenge across three pages of Monday’s <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Daily Mail</em> <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-5142221/Why-Milburn-wrong-Britains-haves-nots.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">ridiculing</a> the need for social mobility and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-5142221/Why-Milburn-wrong-Britains-haves-nots.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">attacking</a> the former tsar personally. However, whatever the process issues that preceded Milburn’s departure, it still raises critical questions about the future of social mobility policy under the current government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As education secretary, Justine Greening is an undoubted true believer in the power of social mobility. Like an increasing number of her colleagues she comes from a modest comprehensive educated background and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/justine-greening-we-should-not-accept-britain-as-it-has-been" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">regularly reminds</a> audiences of how the opportunities that are essential to social mobility helped her to succeed – as well as the inherent challenges in the process. We were also eagerly awaiting a social mobility plan from her department which will surely have been given extra scrutiny by No 10 after the weekend’s maelstrom.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Theresa May chose social mobility as her signature domestic issue in her <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/statement-from-the-new-prime-minister-theresa-may" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">first statement</a> as Prime Minister outside no. 10 and she gave it policy flesh in her first speech on the issue. Unfortunately, the only policy for which the speech will be remembered was an attempt to extend grammar schools – a policy backed by very limited evidence that it could effect significant change. The speech also promised fewer restrictions on faith schools, threatened sanctions on private schools if they didn’t offer more help to state schools or poorer pupils, and sought to get more universities involved in the day to day running of schools.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This year’s general election – after which May no longer commanded a Commons majority – put paid to much of that agenda. Voluntary independent state school partnerships and a willingness by grammar schools more actively to recruit disadvantaged pupils may be a small but welcome legacy. But the conclusion many observers made after the weekend is that the all-consuming demands of Brexit have made it impossible to make serious progress on social mobility.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That is not entirely fair. Greening’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/social-mobility-and-opportunity-areas" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">Opportunity Areas</a> are a serious attempt to bring coordinated action to the areas identified by the Social Mobility Commission as having particularly poor social mobility, including places beyond the traditional inner city focus of such programmes. There have of course been many such place-based initiatives in the past – <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/05/98/education_action_zones/97959.stm" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">education action zones</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excellence_in_Cities" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">Excellence in Cities</a>, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwibp4m-8fLXAhXsKMAKHQJ7AhcQFghBMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2F2013%2Fdec%2F11%2Flondon-challenge-turned-poor-schools-around&usg=AOvVaw1HUFKGKSOr_JCewbKNcvwu" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">London Challenge</a> (and other less successful challenge programmes) – and only the London Challenge delivered (or, some academics would say, coincided with) significant improvement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The pupil premium remains an important support for schools working with disadvantaged pupils and the <a href="https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-timing-function: linear;">Education Endowment Foundation </a>continues to test evidence on an endowment originally provided by Michael Gove. There have also been moves in the cabinet office to encourage firms to do more for social mobility.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">However, what is missing – and Milburn highlighted this weekend – is a coherent approach across government. Theresa May rightly saw lack of opportunity as the cri de coeur of many who supported Brexit – and the mobility maps link closely to their votes. That insight needs to be reaffirmed even as the negotiations continue with Brussels.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The weekend events should there be seen an opportunity. It is a chance to revitalise the Social Mobility Commission and get it working effectively with those – like the Sutton Trust – already championing this cause through programmes and research. But it is also the chance to have a truly radical social mobility plan that takes on vested interests to prioritise policies that can make a real difference – it remains to be seen whether the much anticipated action plan from the DFE fits the bill.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Properly resourced nursery education for disadvantaged children (not an add on to a childcare strategy). The best teachers in schools where poorer pupils go. Fair admissions to all secondary schools. Effective use of the pupil premium, with proper support for disadvantaged pupils including high attainers and support for enrichment and activities that improve life skills. Fairer access to university with much better outreach and contextual admissions. A choice of good apprenticeships, especially at advanced and higher level for young people. And a fairer labour market, including the end to unpaid internships.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That’s the sort of radical but practical programme that could start to shift the dial on social mobility. But it requires real passion and commitment to the issue from the whole government and wider society to make it happen.</span></div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-24620227691739409562017-11-30T13:43:00.000+00:002017-11-30T13:43:02.890+00:00Apprenticeships must not simply accredit existing knowledge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>I've written this piece for <a href="https://feweek.co.uk/2017/11/30/apprenticeships-must-not-accredit-existing-knowledge/">FE Week</a> on a new Sutton Trust apprenticeships report.</i><br />
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The government says it wants to see three million more apprenticeships by 2020. Promises of improved quality, and the push on large employers through the levy, are meant to ensure that the ambitious numbers deliver a better trained workforce.<br />
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But the reality may fall far short of the rhetoric. Last week, new figures showed a big drop in apprenticeship starts between April and July this year. Today’s Sutton Trust report <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/better-apprenticeships/"><i>Better Apprenticeships </i></a>highlights how the levy could produce perverse incentives. Analysis by Lorna Unwin and Alison Fuller notes that one way employers can circumvent the levy is by converting existing employees into apprentices. Of course, in doing so they may give them new skills, but without robust checks they may simply accredit existing knowledge.<br />
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That was something that bedevilled Gordon Brown’s flagship training programme, Train to Gain, in the first decade of this century.<br />
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When I was education adviser to Tony Blair in Downing Street, we were desperate to remove the substantial deadweight cost caused both by such accreditation or paying a subsidy for existing training. Yet in their 2009 report, the National Audit Office found that half of employers using the money from the programme said they would have arranged similar training without public subsidy.<br />
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The levy was supposed to address the latter point by shifting the costs to employers, but the danger is that it does little to develop new skills. Moreover, the public perception of apprenticeships is that they are targeted at young people – largely school leavers – and that they are a practical way for them to gain good qualifications, earning while they do so. But, in reality, the latest government survey suggests two thirds of apprentices are conversions.<br />
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It is vital that there are tough minimum expectations in every apprenticeship, so that they give apprentices the expertise and capability to adapt to a rapidly changing labour market and they do not become a bureaucratic burden on business to be dodged by clever accountants.<br />
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This is not the only problem with how apprenticeships have developed in England. Instead of being a high quality programme targeted at enabling young people to start a fulfilling career, they have become a catch-all title for training at all levels. So, over 40 per cent of all apprentices are aged over 25, largely at work. Of course, adults at work need upskilling, but they are not apprentices, and those positions should be targeted at young people, particularly those entering the workforce.<br />
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And then, among apprenticeships for young people, 60 per cent of places are at intermediate level. New analysis by Sandra McNally for today’s report, of the experience of those aged 16 in 2003 who subsequently embarked on apprenticeships, suggests that fewer than one in four of those who start a level 2 apprenticeship progress to level 3.<br />
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The Sutton Trust will be campaigning through 2018 so that in future anyone completing level 2 should automatically progress to level 3, unless they opt out. The focus on apprenticeship starts rather than overall apprentice numbers in the government target does a disservice to young people. McNally’s research also shows that those doing advanced apprenticeships are less likely to be from disadvantaged backgrounds, but those doing level 2 are more likely to be disadvantaged, so such automatic progress is vital to their social mobility. One interesting point in last week’s figures was that intermediate starts had fallen faster than advanced starts, suggesting that a seamless progression could be valued by employers, even if they don’t like the levy.<br />
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Good apprenticeships can lead to earnings on a par with academic qualifications, from level 3 through to higher apprenticeships. So, the focus should be on creating more such opportunities for young people and supporting progression to them.<br />
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The apprenticeship levy was a brave move for a Conservative government. But unless the government – and the Institute for Apprenticeships as both a quality and access guarantor – gets to grips with apprenticeships now, the danger is that no government will be so brave again. And more importantly, a generation of young people will be the big losers.</div>
Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-44315068821297019492017-09-28T08:53:00.001+01:002017-09-28T09:31:25.430+01:00How extending free childcare could harm social mobility<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #747474;">I</span> blogged at the <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/lessons-in-early-years-policy/">Sutton Trust website</a> and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/conor-ryan1/lessons-in-early-years-po_b_18124642.html?1506587257">HuffPo </a>on problems with the government's free childcare plans</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">It is nearly twenty years since a long-cherished goal of early years campaigners was delivered by the Blair government: the right to free nursery education for all three- and four-year olds. Since then, much has changed in early years policy: mothers are entitled to more time off and families have benefited from tax credits. Sure Start children’s centres brought many services together too.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The free entitlement was to 12.5 hours a week of early years education, planned locally but largely delivered through private and voluntary providers (at the same time as vouchers were scrapped). That universal entitlement increased to 15 hours in 2010, and was extended in 2013 to less advantaged two-year-olds. The latest figures show that 93% of three year olds and 97% of four-year olds are taking advantage of the free provision. This month, children in working families had that entitlement extended to 30 hours a week.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But while extended access to childcare may do a lot to help the labour market and working mothers, and certainly represents a major increase in the state’s commitment to childcare support, it may make it harder to improve social mobility through such early interventions. The government is trying to introduce this at a time of austerity, so quality could suffer.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And that’s the nub of the problem. A third of eligible children – those from the poorest 40% of society – don’t currently take up free provision at age two and a tenth of poorer families don’t take up their entitlement at age three. The government has halted a commitment to improving the qualifications of those working with young children even though a third of such key workers haven’t got decent GCSE passes in English and maths.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sure Start and children’s centres are being closed or stripped of many of their functions. Some benefits are being reduced for children, particularly in larger families. And funding is being reduced for the higher quality more expensive providers – maintained state nursery schools and reception classes – alongside the removal of a requirement that they should have a qualified teacher in the classroom.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The combination of these changes could see a reduction in quality and a widening of school readiness gaps just as there is some evidence that gaps have started to narrow. In particular, the restriction of the 30 hours to working parents could make it even harder for the children of mothers not in work to gain the developmental skills that could help them escape a cycle of disadvantage.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That’s why today’s new Sutton Trust report, <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/closing-gaps-early/">Closing Gaps Early</a> is so timely. Prof Jane Waldfogel and Dr Kitty Stewart praise the progress that has been made under successive governments but sound a strong cautionary note about what’s happening now.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There has been a growing recognition of the link between good quality nursery provision and school readiness. Our Sound Foundations report identified four key dimensions of good quality pedagogy for all children under three: stable relationships and interactions with sensitive and responsive adults; a focus on play-based activities and routines which allow children to take the lead in their own learning; support for communication and language; and opportunities to move and be physically active. Crucially, it stressed the importance of knowledgeable and capable practitioners, supported by strong leaders.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">With gaps still as high as 17 percentage points between rich and poor children on the foundation profile when they start school, we can’t afford to relax the drive to improve the quality of early years staff and access for disadvantaged children to good provision from the age of two. One suggestion in today’s report is that all children should have three terms of very high quality provision prior to reception class, as the benefits of the longer entitlement are going disproportionately to children who are already doubly advantaged, by birth month and family background. If money is limited, it shouldn’t be spread too thin.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There is no doubt that the extended access to free childcare for working families is a real boon for those in work, especially those from modest incomes facing cuts in other family and tax credits, but as the new policy comes into effect it is vital that we keep a close eye on all its impacts, and ensure that lack of money doesn’t lead to loss of quality. If that happens, the progress of nearly twenty years could be placed in jeopardy and it Is the poorest children who will be the losers.</span></span></div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-1888782053516178282017-07-25T08:59:00.003+01:002017-07-25T08:59:39.872+01:00Helping the high attainers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>This piece appeared in the <a href="https://www.tes.com/news/tes-magazine/tes-magazine/our-disadvantaged-high-attainers-are-forgotten-class">TES print edition</a> on 14 July 2017.</i><br />
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Nearly 20 years ago, as then education secretary David Blunkett’s special adviser, I helped to introduce a programme for gifted and talented pupils in urban secondaries. The initiative focused the efforts of many comprehensives on new ways of tailoring provision for more-able students. The programme sadly lost its way in the later years of the Labour government, though its legacy lives on in some schools and academies.<br />
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More recently, Sir Michael Wilshaw, as chief schools inspector, reported annually on how schools were catering for their more-able students. Ofsted inspectors now ask about the progress of high-attainers. But we are still grappling with many of the issues we faced nearly two decades ago – and we need to ask, are we doing enough through accountability to encourage schools to support high-attainers?<br />
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This summer, parents and businesses will learn that GCSE results are no longer as easy as ABC. Grading results on a 9-to-1 scale is the last in a series of steps that could have a profound effect on accountability in secondary schools. But whether the changes also help stretch able students as much as they support those with poorer test scores aged 11 remains an open question. There is a good case for addressing their needs more directly.<br />
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The debate around how to ensure that less-advantaged pupils of high ability fulfil their potential is not uncontroversial. Some say a focus on top test scorers at 11 – those in the top 10 to 20 per cent – means missing out on others with the potential to be just as successful. Others want the focus to be much more on low-attainers – those who don’t get the expected standards in English and maths – and argue that the £2.5 billion pupil premium should be entirely directed at them.<br />
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But this cannot be about pitching groups of students against each other. The Sutton Trust’s Missing Talent research showed that over a third of disadvantaged boys and a quarter of disadvantaged girls, who were in the top 10 per cent of pupils at age 11, were outside the top 25 per cent in their GCSEs. Meeting their needs was an argument for Progress 8 – the new GCSE school-success measure – in that every grade is now credited, so getting a student from a 2 to a 3 is rewarded as much as getting from a 3 to a 4 or a 6 to a 7 in the new grading scale. The system has its teething problems, but its intentions have been good. However, recent arguments about whether a 4 or a 5 is equivalent to a C grade, and the continued importance of floor targets, suggest that border lines haven’t disappeared.<br />
