Brexit's mobility challenge

I blogged at the Sutton Trust on the implications of Brexit for education and social mobility.

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.

As YouGov’s final polling 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.

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.

We need to start young. The gaps in school readiness 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.

As I have argued before, there is a danger 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.

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 our research 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.

Politics needs to become more representative – something the social mobility APPG will be discussing later this month – but so does the leadership of all those institutions that affect our lives.

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.

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.

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 moves 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.

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 only 40% 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.

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 impact in the research excellence framework, and that the teaching excellent framework will force them to think more about how they impart knowledge to those paying them £9000 a year in fees.

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 show recently 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 our data has shown that on average higher apprenticeships may be an option as good – or even better – financially.

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.

Scotland's access challenge

I blogged for the Sutton Trust on access in Scotland, linked to a new Trust report that attracted a lot of Scottish interest last week.

Nicola Sturgeon has placed education at the top of the government’s agenda. By making her deputy John Swinney responsible 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.

But the scale of the challenge should not be underestimated. Today’s Sutton Trust report Access in Scotland 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.

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.

This is not to decry the efforts of colleges. As I learnt in my time as a member of the Scottish Commission on Widening Access, 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.

Sturgeon has commendably accepted many of the recommendations of the Commission, including the idea of an independent Commissioner for Fair Access – a cross between Les Ebdon and Alan Milburn, 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.

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 £50,000 debt 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.

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 radical access work at St Andrews which I heard about when visiting the university.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That’s the challenge behind today’s report. And it is one that matters for Scotland’s future success.

Access and the Avalanche

In my latest Sutton Trust blog, I look a new report suggesting that the days of many traditional universities are numbered in the face of online and mass delivery challenges.

In 1926, John Clarke Stobart, the classical scholar and Children’s Hour creator who was also the first BBC Director of Education, had the idea that there might be a ‘wireless university’, bringing learning to the masses in a way that traditional universities, then the preserve of a small elite, could not achieve. What followed was rather less ambitious: a series of 25 minute talks supplemented by study aid pamphlets.

It would be another four decades before Jennie Lee started to develop her ideas for what would become the Open University in 1969. Those of us old enough to remember the late night OU broadcasts will forever have the image of the typical OU lecture from the 1970s imprinted on our minds.

Nevertheless, despite an initial lack of technical sophistication, the Open University helped over 1.6 million people to gain a higher education. More recently, it has embraced the Internet with the enthusiasm due to a medium well suited to its ambitious approach to access, and it now boasts some 250,000 students worldwide with 1200 academic staff and 7000 tutors. Its model of delivery has been picked up across the world, not least in fast-growing large nations like India and China.

Reading the fascinating new report from Michael Barber and his colleagues for the IPPR this week, one couldn’t help but think of the profound changes that the Open University made in providing access to higher education for many people, initially on TV and latterly via the Internet.

At the same time, the model did not prove as disruptive as it might have to traditional universities which now educate nearly half the young adult population in ways not so different from the approach taken when J C Stobart was expounding his Reithian mission. Nor, despite its often impressive academic credentials, has it managed to challenge the grip of the elite universities in the UK.

Barber and his colleagues argue persuasively that an ‘avalanche’ is coming in higher education which will completely transform the delivery and – in many respects – the nature of higher education. They say all universities face key challenges including the traditional degree structure, the need for specialisation, their links to employability and a devaluing of the worth of an ordinary primary degree.

Of course, we have had some false starts before. I remember all too well what happened to the ill-fated e-university initiative, a construct that was perhaps too premature. Yet, with the growth of Massive Open Online Courses – bearing the unattractive acronym of MOOCs – the world could potentially become a smaller place for students. A relatively small but growing number of UK students now prefer to study in the US – some with the support of Sutton Trust summer schools.

But some US universities including Harvard, MIT and Berkeley, using the EdX platform, are putting many courses and lectures online, opening them up to mass audiences. In developing countries, online may be the only way to achieve mass higher education, but how much will it affect tradition universities in developed nations?

Barber et al argue that it will require universities to adopt one of five models: the elite, the mass, the niche, the local or the lifelong learning. That may well be true. Equally, they point to the impact of rising fees on students as consumers, and their rising expectations as a result. Students may start to demand more contact time and fewer enforced holidays.

Already there are concerns that few students complete MOOC courses, with dropout rates as high as 90 per cent, though that could also reflect differing motivations for signing up. It may well be that students without a higher education tradition at home are the least likely to be able to sustain such course options. However, universities cannot afford to be complacent, and must acquire far more flexibility in their approach if they are to remain relevant in this brave new world, both in their traditional and online delivery.

