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In this issue

• Our thoughts on the last month's news and announcements including our conference events, the Chancellor's conference announcement, and the CEO on ITV
• Some things we enjoyed reading from the Financial Times on graduate unemployment, Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) on the Pupil Premium, and a Civil Society Evidence Organisation
• Some things to look forward to over the next month – the Budget is coming, and who knows, maybe the Curriculum and Assessment Review and the Schools White paper are too?
• If you get to the end, we're talking about music

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.

• At Labour Party Conference the Chancellor announced young people who have been not in education, employment or training (NEET) for 18 months will receive a guaranteed job or training place, as part of the Government's youth guarantee. As co-chairs of the Youth Employment Group, we've long been calling for schemes like this as part of a youth guarantee to reduce NEET rates to match countries like the Netherlands, which would add £69bn to the economy. I spoke to the Telegraph about it all, pointing out that it should become available earlier in a young person's experience of being NEET – something that can hopefully develop over time. (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)
• Party conference season is always a bit of a whirlwind. We were lucky to be joined by some great panellists – including select committee chair Helen Hayes MP and Sarah Smith MP – at our event on school attendance. We've debated internally the use of the term ‘crisis' but there was consensus across the panel that the language is justified with 1 in 5 children (and 1 in 3 children from disadvantaged backgrounds) persistently absent last year. It was great to hear from our portfolio partner Co-op Academies Trust on the difference their inclusion focused internal alternative provision was doing to reduce exclusion and from IPPR on the importance of reinstating the wider services around the child. Our recent report shows that young people want more opportunities to be social and succeed at school – if we want more of them in the classroom, we could start here. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• Elsewhere in the conference whirlwind, our panel with partners The Difference at Lib Dem conference on measuring whole school inclusion was brilliantly lively. I enjoyed the opportunity to share the research Impetus has published over the last two years that gives a comprehensive view of the impact of lost learning and the ways this ripples out into qualifications, future opportunities, and ultimately young people's chances of thriving in adulthood as well as our solutions to this challenge. It'll be no surprise to anyone that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds bear some of the heaviest burdens and given that the poverty they grow up in is neither caused by them nor can be changed by them this fact seems particularly egregious. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• Children with additional needs shouldn't have to wait for a diagnosis to receive support. I've said it before and it bears repeating - when children are left without vital help, obstacles to learning become barriers - driving up absence and exclusion. A report from The Sutton Trust published this month exposes how a system that forces children to clear endless assessment hurdles before accessing support disproportionately harms those from working-class families. Wealthier parents can pay to speed up assessments to secure support; those without the means simply can't. Of course, no family should have to pay to get help for their child. This is why we've been gathering support from across the sector to ensure the upcoming Schools White Paper sets a new direction for schools – one where the system is incentivised and structured to meet the routine and predictable needs of the vast majority of children at the earliest opportunity. If the Government really is serious about breaking the link between family background and opportunity, it must tackle this double disadvantage and offer early universal and targeted support in all schools. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• Labour market statistics: The labour market seems to be ticking in the wrong direction, with vacancies down and both employment and unemployment up on the year. But despite seeing higher employment and lower economic inactivity compared to last year, the unemployment rate for 16–24-year-olds has increased by 0.7 percent. This age group continues to face poor labour market outcomes, which, as we know can have scarring effects on later life. It's clear, however, that this is a priority for government, with the Prime Minister announcing his ambition to have two thirds of under-25s securing higher education or a gold-standard apprenticeship, and the Chancellor announcing that every eligible unemployed young person on Universal Credit for 18 months will be provided guaranteed paid work. The Youth Employment Group – a coalition of over 300 youth employment organisations, which we co-chair – has long called for a youth guarantee so we await the details with interest. (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...

