Welcome to Impetus Insights... a place where we discuss ideas, articles and interesting reading about education and employment policy - and what we think it means for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. We'll be sharing this every month alongside news and updates about our own policy work. We’d love to hear what you think of this edition, and what you’d like to see in future newsletters.

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March 2023 – we highlight the dental gaps gap in Impetus Insights, pointing out that tooth extraction among children is three times more common in the poorest areas as the richest. October 2023 – Labour announces plans for supervised toothbrushing in schools. February 2024 – Government dental plans include a new scheme for oral hygiene in early years settings. Look, I’m not claiming credit for any of this; I’m just pointing out that regular readers are ahead of the curve on what matters.

Next month sees the Budget, where we all get to find out more about whether the economy is likely to grow in the coming years and what this means or doesn’t mean for expenditure on public services. It’s always dangerous to make predictions, especially about the future, but I feel on safe ground in saying it will be full of naff political in-jokes that I have to attempt to explain to bemused colleagues.

Just on the off chance that the dental announcements were inspired by influential readers looking for good ideas – it’s not too late to back tutoring in the Budget.

Enjoy reading,

Ben

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In this issue

• Our thoughts on the last month’s news and announcements including so called soft skills, attendance, and poverty
• Some things we enjoyed reading on free lunches, alternative provision, and the diversity of the teaching workforce
• Some things to look forward to over the next month including the Budget, a report on exclusions we’ve funded, and an interesting sounding event on mission driven government
• If you get to the end, I’ll explain what I mean by the phrase “I want to change the institutional body language of JCPs”

News and views

Our focus here, as at Impetus, is on the outcomes that we know work to improve the life chances of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds – educational attainment, access to higher education and sustainable employment.

• We’ve recently promoted Ayesha to Senior Policy Advisor because she is fab. You can connect on LinkedIn, but first, read her New Stateman piece on skills. There’s always a lot of focus (and funding) for technical skills, but young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are often missing a wider set of Essential Skills they need to succeed at work. Trying to shift the focus and funding towards a more holistic view of skills is something we’re going to work on more in the coming years. For example, the British Chamber of Commerce 10 point skills plan does include Essential skills, as less than one of the ten points. They are much more important than this!
• The case for tutoring in the Budget was succinctly put by Robin Walker (Conservative chair of the Education Select Committee), Lord Blunkett (Labour’s former Education Secretary) and Munira Wilson (Lib Dem Education spokesperson) in a joint op-ed in the i. When we co-founded the National Tutoring Programme in 2020, it was a time of great uncertainty, but the greater stability now is an opportunity to think through more fully the role of tutoring in the wider system. I’ve been really intrigued by Action Tutoring’s work thinking about tutors as potential future teachers. Tutoring could make a really nice “internship” in education, if we wanted it to.
• Fascinating Hechinger Report piece about attempts to approve attendance in the States. It worked a bit – but only on the minority of absentees from better off backgrounds. The obvious point here is that you need to make sure your policy proposals work for disadvantaged groups. But the article also has some good colour on the importance of understanding why an approach does or doesn’t work with particular groups. “Low-income families… often have larger problems that require assistance schools cannot provide. Many families in poverty need housing, food, employment, healthcare, transportation or even help with laundry.” It is unsurprising that calling parents doesn’t’ improve attendance among families facing these issues.
• I’m not that young, and even I was still at school (well, sixth form) the last time interest rates were this high. So I am always caught out by the implications of high interest rates on education policies. This IFS report is a case in point. Interest rates higher than inflation (ie, real interest rates, the historical norm) fundamentally change the financial implications of the student loan system and make it billions of pounds more expensive. Just about the only thing the current system has left going for it is its progressive nature, but since next to nobody is out there defending that, major reform seems inevitable at some point. A big one to watch over the next five years. (Although as always a reminder that in the here and now maintenance support is a bigger deal, and support is only increasing by forecast inflation)
• The most useful annual study is from JRF and the 2024 edition has been released. They have poverty rates mostly stable over the last 15 years or so at 22%, including 29% of children (4.2m). This varies massively by factors like ethnicity, with the majority of Pakistani (61%) and Bangladeshi (62%) children growing up in poverty. If you take the view that the link between poverty and worse outcomes is causal, these figures imply we are likely to continue to see worse outcomes for these ethnic groups in particular.

Top reads

Here’s our roundup of some of the most useful and thought-provoking reads across a range of interesting areas...

• A double dose of EPI this month. Apparently “larger MATs typically achieve higher attainment and progress for disadvantaged pupils, but also have higher rates of absence and suspension when compared with other school groups”. A key question we need to explore is how to get the former without the latter. Explore their MAT performance tool here. Separately, “participation in sports and other hobbies at secondary school is associated with better outcomes… but vulnerable students are less likely to be benefitting.” Not causal evidence, but worth knowing – more here.
• As I write, I am unsurprised to read that parents want free lunches – who wouldn’t? Somewhat more usefully, EPI have done a wider review on whether free school meals works as a proxy measure of disadvantage, and a history of the policy. I recently spoke on a panel organised by the Nuffield Foundation and the University of Essex on this, following the release of some new academic research on the impact of free school meals in primary schools. My big reflection was that the strongest case seems to be on obesity grounds, so the Department for Health should fund it – there are better uses of a billion pounds of education money.
• A blog entitled “how ONS is improving the Labour Force Survey” is probably only ever going to attract a niche readership, but readers of this newsletter are often in the niche. If you’re a consumer of employment statistics, or a survey nerd, it’s worth a look. We should have all new official transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) data from September. Something to look forward to. In the meantime, IES continue to provide a monthly labour market briefing based on the available data. Headline findings are slightly worse figures due to better population data, and like-for-like figures showing a relatively slow and soft negative trend, long-term sickness and economic inactivity emerging as issues. I spoke to LBC news about it all.
• Three things on Alternative Provision from the last month or so, before we release a report on this next month. The Centre for Social Justice has a good stocktake and recommendations from accountability to support for schools. The ever-thoughtful Tom Bennett is back blogging, and had some useful critique on defining and measuring inclusion. Meanwhile Ofsted and the CQC have done some visits and a thematic review, with a sensible call for more “rigour of pre-placement decision-making and of monitoring and evaluation arrangements”, among other things.
• Our friends at Mission44 have commissioned NFER to do some research into recruitment and retention of teachers from ethnic minority backgrounds. They are overrepresented at initial teaching training applications but have lower acceptance rates to their white counterparts. In addition to all the usual challenges of teaching, ethnic minority teachers also report overt and covert racial discrimination from staff, pupils and parents as reasons for leaving the profession. I think of this as a reminder that where systemic issues drive a problem (like systemic racism and teacher diversity), it’s likely systemic answers are required, rather than simpler reforms.

Look ahead

• Later in February will see the launch of an EPI report on the link between school exclusions and attainment outcomes, which we have funded. More next month, or sooner if you reply to this email!
• Tuesday 5 March sees an interesting webinar on “mission driven government: what does it really mean?” from Nesta and the Institute for Government. Sign up here
• Wednesday 6 March is Budget Day. Chancellors are allowed an alcoholic drink while they deliver it. The Impetus team has to make do with cheese and pate (it’s a weird tradition)

And finally...

I have mentioned before my love of the blog Statecraft, but this recent piece feels like a can’t miss for those of you working in employment. It’s full of useful thoughts on how to reimagine jobcentres. I particularly loved the concept of institutional body language (in a UK context, this is the fancy term for thinking “having security guards on the door probably isn’t very welcoming, is it?”) which really encapsulates what we were trying to get at in our report on Youth Hubs two years ago: we need to change the institutional body language of JCPs.