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I was never as convinced of the evils of the C-D border line as some were. For employers or sixth-form admissions, a C proved to be far more valuable than a D. Focusing there did more than improve a school’s league-table scores. But the old system failed to accredit schools properly for getting students As rather than Bs, limiting opportunities for higher-achieving students to access Russell Group universities including Oxbridge.<br />
<br />
As our Chain Effects 2017 report highlighted, there is still much to do. Sponsored academies are good at improving results for low-attaining disadvantaged pupils, but are weaker with their high-attainers. Given that these academies often serve the poorest communities, this disparity should be of concern.<br />
<br />
All this matters to social mobility. The Office for Fair Access reported recently that disadvantaged young people remain far less likely to get to our best universities – and from there to access good professional and well-paid jobs – than those from better-off backgrounds.<br />
<br />
The gap is still as much as 10:1 on some measures, though it has been wider. That isn’t just bad for those individuals, it is bad for society and bad for our economy to waste so much talent.<br />
<br />
Before the election, the government saw an increase in grammar schools as the answer. But while grammars often do a good job for the disadvantaged students on their rolls, our research has shown that far too few such pupils are admitted in the first place.<br />
<br />
Indeed, there is a gradient linked to income in grammar school admissions, not just a gap. Moreover, the evidence is that highly able pupils in the best-performing comprehensives do just as well.<br />
<br />
Now that new grammar schools are on the policy back burner, policymakers must not forget the needs of able students from less-advantaged backgrounds. In fact, there is a real opportunity here for comprehensives to live up to their mission to cater for the needs of students of all abilities.<br />
<br />
Three important steps could help: the first is to encourage fairer admissions to the most successful comprehensives – the top 500, based on GCSE results; these schools only take half the proportion of poorer pupils that live in their catchment.<br />
<br />
Randomly allocating half the places in successful urban comprehensives – backed by outreach and travel support – could open such schools up to those who can’t afford the house-price premium attached to these schools.<br />
<br />
The second is to excite and engage more able students with a curriculum with greater enrichment, as well as access to more demanding lessons and lectures – in partnership both with other schools and universities. The Sutton Trust has moved from working only with sixth formers to supporting able 12- to 15-year-olds through its Sutton Scholars programme. And the government should support schools and universities in trialling what is most effective for highly able students.<br />
<br />
Finally, we need to look again at how schools report their results, and how their success is judged by Ofsted and regional schools commissioners. We shouldn’t just report the overall Progress 8 and Attainment 8 scores, but we should specifically report on the results and progress for high-attaining students.<br />
<br />
We could then see exactly how the best comprehensives perform – encouraging others to emulate them – and how they compare with grammars on a fair measure. Ofsted and regional schools commissioners would look at these results alongside the main scores. But more importantly, this could do a lot to improve social mobility, too.</div>
Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-87064594918263159822017-06-06T11:27:00.000+01:002017-06-06T11:27:32.301+01:00Evidence of intent<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>My latest <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/evidence-of-intent/">Sutton Trust blog</a> on the evidence behind the parties’ election proposals for education</i><br />
<br />
While much of the policy noise of the election campaign has focused on social care and the winter heating allowance, there is quite a lot of educational policy in the parties’ statements of intent. Polling over the weekend showed it particularly important with parents and young voters.<br />
<br />
Despite the narrowing of the polls as Thursday’s ballot approaches, the likelihood is still that a Conservative government will be re-elected. So, it is worth examining what they say – and do not say – in some detail. A lot of the attention has focused on two policies – grammar schools and free school meals – but there were also other important proposals there too.<br />
<br />
Free school meals have become a surprising issue. Just as Theresa May has been keen to show she’s been making tough choices with pensioners’ spending, she is also planning to remove the relatively recent universal nature of free school meals for infants and return to linking them to poverty. Instead, less costly breakfasts will be provided to all.<br />
<br />
When free school meals were made universal, much was made of the impact on educational standards. At the time, I looked at the detailed NatCen evaluation and argued that universal school meals may make some impact on attainment, but seem likely to do a lot more for diet and socialisation in school. Delivering 1-2 months’ progress, it had less impact than other less costly options.<br />
<br />
The EEF’s evaluation of Magic Breakfast suggested a two month gain over a year. The results suggest that for pupils in relatively disadvantaged schools it is attending the breakfast club, not just eating breakfast, which leads to academic improvements. This could be due to the nutritional benefits of the breakfast itself, or the social or educational benefits of the breakfast club environment.<br />
<br />
So, shifting to breakfasts on the face of it looks like a less costly way of delivering results – even allowing for the forensic work on costs by Becky Allen and Datalab. However, neither study focused as much on the nutritional benefits which is what has exercised Jamie Oliver and other celebrity chefs most. There’s also the very real issue of cost for those parents whose incomes are just above the FSM eligibility threshold and who will lose most in this change. By contrast Labour and the Liberal Democrats want to extend free meals throughout primary school, though this feels like a costly commitment when school budgets face so many other pressures.<br />
<br />
Labour has made its most expensive and eye-catching promise in higher education, promising to axe tuition fees and restore maintenance grants. In doing so, it has cited the £44,000 average debt figure first calculated for the Sutton Trust by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Sutton Trust research has also shown student debts in England are the highest in the English-speaking world.<br />
<br />
However, it is questionable that the answer is ending all tuition fees. University students are far more likely to come from better off backgrounds – so there is a massive deadweight costs if this is intended to improve access – and the evidence suggests that participation among poorer students has continued to rise since tuition fees increased. Nevertheless, there are still substantial gaps – the latest UCAS research using a multiple equality measure across demographic quintiles suggests that 13.6% of young people from backgrounds with the lowest rate of entry to enter higher education went to university in 2016, compared with 52.1% from the highest entry or richest areas, almost a four-fold gap, and this gap rises to ten times in the top universities. There has also been a substantial reduction in part-time students, which seems to have accelerated since the £9000 fees were introduced, despite the introduction of loans for part-timers.<br />
<br />
A more cost-effective and targeted approach would have restored maintenance grants for poorer students – which the Liberal Democrats also propose – but also means-tested tuition fees so poorer students borrowed less, though proponents of fees would point out that repayments are equitable given that they are linked to earnings. The problem has been that size of borrowing, and the high interest rates now charged, means that barely a quarter of graduates are likely to repay their loans in full.<br />
<br />
In other policies, the Conservatives have maintained their commitment to lifting the ban preventing new grammar schools, justifying the policy by referring to its new calculation of ‘ordinary working families’ – roughly the middle third of families based on income – though all the evidence, including that published by the Sutton Trust, shows that poorer students and those just above FSM eligibility are much less likely to get admitted. The manifesto does not detail what measures are proposed to address this gap or the income-related gradient in who gets in.<br />
<br />
As importantly, perhaps, the party has also proposed a review of school admissions more generally, though pointedly ruling out ‘mandatory’ lotteries. That doesn’t mean there could not be more encouragement of both random allocation and banding, both of which could provide a proportion of places in popular urban schools, and are the only realistic way to end the ‘selection by postcode’ criticised by Theresa May early in her premiership. The plan for more accountability at Key Stage 3 could fill a gap that has been there since those tests were scrapped in the late noughties.<br />
<br />
Labour, meanwhile, has pledged to outlaw unpaid internships, something that is gaining traction as an issue across the political spectrum. Since our 2014 research estimating that an unpaid intern in London would need to £926 a month to make ends meet, there has been a growing clamour for change matched by a growing number of companies changing practice. It requires proper enforcement of minimum wage legislation matched by open and fair recruitment practices.<br />
<br />
In Scotland, the Global Gaps report that we published in February has been much quoted over concerns about the income-related attainment and university access gaps in Scottish schools. The SNP manifesto was less focused on education issues that are a matter for Holyrood but there they have been strengthening their work on attainment gaps and accountability amidst opposition criticism of a dip in standards over recent years.<br />
<br />
But for all the education policy promises, the biggest challenge facing a new government will be in school budgets and teacher recruitment. The Conservatives, mindful of a backbench revolt, have promised that no school will lose in cash terms from its new funding formula. Labour and the Liberal Democrats are promising to restore budget cuts in real terms too. But whoever gets elected on June 8, the likelihood is that schools will still face challenges getting the teachers they need in a world of rising pupil numbers.</div>
Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-28093764287256994652017-03-30T09:00:00.000+01:002017-08-02T16:26:27.275+01:00Nine to one - not as easy as ABC<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>I blogged at the <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/nine-to-one-not-as-easy-as-abc/">Sutton Trust </a>on the
dangers of an increasingly complex accountability system</i></div>
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Back in 1995, I helped David Blunkett commit a heretical act
– at least in the eyes of the teaching unions. With the help of the late David
Frost and a closely argued column in The Times, we embraced the need for school
performance tables. Yes, we would look at improvement and not just absolute
results, but we would still publish both to hold schools accountable and to
inform parents.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Over two decades on and we have a lot more data available to
us. Admittedly some of it – the detail in the invaluable <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-pupil-database">National
Pupil Database</a> – is restricted to those meeting stringent data protection
rules. But parents can access a pretty good <a href="https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/">summary</a> of
how well a school is doing on the DFE website. The only problem is that it has
become a lot more complex. And confused.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That confusion can only have been increased by the latest
announcements from the DFE this week. This year is the first time that pupils will be judged on a
new 1-9 scale, replacing the current A*-G scale. The idea is that this will
allow finer judgements at the top where gaining a 9 will be a lot harder than
an A* - indeed, Tim Leunig, the DFE’s chief analyst, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/27/new-gcses-only-two-pupils-in-england-will-get-all-top-marks">mused</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"> </span>to his Twitter followers that only two pupils in the
country might get all top marks in the new system.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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But it is not at the top that the confusion and concern has
been concentrated. Rather it is at the borderline. An important feature of the
new system was supposed to be an ending of the focus by schools on the dreaded
D-C borderline. I’ve always been slightly bemused by this concern: after all, a
C is far more impressive to an employer than a D and it is deluding young
people to pretend that their E is of any use to them at all. There does, of
course, need to be more focus on encouraging Bs and As, but as a minimum the C
grade was a reasonable one.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And despite the introduction of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/progress-8-school-performance-measure">Progress
8</a> – the hugely complex statistical measure of progress on which schools are
now supposed mainly to be judged – yesterday’s news shows that the C grade
remains important. Teachers have been struggling for months to understand
whether a score of 4 or 5 will see them over the line in the new system. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Ministers had previously indicated that key school targets
would focus on the tougher 5 grade – a good pass – but pupils who gained a 4
could be eligible for progression to the sixth form or college. On Tuesday,
Justine Greening <a href="http://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-introduces-two-tier-gcse-pass-rate-standard-and-strong/">tweaked</a>
this yet again saying that the performance tables will include two pass rates –
those getting a 4 and above and those getting a 5 or above – particularly for
the English Baccalaureate scores.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Confused? Parents will be. But more importantly, the whole
thing threatens to undermine nearly three decades of school reform. Of course,
the 5 A*-C measure was not perfect. But sometimes statisticians need to
recognise that perfection may not be attainable if it reduces clarity. The data
was a compromise, but with floor targets and minimum standards it did a lot to
drive up standards, especially in the half of secondary schools where fewer
than 30 per cent of pupils gained five good GCSEs twenty years ago. The danger
is all this change makes it impossible to see where improvements are being sustained.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That matters to narrowing the attainment gap as well as to
social mobility, because many of the schools which were performing badly in the
past had a disproportionate number of disadvantaged pupils. Their decent
results have spurred them to further improvement. Progress 8 is a tough sell to
explain how well a school is doing because of its complexity and because of the
distorting impact of a few individual pupils Now the nine to one scale is
layered on top. Comparisons over time become meaningless and past successes may
appear lost. All this at the same time as many of these schools bear the brunt
of cuts and changes in funding.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ll be honest: I was a bit sceptical about the English
Baccalaureate when it was introduced, in part because of concerns that it would
hurt those improved schools. But <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/changing-the-subject/">research</a>
we published last year showed that it benefited early adopter schools and
improved opportunities for poorer pupils. However, the target of 90% or 100% of
pupils achieving it is not realistic, and the case for a technical option
remains strong. But as a way of simply demonstrating a pupil’s or a school’s
success in core subjects, it has proved to be not a bad idea. And crucially it
is comprehensible.</div>
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<br /></div>
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But that is not the case with these latest changes. If even
the head of the exams regulator <a href="https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/exclusive-parents-and-employers-will-be-confused-new-numerical-gcse">admits t</a>hat parents and employers will be
“confused” by the new system, and that communicating what it means will be a
struggle, there are real problems ahead. And it is not just individuals and
pupils that could be the losers, it is the credibility of an accountability