• The Financial Times' chief data reporter, John Burn-Murdoch is back with another whopper, this time looking into the graduate unemployment story. He argues that studies suggesting college graduates do worse in the labour market than their non-graduate contemporaries "make a crucial misstep", by only looking at people in their mid-twenties. Why? Because in the present labour market, a 23-year-old is particularly vulnerable to a hiring slowdown (the main reason for the current, cooler jobs climate). Meanwhile, Burn-Murdoch argues, those who entered the workforce several years ago started in a different and more buoyant labour market. As Burn-Murdoch writes "this is not a like-for-like" comparison. Instead, he suggests we should be comparing with the most appropriate group i.e. those who recently entered the workforce, regardless of age. On comparing these two groups, it seems those without the graduate premium are faring much worse – which doesn't surprise me at all. Across western Europe, young workers without a degree have seen an uptick in joblessness rates of 2.4 percentage points on average compared with 1.4 for recent graduates. He also makes another key point: that evidence for large-scale displacement of early-career jobs as a result of AI remains "conspicuous by its absence". While fears about AI (particularly for young people's learning) are well-founded, I'm cautious around the association with chronically high rates of youth unemployment. Burn-Murdoch is right, we don't need "exotic explanations" – when we are witnessing a cooling post-pandemic labour market, inflation, tax changes, rising employer costs and economic uncertainty. The argument of graduate versus non-graduate also feels like a red herring when we are seeing almost a million young people who are NEET – it might well be worth getting on with that first. (Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor)
• For about a decade I've been meaning to do a project reading a sample of pupil premium statements published by schools, to get a better sense of how the money is spent. You snooze, you lose – EEF have done it. With AI assistance they've coded more than 1200 statements to identify schools' top challenges as attainment in English, attendance, and social, emotional and mental health – all appearing in three quarters of statements. Pupil premium spending is split roughly evenly between high quality teaching and targeted academic support taking 36-37% of the budget (and wider strategies the rest, 28%). Lots of food for thought (not least I now need to refine my idea for a project in this space!). (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)
• I've been thinking a lot about evidence and impact recently (said no normal person, ever). This month, I was fortunate to speak on a panel as part of the Impetus Leadership Academy (ILA). Our brilliant chair asked a number of incisive questions, including how policymakers can be encouraged to take action, rather than getting stuck in endless cycles of research. For many of the thorniest issues across the education and youth employment system, we have a relatively good idea of what works. But is this work being used to inform policy? Most of the time, no. Undergoing impact evaluations, particularly as a smaller and less well-resourced organisation can be extremely time and resource intensive, as we often see at Impetus. So how can we ensure this isn't going to waste? This piece from the PBE (previously Pro Bono Economics) thinktank has drawn up a plan for a "Civil Society Evidence Organisation (CSEVO)" which would act as a central hub for evidence generated across the sector. Driving impact is a central tenet of our work here at Impetus, and PBE's observation that civil society organisations are "too often forced to prioritise short-term service delivery over long-term development" is something we see up close. The plans they've set out are ambitious, and securing funding may be tough in the current climate, but I'll certainly be keeping an eye on how this develops. (Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor)
• I joined a roundtable at Labour Party Conference to talk about all things lost learning. This is one of the (many) areas where over time I have come to realise I was wrong, having originally assumed levels of persistent absence would come down to pre-pandemic levels of their own accord. I talked about the need for a clear definition of inclusion that everyone's agreed on, and an ability to measure it, as well as the findings from our recent attendance research about how young people are weighing up the choice of whether to go to school on a day to day basis. Children and Young People Now have a full writeup – thanks to them for inviting me. (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)
• When the pandemic hit, I was working in a youth and community centre in a financially distressed part of the country and saw firsthand the impact the lockdown had on children, young people and families through volunteering at the local foodbank and organising positive activity parcels for children at home. Those experiences now exist in a hazy part of my mind, but I was somewhat reluctantly reminded of how profound an impact this time had on children and young people at Labour Party Conference as in panel after panel leaders talked about its toxic legacy on learning, wellbeing and development. This prompted me to read the report produced as part of the Covid-19 Inquiry into the pandemic experiences of children and young people. The loss of school – of the community, of teachers and of friends – resonates throughout as does the disproportionately negative impact lockdown had on young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)
• As someone who grew up in a predominantly White working class area and who still campaigns alongside residents there to improve the educational experiences and outcomes for children, I read the first set of findings from the Independent Inquiry into White Working-Class Educational Outcomes with keen interest. Polling found this group of children were more likely to not enjoy lessons than their peers, with a smaller percentage of their parents feeling that achieving good grades is part of being successful. It was reported that the Chair of the Inquiry said school leaders "cannot assume that our pupils or their parents share" the belief in "the value of education for its own sake, as well as recognising its power to open doors". But I'd ask – if you've never actually seen education in the narrow way this is often meant – the GCSE, A-Level and Degree trajectory – really happen to anyone in your family, or amongst your friends, or in your area – and, therefore, doesn't open anything - why would you believe? Policy change should make the social goods that are accrued in education a genuine possible outcome for young people from working class backgrounds, whatever their ethnicity – and we've argued that making the system more inclusive is fundamental to achieving this. The education secretary promises a ‘relentless focus on engagement', but the devil, as always, will be in the detail so we can't wait to see the upcoming White Paper. Belief in education can't be demanded - it must be earned through outcomes that working-class communities can see and feel. (Carlie Goldsmith, Senior Policy Advisor)

Look ahead

Curriculum and Assessment Review... Schools White Paper... maybe

Tuesday 11 November is labour market stats day

Thursday 20 November is NEET stats

Tuesday 25 November is The ERSA Employability Awards

Wednesday 26 November is Budget Day!

And finally... music

How much of a priority music should be in our education system and why is one of those perennial debates and, fundamentally, a values question. As is my wont, I'm going to ignore the values question and bring in empirical research instead! This paper looks at the causal impact of learning music and finds that "musical proficiency fosters key non-cognitive traits, including self-motivation, optimism and adaptability, while also mitigating symptoms of poor mental health, including depression and anxiety." I'm not quite ready to suggest schools spend all their pupil premium money on saxophones just yet, but it's a helpful fact to have in the back pocket for arguing with the music-is-a-waste-of-time philistines. (Ben Gadsby, Head of Policy and Research)