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 share 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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I hope August has given you the opportunity for some downtime ahead of what is shaping up to be a busy September. The new Prime Minister certainly hasn’t been resting, and we were pleased to see one of his early announcements focus on strengthening vocational pathways for young people and removing financial barriers to taking up apprenticeships – both areas we have been calling for action on. As we look at the detail, however, it will be important to ensure that these efforts do not inadvertently narrow young people’s options at this age. We think that English and maths GCSEs remain the passport qualifications that help keep opportunities open and are the single biggest protective factor against being NEET in young adulthood. You can read more about our response to the Government’s announcement below.

Looking ahead, we are excited to launch the final report in our series on school attendance in early September, with Public First. This report brings a new perspective to the issue, exploring attendance from the point of view of teachers. We are also getting closer to launching our new interactive digital tool, which uses Youth Jobs Gap data to explore the likelihood of young people becoming NEET across local authority areas in the UK. We hope this will provide a valuable new way of understanding and responding to the youth employment challenge locally. And, of course, we are getting ready for party conference season. A group of us will be at Labour Party Conference, where we are hosting a number of events and supporting our portfolio partners – see below for more details. If you’re attending too, please do get in touch; it would be great to meet up.

Enjoy reading,

Susannah

In this issue

In this edition, we respond to the Prime Minister's announcement of new technical pathways for 14 to 16 year-olds: an ambitious proposal we cautiously welcome, while making the case that English and maths GCSEs must remain protected as the qualifications that matter most for keeping young people's futures open. We also look at what this year's results season really tells us, arguing that the regional framing dominating coverage obscures the economic divide that cuts across every part of the country.

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.

• Just as schools in England broke up for summer, the PM announced one of the most significant changes to education in a generation: new technical pathways for 14-16 year-olds. The timing was surprising, but Burnham has long argued that neglecting the 50% of young people who don't go to university is one of the biggest political failures of recent times – and a primary driver of the NEET crisis. He tried to solve this as Mayor of Manchester, launching the MBacc last academic year. We'll need much more detail, but the announcement promises students can combine core academic subjects – English, maths, science – with 'high-quality' technical education linked to local jobs, plus time with employers for real-world experience. The news prompted a wave of LinkedIn posts and Substack articles, many no doubt written from a beach café, by people who've been on this rodeo before. I particularly enjoyed Laura McInerney's challenge on the need for high-quality teaching and pastoral support, and avoiding the vocational reform doom loop, and Jonathan Simons' piece on what government could do to get it right. I'm torn. Some of my siblings went through college day release schemes at secondary school, and it put them firmly on the path to trades that have supported their families ever since (they all think this is a great move, btw). But despite wanting it to work, I'm not yet convinced GCSEs in technical subjects are the draw needed to reverse school disengagement – if that's even the problem the reform is trying to solve. This feels especially true for girls, who seem entirely forgotten in this 'hardhat as good as a graduation cap' framing. Current evidence shows English and maths GCSEs are the biggest protective factor against being NEET. Far more should be done to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds secure these qualifications: putting the most experienced teachers in front of the most disadvantaged children, closing the tutoring gap, making admissions fairer and properly funding schools so pupil premium stops being used to plug core costs are only some of many. If we'd already nailed all of that, and technical pathways were still on the table, I'd be all in. (Carlie Goldsmith, Head of Education Policy)
• Earlier this summer, I was lucky enough to spend a day at Edge Foundation and FE News' Breaking Barriers Collective. For those who weren’t able to attend, they have now published a write-up summarising the day and making recommendations based on what was discussed. Perhaps my favourite recommendation is the call for a national transition framework from education to employment. Too often, we wait until a young person has already fallen out of education or work before offering support. The report argues for something much more proactive: starting earlier, with better careers guidance, meaningful employer encounters and work experience, and continuing that support through key transitions. I was pleased to see the emphasis on relationships and trust, with the report making the case for putting youth workers, mentors and community organisations much closer to the heart of the employment system. There are lots of big ideas in the report, but perhaps the most important is that we need to stop thinking about disengagement as a destination, but as a form of attrition which happens over time. As the report says, this means that rather than another NEET reduction initiative, what we actually require is system change: “building clearer pathways into work, earlier intervention, stronger local partnerships, more integrated public services and a renewed commitment to listening to young people themselves.” (Ayesha Baloch, Head of Youth Employment Policy)
• August is results season. Huge congratulations to all your loved ones who achieved the grades they wanted and are now busy preparing for the next step. It’s hard to predict what stories are going to land on the day, but one that featured heavily this year was regional disparity, with more young people getting top grades in London and the southeast than their counterparts in the Midlands and north of England. My frustration is that there is as much variation within regions as there is between them – something we found in our Youth Jobs Gap research – and this framing obscures the real divide: the economic one. In all regions, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds get fewer qualifications than their more affluent peers. That lack of nuance makes it hard to argue for change in places like the southeast, seen as too affluent to fail. If we want better outcomes for these young people, some will keep being left behind unless we ditch these stereotypes. The BBC's reporting on this is well worth a read. (Carlie Goldsmith, Head of Education Policy)