system that has delivered real improvements in our schools.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-66449268702541799632017-02-23T09:52:00.000+00:002017-02-23T14:51:39.478+00:00The data deficit effect<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">In my latest <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/the-data-deficit-effect/">Sutton Trust blog</a>, how a dearth of data in Scotland propelled a Sutton Trust report onto the front pages.</span></i></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A funny thing happened with the Sutton Trust's <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/global-gaps/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Global Gaps</a> report a couple of weeks ago. John Jerrim’s excellent look at the different performance of highly able 15 year-olds from different social backgrounds gained some good – but not spectacular – coverage in the London media.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But on the same day it became the<a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15079187.Report__Standards_falling_for_Scotland__39_s_brightest_pupils/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"> top political news story</a> in Scotland. The report included breakdowns for the four UK nations and the Trust had targeted stories at outlets in each.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Scottish data was marginally worse than that in England – and crucially it showed that science results had dipped over the last ten years significantly – but this was enough to create front page splashes in some papers and much bigger stories in <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/bright-but-poor-pupils-trail-rich-classmates-by-almost-three-years-mwgprn5m3" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Scottish editions</a> than in their <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/schools-failing-clever-but-poorer-girls/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">English counterparts</a>.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Crucially, too, the opposition took the data and ran with it. The two year gap in performance between poor and better off teenagers hit a nerve, and fed a narrative that the Scottish government has been failing on education. So much so that both Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader and Keiza Dugdale, the Labour leader, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-38922338" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">majored</a> on the report at First Minister’s Questions.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That took the story into a second day of front page news and saw the BBC’s Scotland political editor filing a lengthy report for the evening news bulletins. By the time last Thursday’s Question Time was broadcast from Glasgow the story was still fresh enough to warrant a separate discussion.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ve been reflecting on why this happened. There were some strong political reasons. Opposition politicians clearly leapt on the report with a vigour long lacking in their London counterparts, and that certainly gave the story more legs than had it been solely a Sutton Trust press release and report.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Education is also a much bigger issue in Scotland, both because Nicola Sturgeon and her education secretary John Swinney have made <a href="http://www.thenational.scot/politics/14894444.Nicola_Sturgeon_to_focus_on_the_economy_and_closing_the_attainment_gap_as_she_unveils_Programme_for_Government/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">narrowing the attainment gap</a> their big issue in this term, which means that any signs of failure get seized upon.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But I think another factor is just as important – the data deficit North of the border. I became acutely aware of this when I served last year on the <a href="http://www.commissiononwideningaccess.co.uk/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Commission on Widening Access</a> in Scotland. The dearth of data was the main reason I subsequently commissioned researchers at Edinburgh to produce the <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/access-in-scotland/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Access in Scotland</a> report for the Sutton Trust.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">At school level, this data deficit is particularly significant. Swinney is now introducing a more rigorous – if controversial – <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-38110789" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">testing system</a> this autumn. Scotland <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/sep/26/scotland.schools" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">scrapped </a>national testing in the mid-2000s, along with Wales. The result was<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0bf1b9ea-e5f6-11df-af15-00144feabdc0" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"> predictably disastrous</a> in Wales, which has been edging back towards testing, and the PISA results suggest it saw a slide in Scottish results too.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Potentially the reintroduction of national testing could do a lot for research into social mobility in Scotland, something the critics of testing often wilfully ignore, as well as ensuring that aspirations for able disadvantaged students are stretching.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Combined with the introduction of a Scottish version of the<a href="https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/resources/teaching-learning-toolkit" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"> Teaching and Learning Toolkit</a>, currently being developed by the Education Endowment Foundation with Education Scotland, this could have a genuinely beneficial impact on less advantaged pupils’ results.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Contrast the dearth of data in Scotland (and Wales) with its abundance in England. The <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-pupil-database" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">National Pupil Database</a> is an invaluable resource with the potential to improve social mobility as it shows schools how others succeed in similar circumstances and with linkage to other databases including HMRC it allows researchers to measure how well students from different backgrounds progress from the start of school to the workplace.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">PISA is useful for its comparability in that respect, but is not sufficient – hence the excitement surrounding our recent report. Gratifying as it was to have such great coverage, I look forward to the day when such data doesn’t cause so much of a stir in Scotland because there is much more data available on the progress of Scottish children – and teachers have the tools to compare their pupils with similar pupils elsewhere in the country.</span></div>
</div>
Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-84448014153807573082017-01-20T09:04:00.001+00:002017-08-02T16:29:54.094+01:00Breaking the class ceiling<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px;">
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">I wrote this for the <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/breaking-the-class-ceiling/">Sutton Trust blog...</a>.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Education Secretary Justine Greening <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/justine-greening-education-at-the-core-of-social-mobility" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">recalled</a> yesterday how she’s missed out on a banking job because she hadn’t taken a gap year. “I was too embarrassed to admit that I simply couldn’t afford one,” she told an event organised jointly by the Sutton Trust and PriceWaterhouseCoopers on Wednesday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Outlining her vision for social mobility, she admitted that she was fortunate to get a job at PWC and to progress to become an MP and a cabinet minister despite her modest beginnings. And she was perhaps fortunate to face that particular mobility barrier as the guilty bank was Barings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As the first comprehensive educated Conservative education secretary, Justine Greening has shown an admirable determination to place social mobility at the top of her political agenda. Yesterday she announced funding for new <a href="https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/our-work/research-schools/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">research schools</a> in her flagship social mobility programme of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37554334" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Opportunity Areas</a>. The new schools will be run by the Education Endowment Foundation with the York-based Institute for Effective Education and will help transmit evidence on what works across other schools in their locality to address educational inequalities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/revised-gcse-and-equivalent-results-in-england-2015-to-2016" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Today’s GCSE results</a> show some signs that disadvantaged students are doing better in school – more are doing the EBacc than before and English and Maths results are improving. But the gap in attainment in the core subjects remains stubbornly high and the new Progress 8 measure underlines just how far behind many disadvantaged students are even allowing for where they started. Those gaps are still much more pronounced outside London.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The extent of the challenge was laid bare on Tuesday in a new report, <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/policy/all-party-parliamentary-group-on-social-mobility/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Class Ceiling</a>, from the <a href="http://www.socialmobilityappg.co.uk/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility</a>. The APPG, for which the Sutton Trust acts as the secretariat, took as its starting point the <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/leading-people-2016/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Leading People 2016</a> report last year which showed how across most major professions over half of all the top jobs are taken by those who went to private schools, and many were also Oxbridge graduates.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A lot of the coverage on the APPG focused on the call for a ban on unpaid internships, something the Trust has also <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/internships/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">called for</a> in the past linked to research on the cost working without pay. Justine Greening was instinctively against a ban when questioned about this yesterday. But unless firms that hire people for months unpaid start to pay at least the minimum wage these opportunities will remain beyond those unable to access the Bank of Mum and Dad or with a family home near their workplace.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The APPG’s recommendations, based on evidence from a host of professions over the last six months, also urged fairer and more transparent recruitment practices by employers, including contextual practices that place attainment and successes achieved in the context of disadvantage, including underperforming schools and less advantaged neighbourhoods.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">They argued that employers should be conscious of the impact of recruiting from a narrow pool of universities in the graduate ‘milk round’, and the social mix of institutions, building on the work already being done in some elite professions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is not without controversy, as some rather <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4126458/Smash-class-ceiling-bosses-told.html" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">excitable</a> <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">Daily Mail</em> coverage showed, wrongly suggesting that employers should ignore qualifications and ban all internships. In fact, as with similar programmes in universities, this is about recognising that an able young person who went to a tough school and got good results will have had to show far more grit and resilience than a pupil who went to a fee paying school.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">However, this doesn’t mean that they necessarily have the same social skills. And this remains a challenge. Our <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/private-pay-progression/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">research</a> has also shown that not only do privately educated graduates earn more than those with similar degrees who went to state schools. It underlines the importance of developing those skills and school and university, particularly for those the Education Secretary likes to call ‘rough diamonds’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is great that social mobility is now so high up the government’s agenda. And there are clearly lots of things schools need to do to improve opportunities for disadvantaged young people, not least for those whose ability shines at eleven but isn’t properly harnessed through secondary school.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But this is not just an agenda for schools. It is about what business and universities do to foster and develop talent – and to remove the financial and social barriers that prevent success</span></div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-45111896567099239542016-10-13T13:04:00.002+01:002016-10-13T13:04:33.977+01:00Under advisement<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've blogged about teachers' perceptions of Oxbridge at the <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/under-advisement/">Sutton Trust </a>today.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What are we to make of the idea that some four in ten teachers rarely or never advise bright students to apply to Oxford and Cambridge? This finding in an NFER poll for the Sutton Trust published <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/over-four-in-ten-state-school-teachers-rarely-or-never-advise-bright-pupils-to-apply-to-oxbridge-new-sutton-trust-polling/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">today</a> has remained stubbornly unchanged since 2007.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And perhaps more troubling is the perception that teachers have of the proportions of undergraduates at our two most prestigious universities who come from state schools – typically they say 20%, around a third of the actual percentage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is no doubt that there is still a real access issue at our best universities. At the top third, you are <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/priviledged-students-six-times-more-likely-secure-places-top-uk-universities-oxford-cambridge-ucas-a7072226.html" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">six times</a> more likely to gain admittance if you come from the richest fifth of neighbourhoods than if you live in the poorest fifth. At our most selective universities, the odds are even lower. Yet the universities spend millions of pounds each year on outreach, and lots more on bursaries, designed to narrow these gaps.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is good that Oxford now <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-37250916" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">has 59% </a>of students from a state school background, and Cambridge has <a href="http://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/files/publications/undergrad_admissions_statistics_2015_cyle.pdf" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">slightly more</a>. That’s a real improvement, but it still means that taking into account sixth form attendance, privately educated students are three times more likely to gain a place than their numbers in the population.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Russell Group always argue the answer is attainment: A-levels achieved by those in the leafier communities outweigh those from the less advantaged by a significant margin at the top. Yet that’s not the whole story. The Sutton Trust <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/missing-3000-state-schools-represented-leading-universities/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">identified</a> a ‘missing 3000’ some years ago who make the grades but don’t get in to the top 13 universities. There is little sign that has changed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And they’re the group who may lose out if teachers don’t encourage their brightest students to apply to Oxford and Cambridge, and other leading universities. Both universities are central to the <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/leading-people-2016/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">leading professions</a> and <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/earningbydegrees/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">best salaries</a>, and if we are to make a difference to social mobility at the top we need to see more young people of real ability from low and middle income homes getting to those great universities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This isn’t about criticising teachers or Oxbridge dons. It is about both schools and the colleges and universities being prepared to look afresh at how they work and being open to making the changes that could break down these barriers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Earlier this year, the Trust published a <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/oxbridge-admissions/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">brief on admissions procedures</a> at the two universities and made some fairly practical suggestions based on what state school headteachers with a track record of success at the universities, and some of the alumni from our summer schools had said to us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">University rather than college-based admissions are more common, but the distinctions that remain are more of a hindrance to state students than those from private schools with the right networks. What contextual admission offers that are made remain opaque and the information about bursaries and other financial aid is simply not known by too many schools. With a new VC at Oxford showing a strong commitment to fair access and change coming at Cambridge there is a real opportunity for a radical fresh look at what could make a difference.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But equally, schools need to do far more to stretch their highly able students. Grammar schools still have disproportionate Oxbridge entries compared to their numbers too. Every comprehensive should have a strong programme of enrichment for their brightest students from early on in their secondary education. The Sutton Trust works with students to provide such stretch through its Sutton Scholars programme, but programmes for what schools call the able, gifted and talented need to be as embedded in the culture of every comprehensive as much as their support for those with special educational needs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/missing-talent/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Missing Talent</a> report last year showed what happens where schools don’t do this: we identified thousands of students in the top 10 per cent at age 11 who had fallen outside the top 25 per cent by the age of 16. They could have been set fair for top universities, but had lost that chance. That’s why we need the government not only to require grammars to do much more to recruit bright disadvantaged pupils, we need them to be clear that this should be a part of the DNA of every comprehensive too. To his credit, Sir Michael Wilshaw has <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/hmcis-monthly-commentary-june-2016" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">pushed this agenda</a> in his time as chief inspector. But this needs drive from the whole government and as much focus as the Prime Minister has given to grammars and faith schools.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, many schools and sixth form colleges do push their best students to aim high, and universities do run more programmes than ever to reach them. But today’s research shows that this needs to be a national drive if we are to make a real difference to social mobility at the top.</span></div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-18203681732116174312016-09-15T08:00:00.000+01:002016-10-13T13:05:47.574+01:00Lost in the grammars debate<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<em><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I've blogged at the <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/lost-in-the-grammars-debate/">Sutton Trust website </a>on the grammar schools debate</span></span></em></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It was just three months before Tony Blair’s historic victory in 1997. Ben Chapman was fighting as the Labour candidate in the Wirral South by-election. And David Blunkett, the shadow education secretary, was <a data-mce-href="http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/blunkett-promises-higher-school-standards-156602925.html" href="http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/blunkett-promises-higher-school-standards-156602925.html">visiting</a> the Wirral County Grammar School. While he had a cup of tea with the headteacher, the late Eric Forth, then the schools minister, protested outside that Labour was no friend of grammars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But, by then the opposition had decided to park the issue of grammar schools if it got into government. As Blunkett's special adviser, I helped devise the 1998 legislation that is now reported daily as the ‘ban’ on new grammar schools. I briefed its details to the media ahead of that Wirral visit. But ironically, while it did indeed stop new academic selection, the legislation also made it hard to close existing grammars without parental consent. And that was as much its primary purpose. Neither Blair nor Blunkett wanted to be distracted from their wider plans to improve education by a huge debate about the remaining 166 grammar schools. (A few have since merged so there are now 163).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nearly twenty years later, the last few weeks have shown us why. Theresa May’s speech at Downing Street last week may have had four key points to it – including, interestingly, a plan to require private schools to justify their charitable status by engaging more fully in state school partnerships – but most of the acres of coverage and debate have focused on ‘plans’ for ‘new grammar schools’.