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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By the time you read this, Labour party conference will be over. At the time of writing, it's the Monday morning after the IPPR/Labour Together drinks reception we supported. Fortunately, our comms team are very good at turning my incoherent typing into a readable email even when I'm not this fragile, so hopefully you won't notice the difference.

September is a time of transition in the education world. Looking backwards, this email marks two years of Impetus Insights, and next week marks seven years at Impetus for me, so I hope you will forgive me a self-indulgent moment of reflection as I say thank you to everyone who has been on this journey with me. Looking forwards, this month we announced our incoming CEO, Susannah Hardyman, who I've been really lucky to work with on tutoring issues for the last three years or so and I can't wait for her to start in the new year.

Enjoy reading,

Ben

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In this issue

• Our thoughts on the last month's news and announcements including the Who Is Losing Learning report launch, oracy, and talking tutoring at Lib Dem conference
• Some things we enjoyed reading on dyslexia, AI, and being a SpAD
• Some things to look forward to over the next month including NPC Ignites conference, and stats about drug use among young people
• If you get to the end, we're talking about shutting down charities

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.

• This month saw the release of the IPPR report "Who is losing learning?", the first major piece of work as part of the coalition including Impetus, The Difference, Mission 44, and IPPR. With public data showing around 32 million days of learning were lost last year due to suspensions and unauthorised absences, and a £1.6 billion cost to the state over a lifetime for just a single cohort of permanently excluded children, we're very pleased to be drawing attention to this issue. How to ensure all young people get the support they need is a thorny question that the coalition's new Solutions Council will be addressing over the next six months. Our call for evidence is the chance for you to get involved and your thoughts are very welcome!
• This followed hot on the heels of some research we commissioned from EPI, looking at long term outcomes for pupils who are suspended. It found that compared to pupils who were not suspended, those who are were twice as likely not to have a level three qualification by age 19 and 2.5 times as likely to be out of work at age 24. Interestingly lower GCSE grades is the biggest part of the reason for this – not a huge surprise given the average suspended pupil missed out on key GCSEs in English and maths (the suspension grades gap).
• All this focus on who is losing learning might already be having some cut through. Education Secretary Bridget Philipson used an op-ed in the Times to say "Every day of learning lost does serious harm. Children who attend school regularly are twice as likely to achieve good GCSEs in English and maths compared with those who are persistently absent." More substantively, she said that updated guidance would ensure fines for absence would be consistent across the country. This is the first half of something we called for last year in our attendance report. The second half is to evaluate if fines actually work, or whether they just erode goodwill while achieving nothing.
• We've already had Lib Dem party conference, and it was great to have a panel on tutoring and education recovery with Action Tutoring, Get Further and EPI. Munira Wilson MP has since been confirmed as Lib Dem spokesperson on education, which is great because she's very knowledgeable on it. Press release on her speech here. Semi related – Sarah from Get Further shared a lovely twitter thread on GCSE results day of texts from resit students they've helped. As well as being heartwarming it's a reminder these qualifications actually matter to actual young people for their actual future!
• The Office for Students have formally opened bidding for their Equity in Higher Education Innovation Fund. This fund was announced at an event we hosted earlier this year and is part of the regulator's drive towards greater partnership between universities and third sector experts. There's so much more universities could do to grow proven models like The Access Project (UCAS finds its students are 50% more likely to attend top universities than statistically similar peers) and it'll be interesting to see where this agenda goes in the coming years.
• The increased focus on "oracy" from Labour has seen lots of organisations making suggestions for what oracy could look like. The National Literacy Trust got there first. One intriguing suggestion was to provide all children with free eye and hearing tests in school at age five and 11. This has worked well in countries with less established universal health systems than the UK – would it add much value here? The Sutton Trust also majored on it in their report on life skills. As always, polling is interesting but I am not sure I really believe the 31% of schools who said oracy was "embedded in most lessons" – perhaps reflecting the fact there isn't a universally understood definition of oracy. As a longstanding funder of Voice21, I don't think it will surprise anyone to know that we're supporting The Oracy Commission, which reports back in next month.

Top reads

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

• A new study from the University of Durham finds that most people responsible for diagnosing dyslexia use their own diagnostic criteria in addition to standardised assessment tools. This seems suboptimal, so thumbs up to their suggestion that "evidence-based knowledge should be built into the assessment procedures and for this to be guided by government policy" – I didn't realise there was no central policy guidance on diagnosing this. Part of the challenge here is that dyslexia is a sociocultural rather than a biological condition (see eg this academic history or this educator's take)
• It feels like a long time ago, but we haven't covered GCSE results yet in Impetus Insights. As always, education datalab has you covered with blogs on both the main trends and some more interesting things we learned. I was pleased they pointed out that the narrowing of the disadvantage gap might be a statistical quirk of changes in free school meals eligibility, something we first warned about well over six years ago. Ofqual have also published a load of official stuff.
• Pro Bono Economics are great. They've produced this handy googledoc of the charity connections and experience of all MPs. A great starting point for stakeholder mapping. Lots of big charities have lots of alumni in Parliament (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Citizens Advice) stand out but it's got really niche stuff too (I suspect there's only one MP who has ever volunteered with the Shark Conservation Society). Children and education is by far the biggest tab with 91 MPs from six parties having some kind of young people charity connection.
• A quick check in on the AI revolution in education as evidence on use cases starts to role in. Interesting story from Hechinger Report – using chat GPT as a maths study aid in Turkey resulted in more correct answers in practice but worse test results when there was no AI help. Turns out practice of problem solving is pretty integral to success in maths (yes it's a maths pun). I'm not sure I would be rushing to sign up for a private school that's sort of replacing teachers with AI; Oak National Academy's new AI tool for teachers to support lesson planning is probably a better bet.
• The Stanford Social Innovation Review did an education special. My highlight was this retrospective on a 20 year campaign to improve high school graduation rates in the US. Impetus is involved in a lot of coalitions, and I was really stuck by this; "Our outside partners waxed and waned too, since their missions were not exclusively focused on the dropout challenge and new leaders each brought their own priorities. New policy makers and administrations often wanted fresh initiatives and lost interest in the dropout crisis. Changes in business and foundation leadership often meant changes in priorities. One major partner even stopped participating because we fell slightly short of our highly ambitious 90 percent goal". Much food for thought for the many readers of this newsletter who do
• Totally different, but Iain Mansfield was a SpAd at DfE for many years and has written a very long but fascinating blog on life as a SpAd. Some of the richest stuff is his inside account of how some of the big covid decisions got made, from the results day debacle of 2020 to the opening and shutting of schools on the same day in January 2021. It is in sections so you don't have to read it all in one go!

Look ahead

Sunday 30 September to Wednesday 2 October it's Conservative Party conference. I will see some of you there!

Tuesday 15 October is NPC Ignites. Full details on the charity conference are here.

Tuesday 15 October is also labour market stats day!

Thursday 17 October is an intriguing sounding release on "Smoking, Drinking and Drug Use among Young People in England".

The date is still TBC but "October" is still the date for the official Widening Participation in higher education statistics. When will it land? Oh the anticipation!

And finally...

Impetus is all about funding high quality charities and helping them deliver benchmark beating outcomes for young people. Broadly, we want more money to flow to charities that deliver better outcomes. But we're a bit squeamish about what should happen to charities who don't deliver benchmark beating outcomes (such as the Merseyside Youth Association). So I really enjoyed this absolute tour de force on why a commitment to outcomes matters and why projects that fail to meet the bar should be shut down – from someone who did actually shut their project down.