Three cheers for FE

Announced without fanfare, the Department for Education has just published a fascinating report on what disadvantaged students studied and earned a decade or more after leaving school. The research tracks a cohort of 600,000 state-educated students who took their GCSEs in 2005 and had to cope with the distractions of David Cameron winning the Tory Party leadership, Charles tying the knot with Camilla and Kelly Clarkson topping the charts.

What we learned

Within the cohort of 600,000, roughly a fifth of students were classed as disadvantaged (for the purposes of this study, this was defined as being in receipt of Free School Meals at any point between the ages of 11-15). Unsurprisingly, disadvantaged students fared worse than their more privileged peers: only 14% earned over £25,000 a decade later compared to 32% of students in the non-disadvantaged group.

If there are glimmers of hope, they are to be found in the work of Further Education Colleges. The most common qualification route for disadvantaged students was achievement at level 2 (GCSE grades 9-4) or level 3 (A-Level or equivalent). By the age of 25, 46% of disadvantaged students achieved level 2 or 3 at FE compared to 8% in school. The largest volume of disadvantaged male students who progressed to high earnings did so after achieving an FE qualification route.

What we think

Today - November 20 - the Association of Colleges meet for their annual conference in Birmingham. The report shows, once again, that they have much to be proud of: often unacknowledged, FECs are true engines of social mobility. Even more impressively, their work with students from disadvantaged backgrounds has been achieved against a backdrop of shrinking budgets. A recent IFS report showed that funding for FE and sixth form colleges has been cut "much more sharply" than any other area of education.

For many students, the royal road to social mobility runs through their local college. To support FECs, we need not only to ensure fair resourcing but also to make sure that partners across the education sector understand their value. An interim evaluation of the government's flagship Widening Participation programme - the National Collaborative Outreach Programme - found that universities often struggled to engage FECs.

If we want to improve the chances of disadvantaged students, we need to put our FECs centre-stage.

Our response to the Education Committee's "Value for money in Higher Education" report

We welcome a number of the findings in the House of Commons Education Committee’s report: Value for money in higher education.

The report highlights a series of challenges that are key to ensuring that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are able to access, succeed, and benefit from Higher Education.

We fully agree with the Committee's position that the current system of funding Higher Education is "widely misunderstood". In seeking to promote "better public understanding" we endorse an approach which provides funding for the enhanced training of teachers and careers advisors, and provides support for other key influencers including parents. As a recent CfE report (2018) for the Office for Studies pointed out, "support[ing] the supporters" is crucial if we are to make progress towards the goal of fair access.

A number of the report's recommendations focus on the provision of greater data for students including:

1. more information on contextual admissions policies,

2. better statistics on labour market outcomes,

3. the publication of a breakdown of how universities and HEIs spend tuition fees.

While we approve of these objectives, we believe that it is essential for policymakers to emphasise the importance of structured advice and guidance alongside more sources of information.

The Careers and Enterprise Company's "Moments of Choice" paper (2016) points out that "young people are presented with a choice environment in which attempting to act rationally looks like an irrational choice. It is simply too difficult." The response to “too much choice” should not be “too much information”.

If we are to support young people in making difficult decisions, we need to ensure that networks of support are in place so that young people are provided with the information they require and the guidance they urgently need.

“Access Champions has encouraged students to take progression seriously”

We work with schools and colleges all around the country, in all sorts of circumstances. Here we catch up with one of our Access Champions schools in the West Midlands, which we’ve been working with over the past few months as part of our work with the Sutton Trust.

St Edmund Campion Catholic School is an average-sized comprehensive in Erdington, Birmingham, and we’ve been working with Sandra Griffiths, who is the Post-16 Learning Leader at the school.

The sixth form has 130 students on roll. 28% of students are in receipt of free school meals, and a high percentage of sixth form students would be the first generation of their family to go to HE.

This is one of the key things we look out for when working with schools, as there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that family background is a key factor in improving social mobility.

Early on in the programme we ask Access Champions to look at how they currently support students when choosing to apply to university, and help them identify quick changes to make to those systems that could make an immediate impact on students.

One such change that Sandra made was to move progression activities, such as personal statement and reference writing, to earlier in the school year. A small change, but one that has had a powerful impact: students now get more support with admissions interviews.

This means they have more confidence, and improving mock interviews for competitive courses, such as Medicine and Dentistry, had led to two students getting offers to study Medicine this year, as well as others getting offers to study Nursing and Teaching.

On top of those simple changes, we also help Access Champions to look more long-term. Sandra’s plan for progression is to support students with informed decision-making and to organise access to HE days for Year 12 students in collaboration with local HE institutions.

We’re really looking forward to seeing how those plans come to fruition over the coming weeks and months, as this year’s university application cycle begins in earnest.