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But there are real dangers in making this the big focus of education policy, let alone the cornerstone of the Government’s drive for social mobility.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The first – and most obvious – reason is that the evidence is pretty thin that grammar schools improve social mobility. In the Green Paper, the Government quotes from a <a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/social-selectivity-state-schools-impact-grammars/" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/social-selectivity-state-schools-impact-grammars/">lengthy 2008 Durham University report</a> published by the Sutton Trust. That report looked at GCSE results in existing grammar schools and found that those from poorer backgrounds who are highly able do marginally better than similar pupils in comprehensives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To quote in full from the report: “We find that pupils eligible for [free school meals] appear to suffer marginally less educational disadvantage if they attend grammar schools. The difference is equivalent to about one-eighth of a GCSE grade; although this is statistically significant, it is certainly not large. It also seems possible that FSM pupils in grammar schools may typically be quite different from FSM pupils as a whole in ways that are not well measured, so we should be cautious about interpreting this as a strong endorsement of grammar schools.”<a data-mce-href="#_edn1" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=7973&action=edit#_edn1" name="_ednref1">[i]</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">At the same time, our more <a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/poor-grammar-entry-grammar-schools-disadvantaged-pupils-england/" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/poor-grammar-entry-grammar-schools-disadvantaged-pupils-england/">recent reports from 2013 </a>showed that less than 3% of grammar school pupils come from an FSM background, 13% come from outside the state school system, largely independent preparatory schools. Perhaps more significantly, given the focus of the Prime Minister’s speech on those on modest incomes, the Anna Vignoles and IFS <a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/entry-grammar-schools-england/" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/entry-grammar-schools-england/">research</a><a data-mce-href="#_edn2" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=7973&action=edit#_edn2" name="_ednref2">[ii]</a> showed a direct correlation between income and likelihood of grammar entry in each IDACI quintile.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In any case, at a political level, given the strength of opposition on the Conservative benches, there is no guarantee the 1998 legislation can be overturned in the Commons, let alone the Lords, where an alliance of crossbenchers, Labour and LibDems, as well as sceptical Tories could defeat it. Where Tony Blair could <a data-mce-href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4810898.stm" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4810898.stm">turn to the Conservatives</a> when he faced a much larger rebellion over his 2006 education reforms, in the Commons, May can only count on the DUP, a single UKIP MP and hope that the SNP see this as a solely English matter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Even if the government passes all its legislative hurdles, the likelihood is that the <a data-mce-href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/councils-in-dash-to-open-grammars-h5zgwm7lz" href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/councils-in-dash-to-open-grammars-h5zgwm7lz">‘dash’ for grammars</a>, as the <em>Sunday Times</em> had it at the weekend, will be confined to existing grammar school areas. In reality, the number of grammar school pupils has steadily <a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GRAMMAR-SCHOOLS-FACT-SHEET-AUGUST-2016.pdf" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/GRAMMAR-SCHOOLS-FACT-SHEET-AUGUST-2016.pdf">increased</a> from 129,000 to 163,000 since 1997, or from 4.0 to 5.2% of all pupils. Adding new school buildings in those areas, without pretending they are satellite schools, and a few within their catchments in outer London, will hardly match the rhetoric of recent days. There is not much evidence of demand elsewhere.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Interestingly, within the hastily produced <a data-mce-href="https://consult.education.gov.uk/school-frameworks/schools-that-work-for-everyone/supporting_documents/SCHOOLS%20THAT%20WORK%20FOR%20EVERYONE%20%20FINAL.pdf" href="https://consult.education.gov.uk/school-frameworks/schools-that-work-for-everyone/supporting_documents/SCHOOLS%20THAT%20WORK%20FOR%20EVERYONE%20%20FINAL.pdf">‘Green Paper’ </a>this week, there was one idea<a data-mce-href="#_edn3" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=7973&action=edit#_edn3" name="_ednref3">[iii]</a> that could allow a practical way forward for highly able pupils – organising support hubs for the highly able within multi-academy trusts, composed of comprehensive schools. MATs already pool resources for A-level classes, and such a model could offer a way to boost support for able students without selection at 11 and with all the flexibility that a MAT offers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Either way, it is important that the Government doesn’t lose sight of the needs of the highly able in comprehensives. Becky Allen’s </span><a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/missing-talent/" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/missing-talent/" style="font-family: inherit;"><em>Missing Talent</em></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> research for the Trust is widely quoted by ministers, and shows that between the ages of 11 and 16, a third of working class boys who are in the top tenth at Key Stage 2 are outside the top quarter by the time they get to do their GCSEs. As the selection debate grips Westminster and Whitehall, no legislation is required to ensure they get a fair deal, just action in the name of social mobility.</span></div>
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<span data-mce-style="font-size: 8pt;" style="font-size: 8pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a data-mce-href="#_ednref1" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=7973&action=edit#_ednref1" name="_edn1">[i]</a> See pages 218-219; <a data-mce-href="#_ednref2" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=7973&action=edit#_ednref2" name="_edn2">[ii]</a> See page 38; <a data-mce-href="#_ednref3" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=7973&action=edit#_ednref3" name="_edn3">[iii]</a> See page 27</span></span></div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-56122774608569073052016-07-20T09:33:00.002+01:002017-08-02T16:21:21.674+01:00Bacc to the future<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>I've blogged at the Sutton Trust website about new research on EBacc progress today.</i><br />
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Next month, hundreds of thousands of young people will learn their GCSE results. Their schools will be judged for the first time not on the proportion gaining five good GCSEs, but on the more complex Progress 8 measure (as well as English and Maths results). Crucial to the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/536052/Progress_8_school_performance_measure.pdf">Progress 8 </a>score will be the numbers who achieve the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/english-baccalaureate-ebacc">English Baccalaureate (EBacc)</a> – English, Maths, two sciences, languages and history or geography.<br />
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In January, I <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/losing-focus/">blogged </a>about some of my concerns about how well the changes will be understood by parents and employers, and that the challenge of gaining eight decent GCSEs could make it much harder for schools that have struggled successfully to improve the numbers gaining five good GCSEs, including many academies.<br />
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So, to some extent today’s research brief, <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/changing-the-subject/"><i>Changing the subject</i>,</a> by Becky Allen and Dave Thompson at Education Datalab, is encouraging. The brief looks at what happened to schools between 2010 and 2013, including a group of 300 ‘curriculum change schools’ that substantially increased the proportion of their students taking languages, humanities and science subjects.<br />
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It shows that pupils at those schools – including disadvantaged students – benefited from the changes. Encouragingly for the government, there was some narrowing of the gap between rich and poor students, and an improvement in the numbers taking A-levels and other post-16 qualifications. Moreover, there was no adverse impact on English and Maths results.<br />
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That is all to be welcomed. What seems to have happened is that pupils of average ability at the age of 11 who might not previously have taken the full range of EBacc subjects are now being encouraged to do so at these ‘curriculum change schools’. The report also shows that if disadvantaged students were entered at the same rate as other students of similar ability, another 11,000 would be doing languages and 15,000 more taking humanities subjects. Triple science take-up had already been improving as a result of changes made a decade ago, and continues to improve, but there is still a 5,500 shortfall based on ability.<br />
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There are other issues raised by this study. The Government has set a target that 90% of all students should take the EBacc. As evidence that this is possible, they cite a handful of successful academies in London. But the reality is that even in these curriculum changers – keen enthusiasts for the reform – take-up is nowhere near 90%. 57% take a language, a considerable improvement from 26% previously. But some schools that forced all pupils to take a language have had to switch course. One head told us: “Results plummeted and a high level of disaffection was the result. By making the language element optional I now have students in year 10 taking French who want to study it and I expect to see results rise.”<br />
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What that suggests is that a goal of perhaps 70% would still be hugely ambitious, but would be more realistic. There is then the challenge of finding enough good specialist teachers, particularly for languages, physics and chemistry.<br />
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At the heart of the debate is some confusion over how best to ensure that disadvantaged students reach their potential. Those who argue that everyone – or nearly everyone – should take the full suite of EBacc subjects see this as the best way to ensure that able students don’t lose out. And as these schools show, there is real potential for growth in take-up. The gap we have identified is one such group, and these 300 schools should be a good benchmark for other schools.<br />
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So, tens of thousands more students could and should be doing the EBacc subjects. That would make sure that able students aren’t losing out. But equally we need to ensure that we are not entering students not taking the EBacc – more likely to be a third than a tenth of students – have a rigorous technical baccalaureate as an alternative. With the recent <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/post-16-skills-plan-and-independent-report-on-technical-education">Sainsbury review</a> likely to lead to strong reforms in this area, this could be a valuable entry route for such students.<br />
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Today’s research brief is a valuable insight into what’s been happening with the EBacc. But it also provides food for thought as schools await their first Progress 8 results next month.</div>
Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-46167238610542514602016-07-02T12:18:00.001+01:002016-09-14T16:24:10.456+01:00The need for reassurance<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>I've posted my reflections on what needs to happen for Europeans living in Britain on my Facebook page</i>.</div>
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It is now more than a week since I heard the referendum result whilst in the beautiful Cork town of Kinsale. My anger and disbelief clearly made me a part of the so-called metropolitan elite, though I never knew the elite had 16 million members. Yet what I really felt was that I - like perhaps three million other EU citizens living in Britain - was not just a stranger in the country I made my home 32 years ago, but that a large proportion of the people in my adopted country were giving us all a collective two fingers.</div>
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What has happened since then has done little to shake that view. I have spoken to other EU citizens living in Britain this past week, and many of them are deeply worried about their futures. Some have families here, all are massively net contributors to the UK economy. Yet not one of the people who aspire to be prime minister has said anything to reassure these people or their families about their futures. At the extreme end, we have seen vile and vicious racist attacks on community centres, and xenophobic taunts to schoolchildren and people going about their everyday business who happen not to fit into the narrow acceptability of their bigoted tormentors. And to be fair such acts have been condemned, but - aside from the statesmanship of Sadiq Khan and Nicola Sturgeon - too few would be leaders have been ready to say that those who are here and working or long term residents are here to stay, that they are valued and welcome.</div>
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Rationally, I know I probably have little to fear as an Irish citizen. The Irish government is far more actively working on behalf of the 500,000 Irish born In Britain and with far more sense of what needs to happen than any English politician seems to have shown towards those who live and work in this country, those who keep its health and education services going, those who contribute more on average to our economy that those who would tell them to go. I can get dual British citizenship and the Common Travel Area in these islands may hopefully - though who really knows - survive in some form. But emotionally that is not how it feels at all.</div>
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It is not good enough to say that three million people who have made their lives in this country will be pawns in a negotiation over Brexit, as some implied this week. After all, their lives and those of their children will be blighted by fear of the unknown for several years. They need to know that a government that disgracefully denied 2.5 million of them - we Irish did get a vote - any say in their own futures during the referendum (as well as excluding 16 and 17 year olds) has at least got their back for the future. I have yet to hear anything saying that those who work here, and whose families have a stake in this country, are not to be kicked out if the political chess game goes the wrong way in the years ahead.</div>
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We have reached this point by accident, apparently. Quite clearly few of those who created this mess seem to have expected us to leave. There is a lot that needs to happen in the years ahead to save our economy, to support Scotland and Gibraltar, to preserve an open Irish border. But let us not make pawns of so many people's lives in the process. They need to know their futures. Whoever emerges from the current political shambles has a moral duty to give them the reassurance they deserve, and to do so quickly.</div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-41241885926618285792016-06-30T10:26:00.002+01:002016-06-30T10:26:47.648+01:00Brexit's mobility challenge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>I blogged at the <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/brexits-mobility-challenge/">Sutton Trust</a> on the implications of Brexit for education and social mobility.</i></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.6;">It is not as simple as saying – as many do – that we are heading out of the European Union thanks to the disaffected poor who felt their needs were overlooked by the distant metropolitan elite.</span></div>
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As YouGov’s final <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/06/27/how-britain-voted/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">polling </a>showed, there was a huge age divide too – 71% of 18-24 year-olds were for remain versus 64% of the over-65s backing leave – and a marked difference between those with different levels of education – those with few formal qualifications voted Leave in as great a proportion as graduates voted remain.</div>
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There is undoubtedly a strong degree of disaffection among older poorer voters. And this underlines more than ever the importance of ensuring that educational and employment opportunities are available for their children. In a sense, intergenerational poverty could breed intergenerational disaffection if whoever emerges as our political leadership in the months ahead doesn’t address the social mobility issue head on.</div>
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We need to start young. The <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/st-social-mobility-report.pdf" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">gaps in school readiness</a> at age 5 – the bottom 10% are 19 months behind the richest 10% – continue through the education system. While the pupil premium and other education reforms have reduced the gaps at age 11, on traditional measures little has changed at GCSE and there are still eight-fold access gaps to our leading universities.</div>
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As I have argued before, there is a <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/losing-focus/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">danger</a> that those gaps will perpetuate in the new accountability regime – though there is also growing evidence that such gaps are far from universal – so it is increasingly important that rhetorical choices between apprenticeships, college and university are made a reality in ways that really make a difference to young people’s life chances.</div>
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This matters at several levels. The Sutton Trust has long championed the importance of changing the elites – and the referendum has arguably thrown that into sharp relief – where <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/leading-people-2016/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">our research </a>earlier this year found that the privately educated continue to dominate in the professions. Even in politics, half of the current cabinet went to private school, and that’s a lower proportion than the coalition cabinet.</div>
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Politics needs to become more representative – something the <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/160603/social-mobility.htm" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">social mobility APPG</a> will be discussing later this month – but so does the leadership of all those institutions that affect our lives.</div>
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But change needs to come at every level. We have seen a welcome embrace of transparency in school-level data over the last 25 years, with the chance now to compare schools on a like for like basis as never before. That has spurred real improvement, and with the pupil premium has placed the attainment of disadvantaged pupils centre stage.</div>
