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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The solstice has passed, and the days are only getting shorter from here. Unlike Impetus Insights, the drafts of which seem to get longer every month. Thanks to our Comms team for the judicious editing.

Talking of judicious edits – check out the two-minute highlights video from our Youth Jobs Gap launch last month, also featuring some content from an interview we did with the Employment Minister, Alison McGovern. Make sure you're following us on LinkedIn to get all the fun stuff in your feed on the regular.

Only twelve words of my word limit left. Damn, I've wasted them.

Enjoy reading,

Ben 

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In this issue

• Our thoughts on the last month's news and announcements including free school meals eligibility, boys and adolescence, and our thoughts on impact
• Some things we enjoyed reading from ASCL on inclusion, Education Datalab on pupil movements, and the OECD on teenagers' career aspirations
• Some things to look forward to over the next month including exclusion stats, an IPPR paper on opportunity, and a chance to hear from our CEO at the Festival of Education
• If you get to the end, we have fun stuff on 11-14 year olds and belonging in schools

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.

• Well folks, it may have come kicking and screaming, but my baby, Impetus Youth Jobs Gap: Exploring compound disadvantage has finally been launched, and our findings are stark. Using longitudinal education outcomes (LEO) data, we were able to quantify the effect of characteristics such as ethnic background, socio-economic disadvantage, qualification-level and more, on the likelihood of a young person being not in education, employment or training (NEET). We uncovered certain characteristics, including low qualification, SEND, and socio-economic disadvantage, that mean young people are more likely to be NEET, and when combined, significantly increase this likelihood – an effect we call "compound disadvantage". Our results were sobering, but we also found that qualifications are still our best bet for levelling the playing field, so we should continue to strive for better attainment outcomes for the most marginalised young people. All of this is thanks to LEO data, which uncovered granular differences, usually obscured in most data on NEET rates. It showed that if we are to truly understand the extent of the problem - and possible solutions - we need much more data and research like this. The Youth Jobs Gap report was a monumental effort, and its success is all thanks to the people mentioned in this LinkedIn post . My inbox is open to thoughts and reactions. (Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor)
• Labour market stats painted a more positive picture than we've seen in recent months, with a slight decline in the number of young people aged 18-24 who are not in education, employment or training (NEET). Despite this, with the total amount still above 900,000, and the quality assurance issues with the LFS, we should be taking these figures with a pinch of salt. I was also worried by the fact that the unemployment rate for young people aged 16-24 was 0.7 pp higher than the rate in the same quarter one year earlier. With more research like our recent Youth Jobs Gap report, however, we are hopefully one step closer to understanding why we're seeing such persistently high rates of young people who are neither learning nor earning. (Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor)
• Given the recent alarm about boys in wider culture prompted by the Netflix show Adolescence, it's unsurprising that a new independent inquiry was launched into the educational outcomes of white working-class boys. Whilst it's undeniably true that outcomes for this group should bring everyone up short, I'm keen to see how the inquiry goes beyond the hype. In the 2022-2023 school year, 27% of disadvantaged girls in England achieved a grade 5 or above in both GCSE English and maths, compared to 24% of disadvantaged boys – only a 3% gap – so there's more going on here than gender. As our Youth Jobs Gap research found the interplay of disadvantage and place is central to understanding outcomes for young people. Living in persistent poverty is an often-neglected piece of the puzzle, and something Impetus will be working on over the coming months. If you are interested, please get in touch. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• Everyone seemed happy with the extension of free school meals to all families in receipt of Universal Credit. I was particularly happy as the Government decided not to extend pupil premium funding to this wider group. There's no evidence that the newly eligible young people get worse grades in school (if anything, the opposite) and this approach keeps that funding stream targeted at those who need it most. Extending free school meals obviously won't benefit the poorest children (they already get them) but breakfast clubs will. Next step – auto enrolling them so no one misses out. With the Government not doing this it currently falls to individual councils to choose to do it – hats off Liverpool for being the latest to do so. (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)
• You don't need me to tell you that our country's challenges are particularly acute for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. With more than twenty years' experience funding solutions to these problems, I can say with certainty that overcoming such entrenched barriers requires intentional interventions designed for impact. I wrote a bit more about this for Philanthropy Impact, and Ben assures me my thoughts on impact will also be of interest to our friends in policy. My top message: Light-touch, loosely defined programmes can rarely achieve the kind of life-changing impact that enables a young person to thrive when the odds are stacked so high against them. Like philanthropic funders, policymakers should back intentionally shaped programmes providing the right type, duration, and intensity of support to unlock change. (Sebastien Ergas, Portfolio Director)
• Bridget Phillipson telling sector leaders that it will take ‘grit and graft' to tackle the ‘generational challenge' of school attendance hit the sector headlines this month. With 34.8% of children from disadvantaged backgrounds missing more than 10% of lessons last year, we agree with the Secretary of State's diagnosis that this is a very urgent problem indeed. Determination and putting all shoulders to the pump notwithstanding, getting kids back into the classroom won't be achieved without working with the young people most at risk of school absence and their families. We'll have more to say about this when we launch our new research with Public First on young people's attitudes to attendance this autumn. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• It's been a big month for skills. Alongside a £1.2 billion commitment in the Spending Review (and the formal extension of youth guarantee trailblazer), they've also announced a £275 million investment in technical training and apprenticeships. But the hawk-eyed amongst you will have noted that while the Spending Review did commit funding for 16-19, the majority of it was not ringfenced or tied to age. There are almost a million young people who are currently NEET, and we know a key setback of the growth and apprenticeship levy has been that it simply upskills current workers, rather than bringing in younger workers. It therefore feels like a missed opportunity to focus on those furthest from the labour market. (Ayesha Baloch, 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...

