Turning the Tide
New SWSMC Annual Report 2024 launches today
Today, we publish the second annual report of the South-West Social Mobility Commission, set up a year ago to tackle poor social mobility and outcomes for under-resourced young people in the region.
The analysis is stark. Our report shows that children from the lowest income backgrounds in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset perform worse than their peers elsewhere. More 5-year-olds lack school readiness, while 11-year-olds and 19-year-olds are less likely to meet basic educational milestones at the end of primary school or 16-18 education.
The region now has the lowest proportion of disadvantaged students gaining Level 3 qualifications including A-levels, T-levels and equivalent qualifications.
Meanwhile, at school, pupils across the peninsula are missing lessons at a higher rate than pupils anywhere else in the country.
The evidence is compelling and clear - outcomes for children and young people from under-resourced backgrounds in the South West are not good enough. These outcomes are not about education alone, but are indicative of the challenges of social mobility in what is the most coastal and most rural of all English regions. This is about often-overlooked rural poverty, working poor families and issues of geographic disconnection in the South-West peninsula.
But there are reasons to be optimistic. The economy of the South West is changing with new investments in green, digital and engineering amongst other sectors. We now need to address barriers for young people from under-resourced backgrounds to make the most of these opportunities and turn the tide on the region’s social mobility problem.
The Commission brings together twelve Commissioners across a range of sectors and a small Commission Strategy Unit to lead this change. While we will need to accelerate change over the coming year, there are signs that some of the necessary building blocks are falling into place.
At our major event last summer, hosted in collaboration with South West Business Council, circa 120 business and other civic leaders assembled to discuss practical ways businesses can support the social mobility agenda: from offering T-level placements and apprenticeships to reducing the need for unnecessary qualifications.
Education leaders are focusing more sharply on disadvantage as the message has been communicated through presentations reaching over 3000 people in the sector. We have also developed an ‘equity scorecard’ which we are piloting with five schools in the peninsula to collect and analyse new data (such as rates of attendance at parents evening) to strengthen the ways in which they support students from under-resourced backgrounds.
Our pioneering quality-focused, free-to-schools tutoring scheme has scaled this year, reaching around 350 pupils through a partnership with Next Step South-West; a cohort of participating pupils attended a ‘graduation ceremony’ at the University of Exeter where they received certificates from Sir Ben Bradshaw.
Building on our Tech Frontier report, we are working on a pilot with the Cornwall and Devon Careers Hubs and other key tech and education partners benefitting over 2000 students through 30 secondary school tech workshops and 7 tech work experience schemes.
In the Early Years, we have been developing an agenda for improvement; one Council has already said that they will reconsider how they promote nutritional standards in early years settings.
Each of the Commissioners has also been involved in projects which provide local solutions to local issues - from transport to homelessness to skills shortages - looking beyond education to think more broadly about how to improve the life-chances of infants, children and young adults by creating opportunities and pathways (like new apprenticeships) that did not previously exist.
Examples include:
· CELT is looking to offer HE qualifications to their own support staff to become Early Years practitioners within their school settings - an example of improving life outcomes for adults as well as children.
· Young Devon is supporting the upskilling of young people who might otherwise be experiencing homelessness by providing them with accommodation and helping them to access and progress into training and employment. £2.7m of government funding has enabled the creation of 50 one-bedroom units to support this initiative.
· Somerset County Cricket Club has developed a programme called Bridging the Gap for talented young cricketers – girls and boys – from state schools; this provides extra hours of coaching for them through the winter so they can keep up with their private school peers.
· Petroc is consulting on the establishment of a new Northern Devon Sixth Form to enable and encourage young people to study A-levels or alternative academic qualifications locally.
· New apprenticeship routes have been established to help local young people gain the skills they need for well-paid jobs: from NHS Somerset’s nursing and healthcare apprenticeship at Bridgwater and Taunton College (part of an ambition to deliver a Healthcare Academy for Somerset) to new degree apprenticeships at the University of Exeter in digital, engineering, finance, management and healthcare.
Beyond this, we need everyone in the region – employers and education providers along with public and third sector organisations – pulling in the same direction to prioritise social mobility. In the first instance, we propose that everyone, across the region, applies a ‘social mobility lens’ to decision-making: asking yourself whether you’re considering young people from under-resourced backgrounds in your decisions and whether what you’re doing is supporting those young people to thrive.
There is a long way to go. But there is also an appetite and enthusiasm across the peninsula to meet the challenge - something the Commission is helping to coordinate. Together we will turn the tide.
Read our full report here: Turning the Tide - SWSMC Annual Report 2024