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Yet there still remains a real challenge narrowing the gap between London and other parts of the country, in part because of different attitudes to reform, but equally the result of differential access to good teachers and demographic differences. It may be no accident that the strongest Brexit votes came in coastal areas and North East cities where students end up with fewest qualifications. The urgency of addressing those inequities has never been greater.</div>
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Equally, there is a real challenge assessing the value of post-school opportunities. Colleges have been measured on ‘success rates’ for too long, rather than student outcomes. There are welcome <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/522790/BIS-16-185-adult-FE-government-response-outcome-based-success-measures.pdf" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">moves</a> to change this, though the danger is that the data is presented in ways that are not easily understood – a real danger too with the new GCSE rankings (replacing A-E with 1-9). The best colleges transform lives, but it is vital that in communities where colleges are the only source of post-16 education that the current patchwork of performance is transformed for the better.</div>
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More worrying, perhaps, is the emphasis on quantity over quality in the apprenticeships programme. Apprenticeships are back in vogue, which is a good thing. But for young people, it is not good enough that <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/levels-of-success/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">only 40%</a> of them lead to a qualification at level 3 – A level equivalent – or above. Too few teachers will recommend apprenticeships, but until the government is clear that every young person starting a level 2 apprenticeship will progress to a level 3 without having to change course – as is the way in what are still (for now) our European partners – that won’t change.</div>
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And finally we need to shake the university sector out of its complacency and open it up to a transparency that has been alien to them for far too long. It is good that they are judged on <a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/rsrch/REFimpact/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">impact in the research excellence framework,</a> and that the<a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/teaching-excellence-framework-tef-everything-you-need-to-know" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"> teaching excellent framework </a>will force them to think more about how they impart knowledge to those paying them £9000 a year in fees.</div>
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But it is quite appalling that universities can refuse to co-operate in publishing the data on earnings by course linked to tax data from HMRC, something that Anna Vignoles worked with IFS to <a href="http://www.ifs.org.uk/research_areas/38/41/195?year_published%5bstart%5d=&year_published%5bend%5d=&page=1&" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">show recently </a>at an aggregate level. We will be working with MPs to get that changed in the higher education bill. Students have a right to know the worth of their courses, not least when <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/levels-of-success/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">our data</a> has shown that on average higher apprenticeships may be an option as good – or even better – financially.</div>
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So if we are to ensure that the disillusionment that led to Brexit among their grandparents – and many of their parents – is not translated through the generations, we need to make sure not only that opportunity is available to young people across Britain, but that it is provided in a way that is open and honest about the strengths and shortcomings of different pathways. Brexit may have its long term economic downsides, but politicians of all parties need to find ways to ensure that the young who voted overwhelmingly to remain have the chance to use their talents to the full.</div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-17306855345896302222016-06-01T14:24:00.002+01:002016-06-01T14:24:36.637+01:00Scotland's access challenge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>I<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/scotlands-access-challenge/">blogged</a> for the Sutton Trust on access in Scotland, linked to a new Trust report that attracted a lot of Scottish interest last week.</span></i><br />
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Nicola Sturgeon has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-32874215">placed</a> education at the top of the government’s agenda. By making her deputy John Swinney <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-36354024">responsible</a> for education in her cabinet, she has given a clear signal of how highly she prioritises the issue. And in looking again at national testing, she is showing a willingness to put pupils’ interests first: good data is vital to educational equality, and must be part of what emerges.<br />
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But the scale of the challenge should not be underestimated. Today’s Sutton Trust report <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/access-in-scotland/"><i>Access in Scotland</i></a> from Sheila Riddell and her colleagues at Edinburgh University provides the most detailed data to date on the scale of the access challenge north of the border.<br />
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Some figures are familiar: between the most and least disadvantaged, there is a four-fold gap in university access in Scotland at age 18, compared with a 2.4 point gap in England. Others are encouraging: access to “higher tariff” universities is less polarised than in England, although this may in part reflect that a larger proportion of the Scottish sector are in this category, though it includes all the ancient universities . But what is new is the startling figure that of the growth in new entrants to higher education from the poorest areas over the last decade, fully nine in ten have been to sub-degree courses at further education colleges.<br />
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This is not to decry the efforts of colleges. As I learnt in my time as a member of the Scottish <a href="http://www.commissiononwideningaccess.co.uk/">Commission on Widening Access</a>, articulation from college to university is a tried and tested route into university. Colleges have displayed an enormous dedication to improving the education of poorer students. But in a system where half the students moving from college to university have to repeat at least one year, there are clear issues about both the nature of what has been learnt before university and the willingness of universities, particularly the Ancients, to credit that learning.<br />
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Sturgeon has commendably accepted many of the <a href="http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/03/1439">recommendations</a> of the Commission, including the idea of an independent Commissioner for Fair Access – a cross between <a href="https://www.offa.org.uk/about/staff/director-of-fair-access/">Les Ebdon</a> and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/people/alan-milburn">Alan Milburn</a>, at least in their current roles – and the target that a fifth of higher education entrants by 2030 should be from the poorest fifth of neighbourhoods.<br />
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There is a danger that the access debate is simply clouded in the arguments around tuition fees. In truth, neither side has a strong enough case there. The absence of tuition fees has not obviously changed the access picture – and in other countries, the abolition of tuition fees has proved a welcome initial saving for middle class families rather than a spur to participation by the poor. But then it is hard to argue that incurring <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/student-debts-exceed-%C2%A350000-poorest-says-ifs">£50,000 debt</a> on graduation in a debt-averse culture is the right answer either, even if a proportion of the fees are used to fund access and outreach and regardless of what protection may be in place for lower earning graduates.<br />
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That’s why it is not enough simply to accept radical targets. The means must be put in place too. And that means accepting also the more radical commission proposal that universities should formalise their contextual admissions work with institutional minimum thresholds that are targeted at disadvantaged students. Critics in Scotland have talked of social engineering, but the inspiration for this idea was the <a href="http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2015/11/9302/9">radical access work</a> at St Andrews which I heard about when visiting the university.<br />
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At St Andrews, studying Physics and Astronomy has become so popular that the standard asking rates are AAAA in the Highers. Students from a widening participation background can join standard degree programmes but with a modified Gateway entry year, which has a lower asking rate for entry, typically BBBB. In their year of entry these students do about half their credits on traditional modules integrated with the rest of the intake, and about half their time on strongly tutored modules designed for this entry cohort. The early Gateway cohorts include some doctoral students.<br />
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That’s also why it is so important that the Scottish government continues to fund dedicated places at the Ancients for disadvantaged students, particularly when other places continue to be capped. But the changes needed to meet the ambitious targets can’t just be about the Ancients. Some universities already meet the 20% target, but there is room for more higher and degree-level apprenticeships in addition to their existing offer, directly linked to employers and jobs. The overall scale of provision at Scotland’s universities deserves more debate too, with applications having risen faster over recent years than the number of places.<br />
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Of course, none of what universities or ministers might do is enough on its own. The real challenge lies in what happens in schools, where attainment gaps are evident from an early age. It is a good start providing comparable data through assessments, but that needs follow up with equally radical approaches through targeted funding, a strong drive to improve standards, and intervention and support for schools with poorer results, especially in disadvantaged areas.<br />
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But we need to go further in raising aspirations too. The Sutton Trust supports 250 students each year at its summer schools at Edinburgh and St Andrews. Other charities, like the Robertson Trust, play a vital role funding access programmes too.<br />
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It is simply not fair that 26% of places at ancient universities go to privately educated students, when less than 5% of Scottish students are educated at independent schools. We need to see a concerted drive to improve education for able, gifted and talented students in every state school from S1 (Year 7 in England) onwards too.<br />
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That’s the challenge behind today’s report. And it is one that matters for Scotland’s future success.</div>
Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-70086981708148084092016-04-20T15:40:00.002+01:002016-04-20T16:59:17.031+01:00Getting it right on academies<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today's <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/apr/20/david-cameron-press-ahead-plan-schools-academies-pmqs">exchanges</a> at Prime Minister's Questions on academies were undoubtedly a victory for a Labour leader who has too often struggled at the weekly Commons joust. But they did little to enlighten those who watched them on the strengths and weaknesses of academies - nor did we get a convincing reason why ministers want to force all schools to adopt their legal structure.<br />
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As one who was there at the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/mar/15/schools.news">birth of academies</a>, I have been a longstanding supporter of their original concept - a radical shift in the governance of failing schools particularly to improve standards for disadvantaged pupils. But I have had no problem either with some of the changes since 2010 - it made sense to extend them to failing primaries,something I <a href="http://conorfryan.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/labour-should-support-primary.html">argued</a> on this blog in the past; and I am a director of a multi-academy trust having been a governor of the successful school which helped create it, using the freedoms given to us by academy status.<br />
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It is because of my commitment to the original idea of academies that I was so keen that the Sutton Trust commissioned the now annual <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/chain-effects-2015/">Chain Effects</a> reports. Accountability and transparency have to be central to a policy founded on independence, and before Chain Effects in 2014 there were no such comparisons across established secondary chains. Since then, the DFE has published <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/mar/24/less-than-half-academy-chains-producing-above-average-gsce-results">its own tables</a> and Ofsted has started to produce <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/outcome-letters-from-ofsted-inspections-of-multi-academy-trusts">reports on chains,</a> although its powers to do so need strengthening in any future legislation.<br />
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Chain Effects has shown a mixed picture, though reading some of the comments by opponents of academies one might imagine it to damn all academies. It focuses on attainment and improvement for disadvantaged pupils, on the grounds that if academies are to succeed, they must be able to do at least as well as schools generally in enabling their poorest students to get good GCSE results.<br />
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On the positive side, the 2015 report showed that this is happening in around a third of the chains examined. Some, including Ark, City of London and Harris – three chains that have been part of the academies programme almost since the start – were dramatically transforming the prospects of their disadvantaged pupils, with results well above the national average. Others that were clearly making a difference include the Outwood Grange academies in Yorkshire and the Mercers’ academies based on the Thomas Telford model. Around half of chains bettered the national average improvement for poorer pupils, six out of 34 significantly. But many others are middling or worse, and their performance raises important questions about how the programme is run and how it might move in the future.<br />
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When I <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/the-academy-effect/">blogged</a> about Chain Effects last year, I suggested some reasons why this might be so. After all, early <a href="http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/special/cepsp29.pdf">research</a> by Steve Machin on the sponsored academies had been more positive. One reason was the pace of change. By 2010, there was a target of 400 academies with nearly 300 ready to open. Now there are <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-academies-and-academy-projects-in-development">1600 sponsored academies and 3,700 converters</a>, representing two thirds of secondaries and one sixth of primaries. And one reason for the success of the earliest academies was that the troubleshooting capacity of the education department and Andrew Adonis’s detailed project management, from No.10 initially and later as a minister, ensured that the crises that have affected so many chains recently were addressed quickly. But it was far easier to ensure the smooth opening of new academies when the numbers created each year were in the tens rather than the hundreds. The focus was on getting it right much more so than getting the numbers up.<br />
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After 2010, attention was initially directed at converting successful schools to academies. I supported giving them the right to do so at the time, and still do, but combined with the drive for free schools it created a capacity issue in the department that has never been adequately addressed since. There was also a real failure to insist that converters became system leaders in return for the £250,000 extra (money that local authorities ostensibly spent on their behalf) that they received in their budgets to sweeten the changes.<br />
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Now we have the latest phase of the policy. In some ways, it reminds me of how Charles Clarke moved from early scepticism about specialist schools to what would become an evangelical zeal for them as education secretary, so much so that he <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2004/jul/08/schools.uk5">wanted</a> all secondaries to become one. It turned a policy that had been achieving improvements into one that lacked differentiation and was <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/specialist-schools-programme-michael-gove-announces-changes">killed off </a>by Michael Gove in 2010, undermining an organisation that could have helped deliver mass academisation in a collaborative way in the process.<br />
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The truth is that there is no demand for forcing good schools to become academies, and there is no evidence that it will lift standards. Before the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/educational-excellence-everywhere">White Paper</a>, a lot of multi-academy trusts (MATs) had been emerging organically, often geographically based. They can play a valuable role creating economies of scale, through shared leadership and back office functions - indeed, those village schools causing Tory backbenchers to fret would be better protected in MATs with a shared head than they are now. But, while MATs can expand subject choice or improve professional development, the evidence that converting good schools to academies raises their standards is not there.<br />
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The danger of the compulsion policy is that, at a time when too many trusts are not adding value, the DFE loses focus on the failing schools, as they did in the early years of the coalition, as officials spend their time smoothing the legalities of conversions. Only this time the converters are not always going to be choosing their own fate. The weaker schools where academy status could improve their results will be the losers, as will their pupils, not least the poorest ones.<br />
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So what should ministers do now that they've announced all this, given that it is unlikely either the PM or Chancellor will want to drop the policy entirely? First, they need some tactical retreats. There is no good reason to remove the requirement of continuing parent governors, and that should be dropped. Of course, MAT boards and governing bodies need experienced directors, but they and their governing bodies need a voice of parents too. The second change they should make is to allow local authorities to create trusts with local partners to oversee academies at a sub-county or borough level, grouping perhaps a dozen primaries and a couple of secondaries together. Of course, local authorities shouldn't have majority control of the trusts any more than they do governing bodies now, but their involvement would help smooth the process where good schools are coming together. And third, the government should incentivise the change rather than mandate it, and quietly drop the wholly arbitrary 2022 deadline which makes it feel as if there is a gun to schools' heads. At some stage, a tipping point will emerge in any case if they get the incentives right.<br />