• If you want to know what challenges the Government faces as it prepares the School White Paper it confirmed this month will be published in Autumn, this blog, by the General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, Pepe Di'Iasio, is a must read. He makes the case for the ambition to be – rightly in my view – a system where schools identify and meet the routine and predicable needs of all pupils at the earliest opportunity. But families, many of whom have fought long and hard to get their children support, are understandably worried about rumours of changes to the current system of EHCPs. This makes the final sentence of the piece resonate powerfully. "If ever there was a policy area that must be a case of 'done with' rather than 'done to' then this is it." Wise words indeed. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• A few months ago, I expressed my dismay around the cuts to funding for education evaluation programmes across the pond, so I was pleased to read some of these have now been reversed. The Hechinger Report has a great rundown of how the US government has realised that along with trimming "the fat", they had also cut into the "muscle" of the federal role in education. After admitting some of the DOGE cuts had violated congressional statutes, the Trump administration will revive about a fifth of research and statistics contracts killed earlier this year, including the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Although these may operate differently to how they previously did, I'm pleased to see the acknowledgment of the necessity for research evaluation programmes, particularly if the administration looks to increase efficiency. (Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor)
• Brillant to see FFT Education Datalab pick up on the Who is Losing Learning coalition's recommendation to make all pupil movements off the school roll visible and accountable. The first blog sets out some basic stats. The second sets out three options for reflecting pupil movements in performance measures. Super interesting for anyone interested in thinking through what fairer accountability measures could be. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• Launched on the same day as our Youth Jobs Gap last month, I missed this report from the OECD and Education and Employers. "The State of Global Teenage Career Preparation" covers the mismatch globally between young people's career aspirations and the future job types available. In the UK, "aspirations are concentrated around a small number of mainly traditional jobs with 50% of young people apparently focused on just 10 jobs which include actor, doctor and lawyer. Very large numbers of young people are also focusing on jobs such as social media influencers and sports stars where the chances of succeeding in these areas are very slim". One of the things I worry most about is the fact most of us instinctively want to support young people to follow their dreams, but probably not everyone can. When should we be encouraging young people to be "realistic" about labour market opportunities? How do we do it in a way this is free from bias? (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)
• Research published this month by the Youth Endowment Fund reports that even once a range of risk and contextual factors, including behavioural difficulties, are accounted for, children who are suspended or excluded from school are still nearly two and a half times more likely to become involved in violence. The research was widely reported, with Olive Academies – an Impetus portfolio partner – featured in a great Channel 4 News piece. Preventing preventable exclusions through early intervention and support is an urgent policy priority. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)

Look ahead

Tuesday 1 July is the Learning and Work Institute convention

Thursday 3 July and Friday 4 July are the Festival of Education. Our CEO Susannah is speaking on Thursday at a panel on "Can schools and civic society ever really work together?" (I think she's going to say more than just "yes")

Thursday 3 July also sees the release of a paper from IPPR on the Government's Opportunity Mission

Thursday 10 July is the the DfE's release of suspensions and permanent exclusions data for 2023 to 2024

And finally... belonging and school transitions

Regular readers will know I need precisely zero encouragement to share relevant data driven stories from The Pudding. From May this cool piece explores how the data on feeling like you belong at school shifts as young people in the US transition from middle school to high school. For those who don't know, the 11-14 age group presents a particular set of challenges in many places, not least because our educational approaches often predate our understanding of developing brains. (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)