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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Parliament is in recess, school is out for the summer (and has been for a while in Scotland), and it's finally time to catch up on all those things you've been too busy to get round to for however many months.

None of the three of us has school-aged children so we're lucky enough to be able to take our holidays in term time - sorry to those of you who don't have that privilege. Nonetheless, I'm off to Arundel Castle to watch some cricket for a day or two. Carlie has nothing booked until September (not least because she's launching some attendance research on 4 September). Ayesha, meanwhile, will be visiting family in the Philippines - part holiday, part "taking advantage of our work from abroad policy".

This was a very long-winded way of explaining why unlike some other newsletters, we're not stopping for August - see you on the other side of exam results. And if you're also around and fancy an (iced?) coffee with one of us, just hit reply.

Enjoy reading,

Ben 

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In this issue

• Our thoughts on the last month’s news and announcements including oracy, exclusions, and a government evaluation registry
• Some things we enjoyed reading from IPPR on opportunity, the Youth Futures Foundation on mental health, and the Children's Commissioner on poverty
• Some things to look forward to over the next month - let's face it, at this time of year it's basically all results days. Good luck!
• If you get to the end, it's a summer double feature on AI

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.

• In a letter co-ordinated by Voice 21 - the leading oracy charity and Impetus portfolio partner - 60 signatories including Michael Rosen, Alastair Campbell, Charles Clarke and Estelle Morris have urged the prime minister to embed oracy into England's schools. As a well-evidenced intervention, with extensive research to support its association with higher attainment, we have long-supported oracy and welcomed the Labour Party's pledge in 2023 to put it at the heart of their education agenda. Disappointingly, there has been little progress in the two years since. For a government desperate for something that is at once evidence-based, low cost and high impact, oracy should be a no-brainer, so fingers crossed it gets the attention it deserves when the Curriculum and Assessment Review publish their report this autumn. (Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor)
  
• More difficult news on levels of suspension and permanent exclusion in the DfE 2023/24 academic year data release. 21% increase in suspensions and 16% increase in permanent exclusions with young people eligible for FSM, with identified SEND, and from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller and Black Caribbean backgrounds all disproportionately affected. Analysis from the Who is Losing Learning coalition finds 34 million days of learning lost to suspension and unauthorised absence, two million more than the previous year, fifteen million more than the year before the pandemic. It sounds trite to say that behind every number there's a child, family and a teacher - but it's true. The upcoming Schools White Paper must have the inclusion of children having the toughest time inside and outside of the classroom at its core. If you want to support our efforts to get Whole School Inclusion adopted in national policy, please email me to discuss your supporting our Inclusion for All campaign. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
  
• The CSJ have done some work on the Pupil Premium with a good quality mix of short-term and long-term proposals for reform, including some technical stuff that would probably really help in terms of eligibility. I particularly enjoyed the recommendation that DfE collect data on how Pupil Premium is spent. The lack of any data on this is something that has nagged me for about nine years. I have a longstanding idea on how to tackle this - if you have expertise in web scraping please do let me know by reply… (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)
  
• In an unusual month, July saw labour market statistics plastered across headlines. Why? Because according to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) unemployment rates hit 4.7% - a 0.1%pt increase on the last quarter and the highest level in four years. This is a prime example of the need for the usual disclaimer that the LFS continues to experience problems with sample sizes and month on month increases - particularly of 0.1 %pt - should be taken with a pinch of salt. I was certainly pleased, however, to see the recent update on plans for the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS). Part of the difficulty that the LFS has faced over the past few years has been markedly lower response rates as a result of Covid. But plans for the TLFS include the introduction of QR codes to support increased completion and early signs show this seems to be working, particularly across younger respondents. Yay! (Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor)
  
• At Impetus we spend a lot of time pointing out the blindingly obvious -that school absence and exclusion don't just impact the classroom - they affect young people's job prospects and threaten our economy. Despite the use of the thoroughly inadequate term "truancy'' to describe the situation, we give props to the Telegraph for making this exact point and quoting EPI research we sponsored on suspension and outcomes in young adulthood to make it. Also smashing to hear Bridget Phillipson agree. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor
  
• DCMS have published a theory of change as to how their work serves the government opportunity mission. They've correctly highlighted that "there is no evidence relating cultural activities to employment outcomes which represents a key evidence gap" and there's a whole bunch of stuff in there about new longitudinal datasets and more consistent survey methodology. This is the nuts and bolts of slow and steady change. And if they do some good evaluations, they will appear in the government's new evaluation registry, "a website which will act as a single home for evaluations across Government". This is the content you only get in this newsletter… (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)