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But even that will not be enough. It still leaves the more prosaic problem of what to do with the 'middle tier' as local authorities lose their role in school standards. David Blunkett provided some <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27206083">good answers</a> on that score in 2014, and the government would do well to dust them down. They should expand the number of regional school commissioners and introduce a board with local government as well as school representatives to improve accountability. And - unless they want to spend the next five years in the courts battling councils - they should leave land in trust locally.<br />
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And then they need to leave it to schools to come together in trusts themselves, helped by the legal conversion money provided by the government. DFE officials and particularly regional commissioners should focus where they can and should make a difference - on failing and coasting schools. Meanwhile, they should have a full independent evaluation of what works and what doesn't with MATs. And perhaps we could also hear no more daft statistics like the one repeated by the PM today about 88% of converters being good or outstanding, ignoring the fact that being so was a prerequisite of conversion at the start.<br />
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The tragedy of this issue is that there is a lot that is good and sensible in the white paper, where this plan provided its most toxic chapter. Ministers should allow themselves the space to advance those ideas, which can improve teaching, leadership and standards. And there are also real issues ahead as the <a href="http://conorfryan.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/losing-focus.html">exam and accountability system is overhauled</a> and detail is added to the national funding formula which very soon will require real attention from the top. Unless they address the academies issue quickly, they may soon find themselves overwhelmed.</div>
Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-21481272058885187732016-04-15T11:17:00.001+01:002016-04-15T13:22:22.087+01:00Selective primaries<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've written this blog for the </span><a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/primary-selection/" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sutton Trust website</a><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> on primary school admissons.</span></i></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On Monday, hundreds of thousands of parents in England will learn whether or not they have secured a place for their children at their preferred primary school. For many, that will be their nearest primary; for others it may be faith-based schools. For some, there may not even be places as the demographic birth bulge continues to impact on school place planning at a time when all new schools have to be free schools.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But behind the excitement and despair of National Offer Day there is a second story at play. The issue is not just one of school choice but also of educational inequality. Primary schools, even more than secondary schools, are already the subject of social selection, with distance from schools even more important with fewer recruits each year. Selection by house price is an inevitable – and probably unchangeable – aspect of a system where we rightly place a premium on being able to walk to school and minimise the dreaded school run.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet that’s not the whole story. There has been a lot written about admissions policies to secondary schools. Debate still rages about grammar schools, while <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/selective-comprehensives/">Sutton Trust research</a> has shown that many successful comprehensives could be regarded as socially selective. Rather less has been said about primary school admissions policies, yet the choices made at age five can impact on social mobility as much – if not more – than those made at age eleven.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Until today, that is. In an <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/?post_type=research&p=6194&preview=true">important new analysis</a> for the Sutton Trust, Dr Rebecca Allen and her colleagues at Education Datalab have looked in detail at the data for primary school admissions and have discovered over 1500 primaries – just under one in ten – where the difference in free school meal intake is more than nine percentage points below that of the communities from which they recruit.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The pattern seems strongest in some – though not all – London boroughs and in areas outside London where there are strong faith-based, particularly Catholic, state schools. There does seem to be a higher propensity for some academies and free schools – which can vary admissions policies from the local authority – to be among the schools that come through as more socially selective.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Importantly, Dr Allen has looked not just at where this social selection is taking place but its impact on standards. So, 13% of Ofsted outstanding primary schools fit within her rigorous definition of social selectivity compared with 7% of those requiring improvement, and just 1% of those in the bottom 10% of performance in the tests at eleven are among the most socially selective, while 14% of those in the top 10% of performance are among top 10% most socially selective primaries.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So this matters to children’s life chances, especially those of poorer pupils where earlier Sutton Trust research has identified a <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/st-social-mobility-report.pdf">19 month school readiness gap</a>. And while some education reformers dismiss admissions issues on the grounds that they’re ‘making all schools good’, the cold reality is that some primaries (just like some secondaries or universities) will always be better, and their intakes should reflect society better when the taxpayer is footing the bill.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But what do we do about it? Were we to take a coldly scientific position we might argue for a system of lotteries in primary schools, but while they have some merit as part of the admissions policies for popular urban secondaries, such an approach would be impractical in primary schools.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Instead, we need to look at how schools apply the admissions code. We make three suggestions today. The first is that schools – including faith schools – should consider prioritising pupil premium pupils ahead of others in their admissions criteria (they already do this for children in care). The second is that we need the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-admissions-code--2">Admissions Code</a> to be properly enforced, particularly in parts of London where parents have <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/parent-power/">been known</a> to rent a flat close to a good school for the application process (and no longer). And finally, while we understand the wish of the Catholic and Anglican churches to maintain the ethos of their schools, we applaud those that have already decided to make a proportion of places available for those of other faiths – something required of new faith free schools.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 25.6px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The attention given to secondary school choices should not blind us from the impact of social selection in primaries. Today’s new report should help start a debate on how we ensure that the best state primaries are not the preserve of the better off.</span></span></div>
Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-84386189435925399632016-04-11T14:58:00.000+01:002016-04-11T14:58:25.439+01:00Back to school for governors<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>I wrote this essay for <a href="http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/feature/2016/03/back-school-governors">Public Finance Perspectives</a> ahead of the recent education white paper. Its relevance remains strong.</i><br />
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The transformation of school structures over the past decade has dramatically increased the importance of good governance in schools. Yet evidence from the school inspectorate, Ofsted, and others suggests that the rapid conversion of seven in 10 secondary schools and one in six primaries into academy schools has not always been matched by the improvements one would expect in strategic leadership.<br />
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This has thrown into sharp relief the role of school governors, who historically have played the role of non-executives in an educational context. It may also help explain why the ‘academy effect’ on standards has been patchy and far from universal.<br />
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Until 2010, the vast majority of schools were maintained by their local authority. That wasn’t the whole story: a significant minority (largely faith based) were voluntary aided, while others had a greater degree of independence as foundation schools. While schools were funded through the local authority, the government dictated which budget was for schools and which was for central services. School forums, including headteachers, governors and council officials, could vary such spending locally.<br />
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By the time the coalition government took office, around 280 schools – mainly once‑failing secondaries in disadvantaged areas – had become or were becoming academies. These schools, representing fewer than one in 10 secondaries, were funded through an education funding agency, had charitable status, usually had sponsors drawn from charities or business and had greater freedoms over pay, the curriculum, admissions and building development. Most had strong governance systems.<br />
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<b>New landscape</b><br />
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It is worth briefly examining what happened next, as it has created a very different school governance landscape. Former education secretary Michael Gove radically changed the academies programme. He allowed primary schools and schools rated as successful by Ofsted to take on academy status; and he rebranded new academies and all new schools as ‘free schools’.<br />
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With primary academies, the focus was on turning around failing schools. However, a lot of time and energy was also expended in supporting good secondary converters and promoting new free schools, which increasingly are the government’s answer to shortages of school places rather than the hubs of innovation originally imagined.<br />
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For many converters, it was a financial no-brainer: their £5m or £6m budgets would be increased by around £250k a year at a time when those without significant numbers of disadvantaged pupils eligible for the pupil premium were otherwise expecting to have to lay off staff.<br />
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Although the new academies were expected to support weaker schools locally, this was not a condition of approval. As a result, innovation was slower than it might have been and the Department for Education (DfE) found it hard to get enough good sponsors for the rapidly growing number of failing schools required to become academies.<br />
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The DfE promoted some big chains, ahead of local partnerships, to replace failing schools, and they expanded more rapidly than was prudent. The worst offenders were subsequently berated by Ofsted and had to surrender some of their schools. Despite these problems, the government has extended the range of schools that it expects to become academies, including those that are coasting as well as those deemed to be failing by Ofsted.<br />
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<b>Chain reaction</b><br />
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The result is a programme with mixed success. The Sutton Trust looks each year at the performance of academy chains for their disadvantaged pupils – those they were originally intended to help the most. In its 2015 Chain Effects report, it found that, after being part of chains for three years, sponsored secondary academies had lower inspection grades – and were twice as likely to be below the minimum standard set for schools by the government.<br />
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Comparing this with 2013 data, the trust found that the contrast between the best and worst chains had increased in 2014. And, when analysed against a range of government indicators on attainment, a majority of the chains still underperform against the average for all secondary schools on attainment for their disadvantaged pupils.<br />
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Notwithstanding this, there are some great success stories. The Ark and Harris chains, schools sponsored by the City of London, and the Outwood Academies established by a dynamic Yorkshire headteacher, Sir Michael Wilkins, spring to mind.<br />
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Overall, the analysis suggests that chains within geographic clusters (making it easier to share resources), a strong ‘business model’ – with clarity across the chain on issues such as curriculum, teaching and data – and with growth at a manageable pace have succeeded significantly faster than schools generally. But the rest have performed at or below the national average.<br />
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The Sutton Trust focused on chains that had been in operation for at least three years, and it may be that newer chains do better. A wider analysis by the National Foundation for Education Research of sponsored and converter academies found that, although progress between the ages of 11 and 16 in sponsored academies (those replacing failing schools) is better than in local authority schools, there is no significant difference between converters and the remaining local authority schools. Moreover, the additional sponsored academy gains largely reflect a wider use of vocational qualifications that ministers have since downgraded because they believe they overinflate GCSE scores.<br />
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So, although the evidence on academy attainment is complex, the findings do give an indication of the challenging and ever-shifting context within which school governance has been operating – and the issues that school trustees, directors and governors have had to grapple with.<br />
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<b>Multi-academy tasking</b><br />
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Meanwhile, another important change is happening in the system, which could have a profound impact if it works. Ministers have shifted their focus – after the embarrassments of the failing chains – away from national academy chains to local multi-academy trusts (MATs), which now include three-fifths of academies.<br />
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Typically centred around a successful local school (in the same fashion as some successful chains), they are selling it as a way both to achieve economies of scale and to drive up standards through a collaborative approach. The MAT will have a chief executive overseeing several schools, often both primary and secondary, which can share business, back office and teacher training functions. Only one in six primaries are currently academies, so ministers are particularly keen to see MATs bring small primaries together, perhaps with a single head, to increase the programme.<br />
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Yet there may be as big an issue with the governance of the new MATs as there has been with the way many of the less successful chains have been run.<br />
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In local authority schools, parents, teachers and the occasional community governor often made up the governing body, which often exceeded 15 members – there are around 300,000 school governors in England. While they had significant responsibilities, including over the budget and hiring of the head, it was a less daunting task than the role of a MAT director, whose responsibilities are closer to those of a business non-executive director or charity trustee. Increasingly, governors are expected to be recruited on talent rather than on their links to the schools.<br />
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The ‘Trojan Horse’ schools scandal in Birmingham – where governors were accused of putting their personal and religious ideology ahead of the pupils – was one of a number of issues that prompted Sir Michael Wilshaw, the schools chief inspector, to launch a review last November of the quality of school governance. He wants mandatory training for governors and MAT trustees, with payments for chairs and vice-chairs to attract more good people to the roles.<br />
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“In short, the role is so important that amateurish governance will no longer do,” he said. “Governing bodies made up of people who are not properly trained and who do not understand the importance of their role are not fit for purpose in the modern and complex educational landscape.” While the DfE has ignored the payment proposal, it says it is spending £2.4m on the recruitment and training of governors.<br />
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<b>Fit for governance?</b><br />
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Whether there are enough volunteers of the right calibre to provide the required strategic governance is the key question, as the government continues its rapid academy expansion. A National Governors’ Association/TES survey last year showed that half of governors do not have a day job, and a further 20% get no time off for governance. So there is an important role here for employers in encouraging staff to become governors, something the CBI says it supports.<br />
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With the much more business-like approach of the new boards, such expertise will be vital. Equally, it will be important that board members as well as governors reflect the wider community. A 2014 analysis by the University of Bath for the National Governors’ Association showed that 96% of governors are white and many are retired.<br />
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The reality is that a fundamental shift in the structural operation of schools has not been accompanied by anything like the rigour needed to improve governance both locally and in national academy chains.<br />
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As multi-academy board members, trustees and directors are expected to be largely strategically focused on finance, trust-wide policies, leadership recruitment and pay, trust development and expansion, whereas school governors should focus much more on the academic attainment of their students, probing behind ostensibly good headline results.<br />
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MAT boards also need to be smaller, with specialist committees on audit, finance and pay that are MAT-wide. Sir Michael says governors and trustees should avoid “marginal issues” of day-to-day management that ought to be dealt with by school leaders. Multi-academy trusts may have budgets of £20m or more – school budgets total £46bn nationally – so audit responsibilities are particularly important.<br />
