Sign up to get Impetus Insights direct to your inbox every month.

In this issue

• Our thoughts on the last month's news and announcements including school attendance stats, GCSE results, and the cost of school uniform
• Some things we enjoyed reading from the Fabian Society, The Difference, and HEPI
• Some things to look forward to over the next month – our attendance report, the Poverty Strategy Commission, and party conference season
• If you get to the end, we're talking about New Orleans

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 – school engagement, educational attainment, and sustained employment.

• Autumn term 2024/25 school absence data published this month showed a welcome decrease in persistent absence. However, the number of children missing 10% or more of lessons remains nearly 40% higher than pre-pandemic, with the rate nearly double for children eligible for FSM than their better off peers. Our analysis shows what's at stake if we fail to act - half a million failed GCSEs in the next five years, and more than 70,000 young people out of work a decade from now. It was great to see this covered in Schools Week. Put a note in your diary for the 4 September. Together with Public First, we'll be launching our new report on this topic - Listening to, and learning from, young people on the attendance crisis. It's a powerful read that puts young people's voices front and centre. Read it to hear what they really think about attendance and current efforts to fix it, and if you'd like to attend the launch, register here – but quickly, spaces are limited (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• Overlooked because it was the same day as GCSE results, the latest NEET figures were released, and as always show almost a million young people are neither earning nor learning. A good day for the government to announce the extension of the Youth Guarantee trailblazer scheme for another year, with £45m of funding. It's going to be really interesting to see how these trailblazers inform what eventually becomes a national guarantee. We've obviously written about this extensively before but implementing things is much harder than having ideas. As a start, does anyone know if any of the trailblazers are even looking at how to identify and contact the economically inactive non-claimants the guarantee will eventually cover? (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy)
• The debate on GCSE English and Maths re-sits flaring up again reminded me of this piece by the Education Policy Institute. As we know well, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to achieve crucial English and maths GCSEs and make up a significant proportion of those who will re-sit. Even across re-sits, however, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds fall behind by a fifth of a grade in English and one-eight of a grade in maths. Seeing these figures, it's unsurprising that the most staunch critics of re-sits say it's cruel to keep pupils locked in a cycle of failing. But the importance of these qualifications means this policy is essential to closing not only the attainment gap but improving life outcomes for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. And while some may think the answer is to scrap re-sits, GCSEs are still one of the strongest determinants of life outcomes, so I was pleased to see EPI outlining the support that could be given to those struggling to secure them. (Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor)
• As someone who works in policy, the Financial Times' data analysis is obviously one of my favourite things to read (seeing our Youth Jobs Gap research in their hallowed pink pages earlier this year was a real pinch-me moment). This piece by John Burn-Murdoch gets meta, using analysis to show the statistics available to us are not fit to answer Britain's most pressing policy questions. At Impetus, we pride ourselves on being evidence-led, so the article's conclusion that the deteriorating quality of data risks government policy "being guided more by vibes than hard evidence" really hit home. First on the list is the thorn in the side of anyone working on the labour market: the much maligned labour force survey. But better data does exist. That's why our Youth Jobs Gap report called on policymakers to use sources like the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) dataset, which links people's education records to their tax records. (Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor)
• As autumn approaches, interest in the Schools White Paper is growing, with commentators speculating on how a government aiming to break the link between family background and opportunity might reform the system and tackle its many big challenges - the disadvantage gap, stubborn levels of learning lost through absence and exclusion, rising pupil needs, and costs. I'd recommend a great IFS podcast that sets the background and context to this, and outlines the very real challenges faced by politicians and policymakers now. Other essential listening is a new series from the IPPR Inclusion Taskforce. It sets itself a big challenge – to discuss how society can educate all young people from all backgrounds. The first episode set out the challenges in SEND education, and I'm looking forward to what comes next. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• As always results season leaves us spoiled for choice on things to read to understand what's happening at a system level (with no official government data for months yet). Start with Education Datalab's July blog on the white working class as a primer before delving into their results blogs (GCSEs/level 2; A levels/level 3). Schools Week, FE Week, and TES obviously have good stories. And of course the national papers are full of hot takes, from the Express columnist who rightly points out that English and maths are important while being the only person I've seen who has used the headline pass rates regardless of age; to the Guardian reminding us that these young people have beaten the odds given the pandemic. And if you find the grading system confusing it could be worse. This year I learned the grades in Danish universities are: 13, 10, 7, 4, 02, 00, -3. The leading zeros on the low grades are for fraud prevention. (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)
• There are many great things about education, but plenty that drive me round the twist. The costs associated with getting children to school in a way that complies with school policies is one of them. The costs of school uniform and transport are bugbears, and I campaign on both issues in my spare time. I'm not ‘anti-uniform' but I am very sceptical of there being any case that shows expensive branded unform is justifiable when child poverty is so high, and deepening. And it's not just me, polling by Parentkind is pretty damning with nearly half of parents whose children are eligible for FSM saying they'll go without heating or eating to cover the cost and just under half saying wearing second hand leads children to be stigmatised. I hard relate. When I went to school outside my estate – coming from a place where worn before meant poor - people's attitudes to what they called ‘vintage' clothes was one of many cultural shocks. Luckily, the government agrees, and the Secretary of State reiterated her message to school leaders this month, asking them again to make voluntary changes to school uniform policies before new legislation forces a cap. I've seen similar calls for a few years, and I struggle to understand why change has been so slow on this issue. Come on schools, sort it out. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)