Universities will have to make the case for an experience that is collaborative, and which opens students up to networks that still feel more real than the social media alternatives that are supposed to act as substitutes. As importantly, they will need to show that they are delivering it.

Of course, that may mean new ways of doing things. Warwick University, which ran some excellent summer schools for gifted and talented school students in the first decade of this century, has recently created a new online network – IGGY - that it wants to blend with face-to-face activities and use that as a way to encourage able students of all backgrounds to network.

Whatever the mode of delivery, access will surely be as important an issue to all the new types of university as it is to traditional institutions. MOOCs must not become the poor man or woman’s alternative to a place at Harvard or Cambridge, which seem unlikely to forfeit their prestige or their role in developing leaders in all fields. Unless we are careful, there is a real danger they will do so.

If elite institutions are here to stay, as Barber et al believe they are, new levels of global competition for talent will make it more important than ever to harness brainpower from the whole of society, not just a narrow elite. That social mobility challenge seems no more destined to disappear than the great universities of the world and their formidable brands.

How state pupils raise their game in elite universities

The most important piece of educational research this month, which is from the Sutton Trust, raises many important questions. The Trust, in a study originally meant to show the benefits of adopting a US-style SAT for entrance, has instead shown pretty conclusively that all other things being equal, a comprehensive school student will outperform a grammar or independent school undergraduate at an elite university. In other words, when universities award a place to a bright state pupil with just 3Bs when the same place would require AAB from an independent or grammar student, they are not 'dumbing down' but exercising both common sense and social inclusion. This is hugely important for several reasons.

First, it suggests that it can be reasonable to differentiate between the experiences of different students, where there is clearly a similar degree of aptitude. Second, it argues for the development of programmes that link academic achievement to elite university places in some schools and academies. There are still many state-educated AAA students who don't apply for or get Russell Group places. And third, we should hear no more nonsense about dumbing down from the Mail or Telegraph, when universities do make such allowances. Instead, these august organs might start to ask why independent school pupils underperform at university. Meanwhile, those who are paying the fees at independent schools might wish to drill down into the data to find which of the schools are really providing lasting benefits for their children.

Learning the right university access lessons

Anyone listening to Today this morning might have imagined that the chances of poorer youngsters going to university had not improved as a result of the efforts by the Labour government and universities to improve access. Yet, here is what the report from the Office for Fair Access says:

....the likelihood of those from the lowest participation areas participating in HE has increased by 30 per cent over the last five years alone and by 50 per cent over the last 15 years. Importantly, the gap between the participation rates of the most advantaged and the most disadvantaged areas has been narrowing, both in proportional terms and percentage point terms, since the mid 2000s. This is the first time that this has happened since the mid-1990s, and most likely ever. This significant narrowing of the gap has not occurred at the expense of fewer young people from advantaged areas entering higher education. Young people in advantaged areas are 5 per cent more likely to enter higher education than five years ago, and 15 per cent more likely compared to the mid-1990s.

That is clearly good news. But where there is obviously still a big issue is in access to elite universities, where the social gap has remained largely unchanged. That is far more complex. As OFFA director Prof Martin Harris says, it needs a combination of earlier intervention, clearer bursaries, summer schools and the right subject advice by schools. The most successful interventions are sustained outreach by research-intensive universities with schools in disadvantaged areas. And in some cases, this means guaranteed access for successfully completing an outreach programme and gaining certain grades, making access easier. The report also concludes that without these programmes

It would therefore be fair to conclude that without these efforts we would have seen a decline in the both the absolute and relative participation rates of such students in the most selective third of institutions.

It is important that we draw all the lessons from this report if we are to improve access to elite universities and improve access further to higher education in general.

Denham's impressive pitch on access

I've spent the last couple of days helping the Higher education Funding Council with their conference blog. Today's speech from the universities secretary John Denham was impressive not for the various stories that have excited the media, but rather for the careful argument he made for widening participation and access policies. He rightly positioned them as being as much about fulfilling the ambitions of the children of paraprofessionals as about those of the most disadvantaged; by doing so, and identifying with their aspirations - apparently 50% across all classes now aspire to university for their children - he is selling a difficult policy the way it should be sold. And by urging that access funds - such as Aim Higher - should focus much more on young people aged 14 and under, he is recognising that it is then that aspirations are fixed (and, perhaps, adding extra money to grants was not the best use that could be made of it). Despite affecting disagreement, his Tory shadow, David Willetts said largely the same thing this morning, and as the government is giving itself more time to reach its 50% participation rate, there should be more consensus on this policy across the parties.