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As the government shifts from chains to MATs as its preferred schools delivery model, there is a big demand for senior people in the public and private sectors to take on all these roles. It remains an open question though as to whether this scale of ambition can attract the right calibre of trustees and governors – with the experience and vision needed to oversee the effective use of so much public money.</div>
Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-60432701399031507682016-01-21T08:37:00.000+00:002016-04-25T13:01:58.233+01:00Losing focus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>In my <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/losing-focus/">latest Sutton Trust blog post</a>, I worry that plans for an over-complex accountability system could
backfire.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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All credit to Centreforum and
Datalab for their detailed <a href="http://centreforum.org/publications/ambitions-for-english-education/">report</a>
this week showing the likely impact of the myriad changes to the exam
accountability system planned over the next few years. They made a commendable
effort to develop a new set of indicators that they argue allow us to judge
schools in years to come against the standards achieved by other developed
nations.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
But in performing this service,
their report also highlights something else<span style="color: #333333;"> which we should take on board on the day the government publishes the </span><a data-mce-href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/secondary-school-performance-tables-in-england-2014-to-2015" href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/secondary-school-performance-tables-in-england-2014-to-2015" style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">latest league tables</span></a>. It shows how the system is in
danger of losing long-term comparability, bamboozling parents with a level of
complexity that is meaningful only to dedicated statisticians and mislabelling
a host of improving schools as failures. Taken together – and a lot of the
changes are phased - there is a real danger that they will damage rather than
improve standards, not least for the poorest students.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The starting point for all these
changes was built on an assumption – utterly false, it has to be said – that
previous governments had tried to undermine exam standards to flatter school
performance on their watch. True, there is much to be said for raising the bar
in exams, just as has been done with floor standards, but the question will be
whether the price is worth it. So, the new system will effectively lift the
minimum threshold expected for GCSE students from a grade C to a level 5 on a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/setting-standards-for-new-gcses-in-2017">new
nine-point scale</a>, making the minimum somewhere between a B and a C. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
At the same time, there is a move
to assess progress in the best eight subjects as a key standard, as well as
giving extra credit for attainment in English and Maths. It is not clear how
this related to an extraordinarily ambitious <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/implementing-the-english-baccalaureate">expectation</a>
that 90% of pupils – it was 100% in the Conservative manifesto, but was reduced
after representations - will be expected to study the academic subjects which
ministers call the English Baccalaurate., though it is not clear how many will
get the EBacc – only 39% currently enter all the subjects and just 24% achieve
five grade Cs in them. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The argument is that by raising
the standard, our results will be closer to those in other OECD countries. In
its report, Centreforum argues that 50 points would become the new equivalent
of five good GCSEs, as a minimum expectation for schools.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
All well and good. But in the
process, we will no longer be able to compile time series showing how schools
are performing over time. We will have no idea from the data whether standards
are really better – Ofqual has established more credibility than the old
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, but both are just quangos. Crucially,
too, while schools may have an expectation that more students gain the higher
grade 5 as the norm, there is no real incentive to do so. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The D-C borderline was widely
criticised, but it recognised that for employers and sixth form studies, there
was a world of difference between the two grades. Can the same really be said
about a 3, 4 or 5 in the new system? Equally, while there are more points for a
top grade, is there sufficient incentive to stretch at the top? I understand
that there will be a little extra gain moving from a B to an A though the
differentiation between 7, 8 and 9 will be finer than the current A and A* but
will this be enough to outweigh the incentives lower down the scale? Why not
report the proportion of pupils gaining grade 7+ as well as the overall scores
if we want to encourage stretch?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
But there are two other causes
for concern in this upheaval. The first is that parents and employers – who
have a fair idea what an A, B or C means – are likely to be left utterly
baffled by the new grading system. Instead of enhancing accountability for
them, it is likely to reduce it. And the second is that it is likely to leave
many schools that have greatly improved their threshold scores thanks to floor
targets started by Labour and maintained by the current government floundering
once again, giving an appearance of failure from which – lacking the resilience
of the much touted King Solomon Academy – they may find it hard to recover.
Disadvantaged students for whom five good GCSEs was a real and worthwhile
achievement may find their efforts deemed worthless again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Of course, over time, it may be
that the new system becomes the rigorous accountability mechanism that is the
hope of its creators. The worry is that in the journey towards that point, too
many passengers find themselves abandoned en route.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
And none of this addresses the
issues in primary school. In an act of incomprehensible madness, the system of
levels by which primary schools have been judged for 20 years – and which are
well understood in schools - is to be abandoned in favour of ‘scaled scores’ –
supposedly ensuring consistency of standards from one year to the next – while
schools can do what they like. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.headteacher-update.com/best-practice-article/life-after-levels-faqs/82471/">Most
seem to want to keep levels</a>, and the Centreforum report works on the reasonable
assumption that level 4b (slightly higher than the current ‘expected’ grade)
will be the benchmark. The level of ambition in primary schools is welcome, and
4b a better guide to GCSE success than anyone getting a level 4. But
comparability is being lost, schools won’t have a common currency and needless
chaos is being introduced where some modest adjustment would have been enough.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Sir Michael Wilshaw was
absolutely right when he said at the Centreforum launch on Monday: “There will
be many who think your ambitions for the future of English education are too
bold and too unrealistic. I am not one of them. We simply have to aim high.
Unless we can compete with the best jurisdictions in the world, all our hopes
for a fair, cohesive and prosperous society will come to very little.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
However, all this tinkering with
the way we measure success is in danger of overwhelming a system that should be
focused on improving attainment and reducing gaps for disadvantaged pupils. The
commendable focus of the last five years will be lost in a blizzard of
incomprehension and new statistics. The irony is that all this change may leave
us none the wiser, and set back the cause of education reform for a generation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-41949677032624337292015-11-12T13:10:00.003+00:002015-11-12T13:11:25.945+00:00Getting the student architecture right<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've looked at the possible impact of merging the Office for Fair Access into a new catch-all higher education regulator on my latest <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/student-architecture/">Sutton Trust blog</a>.</span></i></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Green and white papers are published for a variety of reasons, aside from the need to ‘consult’ prior to legislation. A new minister wants to make his or her mark. The government needs to save money. A department wants to show it is doing something, usually a new organisation with a new acronym. Whatever the reason, they are rarely all they seem, and the outcomes don’t always match their ambitious good intentions.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So how does the latest universities green paper, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/higher-education-teaching-excellence-social-mobility-and-student-choice" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Higher education: teaching excellence, social mobility and student choice</a>, match up? Among its new ideas is a Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), a way of holding universities to account on an aspect of their delivery that is decidedly patchy, and a new Office for Students (OfS) which will be a ‘single, light touch regulatory system’ that will ‘empower students, drive quality, eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and save taxpayer money’.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The detail may still be dependent on MPs’ approval, though the acronyms are already in place. But can the Office for Students (OfS) really do all of these things successfully, and what will it do as a single entity for social mobility that maintaining the successful<a href="https://www.offa.org.uk/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Office for Fair Access</a>, and expanding its remit a little, would not achieve? The new Office will not only see OFFA absorbed under its wing, it will also run the new teaching framework, absorb<a href="http://www.hefce.ac.uk/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">HEFCE’s</a> regulatory role and provide quality assurance.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Sensibly, it will not take over the creaky behemoth that is the<a href="http://www.slc.co.uk/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Student Loans Company</a>, and the department itself wants to change how the remaining teaching grant is allocated to universities. There must, however, be concern at the suggestion that raising the fee cap would no longer require a parliamentary vote, and could be done by power of the Secretary of State.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The new body will operate in the students’ interest, we are told, but it will be funded by universities. There is much that is good about the overall functions of the new entity – it will have specific duties to promote students’ interests, excellent teaching and fair access. It will also be the body charged with deciding which new providers can offer higher education and providing better information on choices.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Having had my time in Whitehall, I can see how logical all this may seem. Government loves having everything ‘joined up’. It promotes efficiency and collaborative working, the civil servants hum. It (ostensibly) saves money, the chancellor purrs. And it gives me something to be seen doing in parliament, the minister cheers.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But I’m not convinced it will meet another important objective of the green paper: improving social mobility. One of the less well publicised government targets (they’re back in favour again, apparently) is to double the percentage of disadvantaged students going into higher education from 13.6% in 2009 to 27.2% by 2020, and to improve access for minority ethnic students. The figure was 18.2% in 2014. Achieving this will require real focus, not least with potential cuts in the spending review of widening participation funds, and a drive that ensures the target isn’t met simply by plucking the lowest hanging fruit – there is still an <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/independent-commission-on-fees-2015/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">eight fold access gap</a> in our most elite universities, after all.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The record of ‘logical’ mergers in recent years is hardly encouraging. The <a href="https://www.education.gov.uk/consultations/downloadableDocs/EveryChildMatters.pdf" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Every Child Matters</a> agenda under the Labour government was a worthy and logical attempt to join up education and children’s services. The result was a lost focus on education standards in many local authorities where a social services agenda dominated, or vice versa. The resultant loss of dedicated child protection teams as part of that agenda arguably contributed to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Baby_P" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Baby P case</a> in Haringey. The ‘logical’ merger of the National College of School Leadership with the Teaching and Development Agency has been accompanied by a teacher recruitment crisis and the near-destruction of a programme<a href="http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/44374889.pdf" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">credited by the OECD</a> as ‘changing the landscape of school leadership.’ Both were affected by a loss of focus.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Office for Fair Access has had a good record since its inception in 2004. Its access agreements have kept universities accountable in a very specific area that is vital to social mobility. The duty to report on access to parliament, combined with the power to prevent universities charging higher fees, have supported <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/independent-commission-on-fees-2015/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">improvements in access</a> from disadvantaged students despite the trebling of those tuition fees.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The green paper would not take away any of these powers, and it would maintain the access regulator’s post. Indeed there is an expectation that the regulator should look also at the destinations of access students, a welcome extension of the existing remit. Improved information for students would be a great boon too. But the new Office would absorb OFFA into an entity with lots of other complex responsibilities. The result could be a gradual erosion of independence and loss of impact in a body that is likely to spend much time on the complexities of competition. That would not be good for social mobility.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 1.25rem; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There is much to welcome in the new green paper, not least the stronger role for students and the overdue focus on teaching. But the danger is that in its desire to create a clean new ‘architecture’ the Office for Students ends up creating something closer to the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Fenchurch_Street" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">Walkie-Talkie</a> than <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shard" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;">The Shard</a>. We need to be convinced otherwise.</span></div>
</div>
Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-45593200680812418562015-07-24T12:39:00.000+01:002015-11-12T13:19:30.540+00:00The academies' capacity challenge<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I've blogged at the <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/the-academy-effect/">Sutton Trust</a> this morning on the academies' capacity challenge.</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The Government shows no sign of slowing its academies
programme. One of Nicky Morgan’s first acts after the election was to launch an
assault on ‘</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hundreds-of-coasting-schools-to-be-transformed" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #082164; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">coasting schools</span></i></a><span style="background: white;">’ with the expectation that many of them would become
academies. Yet it is not at all clear that there is enough capacity in the
system to transform all of those schools that are deemed failing or coasting
into success stories.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="background: white;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">That’s why the second annual </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"><a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/chain-effects-2015/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #082164; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Chain Effects</span></a></span></em><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> report
is so important today. In publishing it, we have focused once again on
attainment and improvement for disadvantaged pupils. If academies are to
succeed, they must be able to do at least as well as schools generally in
enabling their poorest students to get good GCSE results.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">On the
positive side, the report shows that this is happening in around a third of the
chains examined. Some, including </span><a href="http://www.arkschools.org/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="color: #082164; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Ark</span></i></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, </span><a href="https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/education-learning/schools/Pages/City-of-London-schools.aspx" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="color: #082164; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">City of London</span></i></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="http://www.harrisfederation.org.uk/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="color: #082164; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Harris</span></i></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> – three
chains that have been part of the academies programme almost since the start –
are dramatically transforming the prospects of their disadvantaged pupils, with
results well above the national average. Others that are clearly making a
difference include the </span><a href="http://www.outwood.com/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="color: #082164; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Outwood Grange academies</span></i></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> in
Yorkshire and the </span><a href="http://www.mercers.co.uk/state-schools-academies-colleges" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="color: #082164; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Mercers’</span></i></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> academies
based on the Thomas Telford model.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br />
Other chains are showing substantial improvements, including the Bristol-based <a href="http://cabotlearningfederation.net/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="color: #082164; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Cabot Learning Federation</span></i></a>,
the <a href="http://www.dret.co.uk/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="color: #082164; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">David Ross education trust</span></i></a> and
the <a href="http://co-operative.academy/" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="color: #082164; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Co-operative academies trust</span></i></a>.