Top reads

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

• What is driving the decline in entry-level jobs? This is one of the hot topics of the day, with AI increasingly labelled the main culprit. That the labour market has worsened for younger people is undoubtable. And while it makes sense to blame AI for displacing these jobs – it is, after all, a “labour-displacing technology” – evidence shows a mixed bag, with some research suggesting that firms with high AI adoption are actually hiring at a faster pace than companies that do not adopt it. However, this Substack provides a slightly more creative answer to the question, citing research which suggests the increasing prevalence of working from home could be responsible. It suggests that young workers need significantly more training and hands-on supervision than their more experienced colleagues, and a great deal of early-career development happens informally through proximity to colleagues, spontaneous mentoring, and the kind of incidental learning that is difficult to replicate on a screen. Remote and hybrid working disrupts this dynamic, meaning inexperienced hires take longer to become productive and are therefore more costly. As a result, the return on hiring junior workers falls and the cost rises, meaning graduate recruitment suffers. It is almost impossible to ascribe causality to either of these trends, but it certainly provides some interesting food for thought! (Ayesha Baloch, Head of Youth Employment Policy)
• There’s a lot of talk about how belonging matters in education already, but new DfE research published this month might put rocket boosters under the issue. It finds students who said they felt they belonged score significantly higher on Attainment 8 than those who didn't, even after accounting for prior attainment, background and bullying. It reports that students who go from "strongly disagree I belong" to "strongly agree" gain the equivalent of roughly a full GCSE grade across eight subjects – a startling finding. But there are caveats. The study doesn’t establish a causal relationship between belonging and grades; it just establishes it exists and, importantly, the relationship only shows up when belonging is measured with a single, simple question and not a broader index combining several belonging-related questions. Given the Schools White Paper commits schools to monitoring wellbeing and belonging by 2029, this research has interesting and serious implications for how we do this. One for DfE, policy makers and schools to consider. (Carlie Goldsmith, Head of Education Policy)
• A timely new briefing from Catch22 and the Centre for Young Lives sets out how the government's Young Futures Hubs can be designed to genuinely reach young people most at risk of becoming NEET, and why getting this right matters enormously. As the Milburn Review’s interim report put so eloquently, it is no secret that a key downfall of the current system is that "responsibility is dispersed across many organisations [..] there is no shared accountability and no clear governing philosophy.” Impetus are fans of the Hub model, advocating for and helping to shape the Youth Hubs rolled out under Boris Johnson’s government. Most recently, we called for a “Supercharged Youth Hubs” model in our own recent report. Though slightly different, it’s positive to see Catch22 and CfYL’s ideas for how Young Futures Hubs present a genuine opportunity to shift the system from crisis response towards early intervention, and how they can work alongside DWP Youth Hubs, Careers Hubs and schools. The report also argues for the importance of relationships, with qualified careers advisers who identify young people at risk early and maintain caseloads through key transitions. This is music to our ears, and chimes with our Closing the Youth Jobs Gap report, which similarly called for provision of “trusted adult” figures in Youth Hubs. As a small aside – I'm currently reading Darren McGarvey’s Poverty Safari, and am increasingly convinced of one final point: that any successful intervention embedded in communities must be designed in concert with those communities, and meaningfully involve the people the interventions are designed to serve. (Ayesha Baloch, Head of Youth Employment Policy)
• I have a strong interest in school admissions policy, campaigning to make them fairer for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in the city I live in. It’s a bit niche, so reading this corker of a Substack - that makes a robust case for redesigning accountability and admissions - so our education system is ‘inclusive by design’ gave me hope that it’s still on the agenda. (Carlie Goldsmith, Head of Education Policy)

Look ahead

2 September, ONS publishes analysis on young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) using Census 2021 data

3 September, launch of our exciting Youth Jobs Gap Digital Tool

10 September, our latest research on attendance, alongside Public First, launches in Parliament.

Party Conferences! We are doing the following events at Labour Party Conference, do come along if you’ll be in Liverpool:

• 27 September 2.30 - 3.30pm Tackling the youth jobs gap: How to get Britain's young people into work, Arena Room Tyne, Convention Centre, Liverpool Experience Campus

• 28 September 10.00 - 11.00am Listening to, and learning from, teachers in the attendance crisis, Revolution Liverpool, Unit 4M Atlantic Pavilion, L3 4AE

And finally...

It’s been hot, hasn’t it? I went on a deep dive into the social effects of the heatwave prompted by this piece on Eva Wiseman’s (always beautifully written) Substack ‘My heatwave is not your heatwave’. Much of it is behind a paywall, but it contains paragraphs like this one:

‘I saw, from my seat upstairs on a sauna-like bus, as I fanned myself pathetically with a paperback, a homeless woman sleeping on the pavement. She was right outside Tesco in the rays of the midday sun. Further along the road another man was begging outside the station as commuters hurried past, shaded under umbrellas. A young homeless woman paced in circles near the hospital in a jumper and jacket, carrying a rucksack the size of a child, her dog panting by the wall. People will die this summer, I realised, not because they won’t take tips on how to stay cool, but because they can’t.’

The LSE's recent blog ‘The inequality of Britain’s heatwaves and the case for public adaptation’ takes this theme and looks at how socially marginalised groups are the least able to shield themselves from the worst impacts of the heat, through the lenses of neighbourhood, housing, gender, workplaces and schools. It argues that the response to heatwaves so far in the UK has been largely to leave people to adapt themselves, which essentially allows wealthy people to buy their way out of the impacts of climate change, and calls for a community-based approach to managing its effects. In light of this, it was good to see the Nuffield Foundation advertising a call for applications for grant funding for further research into the unequal impact of extreme weather on UK education, in particular the effects on pupil and student absence, attainment, learning and educational experiences, and impact on 'more disadvantaged or vulnerable children, young people, staff and families'.

Perhaps the thing to take away from this summer’s heatwave is that there is no such thing as a shared experience of extreme weather. We have all been hot, but we haven’t all been hot in the same way, and as the climate changes, understanding that difference is going to matter even more. (Nicola Robbins MCIPR, Director of Communications)