Top reads

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

• This month, the Fabian Society launched their report Levying Up: How to Make the Growth and Skills Levy Work. The research identifies the main failures of a key pillar of the skills system and some direction on how it could work better. We're currently thinking about skills a lot at Impetus. I've found the process daunting and exciting in equal measure, because this is kind of where policy-making starts. What is the key issue to address across the skills landscape? (Hint: it isn't just one); how do we build a skills system which works for young people, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds? What are the levers we can pull? All of this comes with risks, particularly as the external landscape changes rapidly, and above all, there are no easy answers. For anyone else thinking through these questions, the report provides great food for thought. (Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor)
• I'm concerned that internal alternative provision is seen by some policymakers as a bit of an inclusion silver bullet. Something quick and cheap to implement that ticks the ‘we are doing something' box. I'd steer anyone thinking this in the direction of the latest the latest report from our portfolio partner, The Difference. Drawing on interviews and school case studies, sets out clearly the key things that make this type of provision effective. I particularly like the message that it shouldn't be a place where children are sent to be "fixed" but instead operates best where inclusion for all children is at the heart of the culture (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• With A-Level/BTEC results day happening earlier this month, a familiar debate is bubbling up again - is going to university still worth it? With the recent changes to student finance, increasing costs of living, growing fears about AI replacing graduate jobs and a cooling labour market on the other side of their degrees, it's no wonder that young people aren't sold on the prospect. But at Impetus, we firmly believe that higher education is still one of the best evidenced ways to secure a good job, which is why I was pleased to see this new study from the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) and King's College London. The report finds the public overestimate how many graduates regret going to university, guessing that 40 per cent of graduates wouldn't go to university if they could choose again, when the actual proportion who say this is only 8 per cent! After the heat the higher education system has received in the headlines in recent months and years, it's great to see research which adds some perspective. (Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor)
• It's good to see new evidence about what works in reducing school exclusion here in the UK. This systematic review – the first of its kind – by academics at Oxford Brookes University finds both preventative whole school approaches and targeted interventions are effective. In the end, it argues in favour of a public health, whole school preventative approach led by government as the favoured option on the basis that this prevents stigmatising of individual children, is less disruptive to classrooms and less stressful for school staff (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)

Look ahead

Tuesday 2 September, Policy Exchange are hosting an event to launch Nick Gibb's book

Thursday 4 September, our report with Public First Listening to, and learning from, young people in the attendance crisis will be published. If you'd like to attend the 6-7.30pm launch in central London on the same day sign up here

Monday 8 September is the Poverty Strategy Commission's latest report launch

Wednesday 17 September is the ERSA Youth Conference and Ben is speaking on a panel

Saturday 20 September if you're at Lib Dem Conference, there's a panel from the Who Is Losing Learning coalition on whole school inclusion in the Sherborne Suite of the Highcliff Marriott Hotel at 1pm

Advance notice also for Monday 29 September – Labour party conference event on the attendance report we launch on 4 September. Revolución de Cuba, Unit 17, Albert Dock, Liverpool, 12:30pm

And finally...New Orleans

It wouldn't be the summer without a bit of foreign travel, so let's talk about New Orleans. The Big Easy is on my bucket list for food related reasons, but who knew it's educational reforms were also interesting? After Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago (almost to the day) they tried a more extreme version of the reforms carried out here after 2010 and they got great results, but what really struck me was quite how bad education was there before – "19 out of every 20 high school seniors testing in school exit exams below basic proficiency in English and maths." I'm not sure what the bar is for "basic proficiency" but for context there isn't a school in the whole of England with fewer than 1 in 10 achieving grade 4 at GCSE, outside of the special educational needs and further education sectors, let alone a city. Mind boggling.