Top reads

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

• On a hot and busy night in Westminster - thanks Macron - IPPR launched Towards Universal Opportunity for Young People. Supported by Impetus and Youth Futures Foundation the report sets out a reframing in pursuit of 'universal opportunity' to focus not just on increasing social mobility for a chosen few, but also on reducing inequality and providing opportunities for every young person. Useful reading for anyone thinking about and working on policy who understand that the current 'rags to riches' conception is at best unhelpful, and, at worst, actively harmful for young people. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• At infants' school I persuaded my headteacher that I was a packed lunch kid and not a free-school meals kid. It worked for two days until it became obvious that a) there wasn't food at home to turn my longing to be like other kids into reality b) stealing Space Invader crisps at the local shop wasn't a good life choice. So, for me, reading new research from the Children's Commissioner and hearing from children who, over forty years on from my experience, face "Dickensian" levels of poverty and the inevitable indignities it causes is not a top read -it's a vital one. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• This survey by the Work Foundation at Lancaster University revealed some concerning findings: almost a quarter of young workers aged 16 to 24 (23%) rated their mental health as poor, with two in five (43%) worried that their declining health could push them out of work in the future. People aged 16 to 24 were also the most likely to report that their job negatively impacts their mental health (34%). With stagnating wages, stubborn inflation, and milestones such as buying a house or beginning a family too expensive for too many young people, work does not "pay" the way it used to. Even the promise of a stable pension - the long-heralded reward for a life of "hard work" - feels like it's getting further away. It therefore shouldn't come as a surprise that, for many young people, the prospect of work isn't particularly compelling. Re-building this social contract will be a key part of getting young people to want to be either learning or earning. (Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor)
• Not unrelated to the above, the Youth Futures Foundation have done some serious work looking at the rise in mental health issues among young people, a known driver of economic inactivity. As well as adding to the list of serious orgs concluding that the rise in mental health is real rather than "the result of increased symptom recognition, greater awareness, overdiagnosis, or reduced resilience" they identify four key drivers including worsening sleep quality and social media/smartphone use. Slight spoiler alert for our September attendance research but those two things are entangled… (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)
• Two pieces of work highlighted the importance of trusted relationships in education for children and families in difficult circumstances. The first, National Children's Bureau final report for Ofsted on how vulnerability and disadvantage are understood across sectors - including education. The second, research on young people's experiences of school exclusion across the UK's four nations. Fascinatingly the latter concluded that whilst different policy approaches to exclusion across the country affects exclusion rates, it makes little difference to young people's actual experiences of it. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• Education datalab are always churning out interesting new analysis. Two highlights this month. Correlation between year 6 and year 7 absence. No "magic number", but "those who missed between 8 and 12% of sessions in Year 6 had a 25 to 50% chance of being persistently absent, and those who missed more than 12% of sessions had at least a 50% chance". Useful info for targeting programmes. They've also summarised all the data on outcomes for white working class pupils, which are very poor. A good overview of a topical subject. (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)

Look ahead

Tuesday 5 August is results day in Scotland

Thursday 7 August we get the school absence statistics for the autumn term

Tuesday 12 August is the monthly labour market stats

Thursday 14 August is results day in England, Wales and Northern Ireland for A levels, T levels, and a whole bunch of vocational qualifications at level 3

Thursday 21 August is results day in England, Wales and Northern Ireland for GCSEs and a whole bunch of vocational qualifications at level 2 - and it's also the quarterly NEET statistics

Thursday 4 September we're launching some new research on attendance - evening event, full invite to follow

And finally... a summer double feature on AI

People keep asking me for views on AI. Like most intelligent people, I try not to have views on things I don't really understand, but I can do a passable impression of an informed person by regurgitating other people's opinions. This New York Magazine piece from May has really stuck with me about how AI is already fundamentally undermining university essays. My personal highlight/lowlight "Multiple AI platforms now offer tools to leave AI-generated feedback on students' essays. Which raises the possibility that AIs are now evaluating AI-generated papers, reducing the entire academic exercise to a conversation between two robots - or maybe even just one". I also really enjoyed the always readable (and West Ham fan!) Daisy Christodoulou who has pointed out that regardless of AI we still need to teach people to write because writing extends working memory. Writing is thinking! (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)