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 March newsletter marks the end of the first quarter of the year (or the last quarter, if you're on the Impetus finance team). It also marked a new start for Dr Carlie Goldsmith, who joined my team as a senior policy advisor to look after our school exclusions and absence work. Please do connect with her on LinkedIn or X /Twitter. She's learned the names of almost everyone here, so it's about time for her to start having intro coffees with more people!

March was also the Budget, though that feels a long time ago now. The Pro Bono Economics summary is always a good read for good depth and charts with a charity sector specific lens. Given the Budget contained nothing of note for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, that's all we're sharing on that…

We've launched a report on exclusions – more below – and next month we're launching our manifesto, so it's a busy time for us. Plus ça change. I'm looking forward to the long Easter weekend. Happy Easter, a late Happy Holi, and an early Eid Mubarak

Enjoy reading,

Ben

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In this issue

• Our thoughts on the last month's news and announcements including the exclusion grades gap, a Kevin Collins interview, and the ERSA manifesto
• Some things we enjoyed reading on learning loss, the charity sector, and where young people move to
• Some things to look forward to over the next month including the clocks going forward, government stats, and the birthday of the Youth Employment Group
• If you get to the end, I'll make a point about unlocking agency by sharing another esoteric blog you probably haven't seen before

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 – educational attainment, access to higher education and sustainable employment.

• Some work we commissioned from EPI has found an exclusion grades gap – on average, pupils suspended in secondary school are 12 months behind those who aren't, and they do not pass GCSEs in English and maths. The existence of a gap is probably not a surprise, but it is the first time it's been measured. Our view is that by supporting pupils struggling to engage in education, we would see lower exclusion levels. This is not about reducing exclusions simply for the sake of it, but because it would be a sign of a more effective education system for pupils and teachers alike. Ayesha spoke to LBC and TalkTV about the findings.
• The government announced the "next stage" of their school attendance work. As a general rule, whenever a government press release leads with "we're going to collect better data" Impetus reaches for the thumbs up emoji 👍. Bringing fines for unauthorised absences under a national framework to make them more consistent has was one thing we called for in our research with Public First last year, but we also called for a review of their effectiveness, so only half a thumbs up for that one.
• Kevin Collins has done a fascinating interview with TES giving an inside account of his ultimately unsuccessful stint as the DfE's pandemic "catch up tsar". It's got some good colour on how he went from hearing all the right noises to being told no over the course of a weekend. We'll need someone else's account to understand what changed, but I think Kevin is too hard on himself in terms of his regrets. One thing I hadn't fully clocked before is how "schools-led" tutoring emerged as what the government was going to fund instead – a third strand of the National Tutoring Programme that was shoehorned in and undermined the other, evidence backed pillars. Politics and procurement, barriers to impact.
• For those who aren't regular readers of BBC Bitesize, I quite liked their polling on the jobs teens want. Maybe just because they are famous careers available across the country, but lots of public service roles made the top 10 like teacher at #3 and police officer at #9. Money is less important than happiness to teens – which reinforces my regular point that judging the "worth" of a degree by the salary of its graduates is probably not a sensible way forward. (Why yes, I can find an excuse to bang my favourite policy drums in almost anything).
• There must be an election coming when organisations start releasing their manifestos. First out the blocks our friends at ERSA. A range of sensible employment policies for the different groups that struggle in the labour market. We're particularly supportive of the call for the roll out of Youth Hubs, which we developed a blueprint for when they first started. As per the intro, the Impetus manifesto will be with you next month!

Top reads

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

• The Resolution Foundation have an excellent report on young people's mental health, education and employment. One in three young people has symptoms of a common mental disorder, which is probably not unrelated to the doubling of the number of young people not working due to ill health. Non graduates with mental health problems are twice as likely to be out of work as graduates, and ill health is a bigger issue for people in their early 20s than early 40s. Really useful context for the world we operate in.
• The ONS have done some nerdy stuff again looking at how young people move as they grow up and enter adulthood. So many highlights. Readers of our Youth Jobs Gap research will be unsurprised that variation within categories like "small towns" is much bigger than variation between them. For those interested in people leaving their home towns to go to university and never returning, you'll love the analysis that shows that prosperity of the home town and whether it is commutable to a larger conurbation were both factors.
• Another batch of stats from EPI on learning lost due to the pandemic (update your go-to stats accordingly!). Firstly, girls are more affected than boys, and at secondary school, white and Chinese pupils are the only ethnic groups behind where they were at the start of the pandemic in reading. Secondly, maths results are worse than before the pandemic (by an average of four months), and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are worst affected. You can find loads of specific numbers of months behind for different groups by following the links.
• The Children's Commissioner has done some novel work to try and work out what happens to people who leave the education system unexpectedly. Local authorities have no idea what happened to one in eight of them, totalling some 10,000 children. Children who move to home education are overwhelmingly persistently absent before leaving, and over 10 times as likely to have been severely absent. There's a helpful set of technical recommendations too.
• NPC's State of the Sector research has some interesting findings on what's happening with charities delivering public sector contracts - the average charity is contributing 35% the value of a contract. Hard to see this as sustainable, especially with Probono Economics looking at how the squeeze in local government finances is impacting charities – I did not know 13% of charity income came from local government. Also related and not new, but the Charity Commission have put the highlights from their regular research on public trust in charities on a single page.

Look ahead

Sunday 31 March is when the clocks go forward

Tuesday 16 April is the official birthday of the Youth Employment Group… and also the labour market stats

Thursday 18 April is when we get revised statistics on A level (and equivalent) results

And finally...

I love sharing esoteric content with you that I don't think you'll have seen elsewhere. This month – a Spectech blog on ARPA. ARPA is a US government agency with a reputation for being involved in many of the innovations that shaped the modern world. The track record of success has spawned many articles that try to pinpoint what the secret sauce is. I was particularly struck by the importance of unlocking agency – something we think about a lot here in terms of the young people we want to help, but also the charity leaders we support. It's interesting (to me at least) to imagine what different parts of the ecosystem might look like if certain people had their agency unlocked, from teachers to work coaches to civil servants.