But many others are middling or worse, and their performance raises important
questions about how the programme is run and how it might move in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br />
I speak as someone who was there at the birth of academies. Indeed, the
original term City Academy – the urban allusion was soon dropped – was one that
I believe I coined in an early discussion with Andrew Adonis, whose idea it was
to co-opt Kenneth Baker’s City Technology Colleges to the New Labour project
and whose tenacity and attention to detail ensured success for most of the
first sponsored academies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br />
By 2010, there was a target of 400 academies with nearly 300 ready to open.
Even that was a tall order. One reason for the success of the earliest
academies was that the troubleshooting capacity of the education department and
Andrew’s detailed project management, from No.10 initially and later as a
minister, ensured that the crises that have affected so many chains recently
were addressed quickly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br />
But it was far easier to do so – and to ensure the smooth opening of new
academies – when the numbers created each year were in the tens rather than the
hundreds (not to mention all the free schools, UTCs and studio schools now
being created too). The focus was on getting it right much more so than getting
the numbers up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br />
After 2010, attention was initially directed at converting successful schools
to academies. I supported giving them the right to do so at the time, and still
do, but combined with the drive for free schools it created a capacity issue in
the department that has never been adequately addressed since. And that’s the
real challenge presented by our report today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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As it stands, nearly half of all the sponsored academies we looked at would be
defined as ‘coasting’ for 2014 under the current definition (which doesn’t as
yet allow for the performance of disadvantaged pupils). But of more
concern must be the thousands of primary schools that will require action once
the changes come into effect. If they are to become academies with support from
chains or other schools, where is the capacity to achieve this?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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That’s why the report urges the Government to expand its pool of school
improvement providers beyond academy sponsors, while introducing greater rigour
and transparency for all sponsors. Russell Hobby, the general secretary of the
National Association of Head Teachers, argues that the government should put as
much effort into building new collaborative trusts and federations first, and
perhaps then encourage the academy status, and that seems sensible in a system
where fewer than one in six primaries is an academy. Indeed, the right
collaboration seems as important as freedoms in the success of sponsored
academies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Our report also argues that new chains should not be allowed to expand until
they have a track record of success in bringing about improvement in their
existing academies. That too is important. ARK and Harris have around 30
academies each, but have expanded relatively slowly compared with other bigger
chains. Such measured expansion has helped ensure their success. But it also
highlights the difficulty the DFE faces in growing the numbers of good chains.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Our reports are not the only ones to suggest that the overall ‘academy effect’
is not large: that was a finding of a <a href="http://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/LGGA03/LGGA03_home.cfm" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.298039); box-sizing: border-box; color: #082164; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit; text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="color: #082164; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">recent NFER report</span></i></a> too.
With so many schools now academies that should not be so surprising – the move
from exceptionalism to universality had similar effects in specialist schools.
But in the stories of those chains and academies that have transformed their
less advantaged students’ prospects there are lessons in what can be achieved –
with the right mix of leadership, good teaching, proper planning and a clear
vision.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-87603355212609210952015-05-12T13:33:00.001+01:002015-05-12T13:33:47.828+01:00A comprehensive Commons and Cabinet?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>I've blogged at the <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/a-comprehensive-commons/">Sutton Trust </a>on the educational backgrounds of the new MPs and Cabinet.</i></div>
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The election result on May 7 may have surprised pundits
expecting a hung parliament. But it was equally interesting in what it says
about Britain today, and who now gets to become an MP. Across the political
spectrum, the diversity that really started in the late 90s has now become
embedded in both main parties, and not just in an improved gender and ethnic
balance, but also in a more socially representative group of MPs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Over several elections, the Sutton Trust has been tracking
the educational backgrounds of MPs and cabinet ministers, and there are some
interesting trends visible in our <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/parliamentary-privilege-the-mps-2015/"><i>Parliamentary Privilege</i></a> research
brief this week. For a start, newly-elected MPs are much more likely to have
been to comprehensive schools in 2015 than those who were re-elected from the
2010 intake. And our analysis of the new Cabinet –widely quoted in the press
this week – showed a doubling in the proportion of ministers attending Cabinet
who had been to non-selective state schools.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/table-blog-3.png"><img alt="table blog 3" class="size-full wp-image-3956 aligncenter" height="213" src="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/table-blog-3.png" width="501" /></a></div>
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Of course, this doesn’t mean that a private education is not
still an advantage for Parliament or the Cabinet, just as it is at the top of
professions from the law to the City. Half of David Cameron’s Cabinet <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/half-of-new-cabinet-was-privately-educated/">was
privately educated</a>, seven times the proportion of the population who attend
independent schools, and 32% of MPs were too, over four times the national
average.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Moreover, while Conservative MPs are a bit less likely to
have been privately educated – at 48% probably the first time their proportion
has dipped below half – a number of Labour’s new intake had an independent
education, pushing their proportion up slightly to 17%.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When people talk about parliamentary privilege in education,
they often couple an Oxbridge education with having been to public school.
However, the two groups are not synonymous and we would expect MPs to be better
educated than the population at large. Still, it is still interesting that more
than a quarter of MPs went to Oxford or Cambridge and a further 28% attended
another Russell Group university. Half the Cabinet also has an Oxbridge
education. Interestingly, among the new SNP group of 56 MPs – at least the 40
whose educational backgrounds were publicly available – few had a private
education and Glasgow was perhaps unsurprisingly their main political training
ground.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So what are we to make of all this? Of course, we should
welcome evidence of improved mobility for state educated parliamentarians, and
the Cabinet and Commons should be the richer for this wider experience, just as
it has been improved by having a growing number of women MPs and those from BME
communities. But just as the <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4437668.ece#tab-5">29%
of female MPs and 6% of BME MPs</a> in the new Commons are not yet
representative of the community as a whole, neither should we rest on our
laurels when even in this new intake the newly elected MPs are four times more
likely to be privately educated than average.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Some will say that this is all about class envy publicising
this information, and some candidates refuse to make public their educational
backgrounds perhaps for that reason. That isn’t what it is about at all. Rather
it is to recognise that access to our best schools – and that includes our best
comprehensives and grammar schools – is too often related to ability to pay,
including the means to buy a house in a popular catchment area. So we need this
more representative group of MPs to address these issues, supporting fairer
admissions to comprehensives and needs blind access to independent day schools.
The issue is one of fair access.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Equally, we should be less concerned that Oxbridge and the
Russell Group has such a grip on political life than we should be that access
to those leading universities is still so heavily skewed towards the richest
communities. A child from the top fifth of neighbourhoods is still more than <a href="https://www.ucas.com/corporate/data-and-analysis/analysis-reports#jan_deadline_analysis">six
times</a> more likely to go to a leading university than one from the bottom
fifth, and when it comes to the top 13 (including Oxbridge) that gap widens to <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/independent-commission-on-fees-report/">nine-fold</a>.
There are too many bright youngsters from less advantaged areas who are not
getting as far as applying to these universities, let alone being admitted to
them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So that’s the challenge for our ‘comprehensive’ Commons and
Cabinet – will they do more to promote fair access to our best schools and
universities, so they can be trailblazers for many more young people from
modest backgrounds to reach the centres of political power in Britain today?</div>
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With the right policies, they can open doors for others to
follow.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8888848804347928571.post-49774211234937371352015-04-17T12:12:00.000+01:002015-04-17T12:12:38.503+01:00Mapping mobility<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>I've written this new blog post for the <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/mapping-mobility/">Sutton Trust website</a> to coincide with a new index of social mobility across England's 533 constituencies.</i></div>
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The outcome of the general election on May 7<sup>th</sup> may be up for grabs. But one thing is certain – it will usher in a whole new cadre of MPs. We looked in February at <a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/parliamentary-privilege/" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/parliamentary-privilege/">the backgrounds</a> of some of these candidates, and will look at the House of Commons in the future. But, what of the constituencies they represent? How well do advance social mobility?</div>
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That’s the background to today’s new <a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/mobility-map-background/" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/mobility-map-background/" target="_blank">social mobility index</a>. The index looks at all 533 English constituencies – data is much better in England than in the other UK nations - and highlights the big differences that exist across the country in the chances of young people getting ahead in life. With an interactive map, you can see how each constituency ranks on key measures.</div>
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It also points the way to some of the policies that those candidates who get elected in May should embrace if we are to enhance those limited life chances.</div>
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For example, the proportion of poorer children whose development is seen as good varies from 72% in Lewisham to 19% in Kenilworth and Southam. This is a big issue: our <a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/poorer-toddlers-need-well-educated-nursery-teachers/" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/poorer-toddlers-need-well-educated-nursery-teachers/">earlier research</a> has shown a 19 month gap nationally in school readiness between the richest and poorest five year olds. Last year’s <a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/sound-foundations/" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/sound-foundations/"><em>Sound Foundations</em></a> report highlighted the importance of having well qualified staff to provide the sort of vocabulary and stimulus too often missing in deprived homes. More recently, we showed <a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/subject-to-background/" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/subject-to-background/">a link</a> between good nursery education and taking the right A-levels.</div>
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Of course, these inequalities persist through primary school and unusually by international standards they continue through secondary school. And our index confirms that the London effect is making a difference, with 30 of the top 50 constituencies for mobility being in the capital. We’ve seen lots of explanations for why London schools, once falling behind, are now ahead of the national average, including the way schools worked together in the <a data-mce-href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluation-of-the-city-challenge-programme" href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluation-of-the-city-challenge-programme">London Challenge</a> programme, stronger <a data-mce-href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/321969/London_Schools_-_FINAL.pdf" href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/321969/London_Schools_-_FINAL.pdf">improvements</a> in literacy and numeracy at primary schools and the <a data-mce-href="https://cmpo.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/london-schools-the-central-role-of-ethnicity/" href="https://cmpo.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/london-schools-the-central-role-of-ethnicity/">wider ethnic mix</a> that has brought greater aspiration into the capital’s classrooms.</div>
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But underlying all this we need to improve the quality of teaching in schools. Sutton Trust <a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2teachers-impact-report-final.pdf" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/2teachers-impact-report-final.pdf">research</a> has shown that poorer pupils gain 18 months’ worth of learning with very effective teachers over a school year, compared with six months with poorly performing teachers. In other words, a great teacher can produce a whole year’s extra learning. Professional development is not a sexy subject for politicians, but getting it right with a strong entitlement for all England’s 450,000 teachers could make a massive difference to school standards.</div>
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Attending good universities is important for the top jobs, and changing mobility at the top of our professions, politics and the City. Our index finds big differences between areas when it comes to sending young people from the poorest neighbourhoods to the third of most selective universities, including the Russell Group and Oxbridge.</div>
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Students nationally are nearly <a data-mce-href="https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/2014-undergraduate-end-of-cycle-report.pdf" href="https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/2014-undergraduate-end-of-cycle-report.pdf">seven times</a> more likely to go to a top-tier university if they live in the richest fifth of neighbourhoods compared to the poorest fifth, and the gap is even wider for Oxford, Cambridge and other elite institutions. The index shows big variations between constituencies on this measure.</div>
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But getting to a good university is not enough. Research has shown that state school pupils can outperform their private school counterparts if they get admitted, though those from disadvantaged areas may need extra support to succeed while there. But they then need a level playing field in internships and work experience, if they are to get on. In our index, we looked at the success of less advantaged graduates in getting professional jobs, finding Harrogate and Knaresborough had the best record and Stoke-on-Trent North the poorest.</div>
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However, the important test of success today is getting a good job after school or university. For some young people that should mean apprenticeships, and our <a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/higher-apprenticeships-better-jobs-university-degrees-say-public-new-polling-sutton-trustpearson-summit/" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/higher-apprenticeships-better-jobs-university-degrees-say-public-new-polling-sutton-trustpearson-summit/">polling</a> shows that parents and teachers share our view that there should be more available at A-level and degree standard. For others it will be doing the right degree at the right university.</div>
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Those choices should be known by every student, yet our <a data-mce-href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/advancing-ambitions/" href="http://www.suttontrust.com/researcharchive/advancing-ambitions/">research</a> has shown that while good careers advice has a positive impact on results and choices, far too much of it is below par. We need a big improvement in the specialist advice on subjects like elite university admissions and the availability of apprenticeships for schools to guide their pupils in the right direction.</div>
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Social mobility has stalled in Britain, though we have seen progress in recent years – including improvements in primary test scores and access to higher education. But whatever combination of parties is in power after May still has a major job if they want to ensure young people can succeed regardless of their background.</div>
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Conor Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13457628816008082005noreply@blogger.com0