What a university summer school did for me…

Anne-Marie Canning, the Head of the Widening Participation department at King’s College London, was one of those students who won a place on a life-changing university summer school. Here’s her story.

“I owe a lot to the old, creaky fax machine in Doncaster that whizzed off my Sutton Trust Summer School application in the nick of time about ten years ago. I was in the common room late on a Friday afternoon when my teacher pushed a form in front of me with the words, ‘I’ve just found this summer school thing and I think you should apply. We’ve got half an hour, so hurry!’ I didn’t have much time to think about which course to apply for so ticked the thing I liked doing most at that point in time: reading books, English Literature.

My mum was over the moon when a letter came through the post telling me I’d won a place, and I promptly set about reading all the books by authors I’d never heard of, like James Joyce’s ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’. They were not easy books to read but it made me realise that the summer school meant business and would be intellectually challenging.

Fast-forward to August and there I was in the glorious summer sunshine at the gates of the University. I felt a kick of homesickness in my stomach but steadied my nerves and went to the sign in desk, where I met by a group of friendly undergraduate students. They showed me to my room and told me what I could expect from the week ahead.

The summer school involved all sorts of exciting things I’d never had the chance to do before, like watch a Shakespeare play, debate my ideas, listen to a lecture, have a tutorial and experience the freedom of an entire library. And as well as learning a lot about my chosen subject I also learnt a lot about myself during that week.

I learnt that there were lots of like-minded people out there, and that they were just as clever (if not more clever!) than me. I also learnt that my northern accent was much, much stronger than I ever imagined it to be! I made some good friends, too, and we all ended the week with a swanky dinner. I went home happy and determined to work hard and get good AS-level grades.

That Autumn I applied to lots of highly selective universities and made sure I talked about my summer school experience in my personal statement. The Autumn after I joined the University of York as a student of English and Related Literatures, and ten years later I am now the head of the team that will be running the Sutton Trust Summer School at King’s College London.

This blog post first appeared on the King’s College website. 

 

What Works – A winning formula

Peter Lampl welcomes the designation of the Sutton Trust and EEF as the What Works Centre for Education

This week the Sutton Trust was, together with the Education Endowment Foundation, designated the What Works evidence centre for education by the Government. There will be six leading evidence centres and we and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) have been selected to lead on education and health respectively. The centres will be the first port of call for advice on the latest research on the impact of Government programmes.

This is recognition of the Sutton Trust’s focus on evaluation and research in all the work it does. We have always aspired to subject our programmes to robust review. And as an independent foundation we have used evidence to challenge or support the Government’s education policies.

The Trust has funded over 120 research studies in the areas of social mobility and education. But it is primarily a ‘do tank’. Our flagship summer school programme for example is now the largest national university access scheme – but it is also the most scrutinised programme in this field.

We know they have impact: over three quarters (76%) of summer school attendees go on to a leading university, compared with only 55% of students with similar backgrounds who aren’t on the programme. We also know they are highly cost-effective: when Boston Consulting Group did a cost-benefit analysis of the Trust’s programmes – comparing the lifetime earnings benefits for the individuals on the schemes with the money spent – summer schools were among the programmes resulting in returns of over 20:1.

It was these disciplines – assessing the evidence on what works, assessing cost-benefit, but also ensuring that the research results are presented in a clear accessible way – that underpinned the Teaching and Learning Toolkit the Trust developed for schools on what works best at improving the results of children from poorer backgrounds. The Toolkit has now been used by thousands of schools across the country, and underpins the work of the Education Endowment Foundation.

When we established the EEF in 2011 as lead foundation with Impetus our vision was that it was going to embrace the Sutton Trust’s principles and become a gigantic do tank. The aim was to improve the results of the poorest children in our most challenging schools. But it would also have the freedom to experiment, innovate and rigorously evaluate projects and scale up those that were cost effective.

Two years on I am pleased to say that this has become the reality. To date the EEF has awarded £24.4 million to 55 projects working with over 275,000 pupils in over 1,400 schools across England. It has commissioned over 40 randomised research trials in our schools – the gold standard for evaluations on what works. Over the coming years these studies will add greatly to our knowledge of what interventions are successful in the classroom.

But with research, you have to take the rough with the smooth. Not all the Sutton Trust’s research findings have been welcome. In 2005 the Trust jointly funded a five-year study with the Department for Business, Innovation, and Skills and the College Board into the US SAT aptitude test as a potential addition tool in the selection of candidates for universities.

In particular the National Foundation for Educational Research study aimed to find out whether the SAT test could identify highly able non-privileged students whose potential was not being reflected in A-levels because of their circumstances. After five years tracking the results of thousands sixth formers who then attending university, the study concluded that the SAT added little extra information to that provided by A-levels.

If the Government is true to its word on ‘evidence-based policy’ then it will have to face up to this reality. The research may not always confirm prior convictions or favoured policies, and almost always throws up some unexpected results. That’s why I think it is important the EEF and the Sutton Trust remain fiercely independent and make public all the evidence we produce. As the Government’s What Works evidence centre for education, these will be our guiding principles.

Increasing social mobility in UK financial services

Lee Elliott Major on why the City needs to improve social mobility for economic as well as social reasons.

Thomas Wood is what the Sutton Trust is all about. A bright state school boy whose parents had never experienced higher education, he wasn’t sure whether study, let alone at a prestigious university, was for him. One week at the Sutton Trust summer school changed all that. Like many of the pupils with modest family backgrounds taking part, this week-long taster of university transformed Thomas’s life. He went on to gain a place at Nottingham University. During his degree he got an internship at a major bank. Now Thomas is an analyst at Citigroup, leading a successful career in the City.

Sadly, Thomas’s story of upward mobility remains the exception not the rule. Britain’s low social mobility, and the shocking waste of talent that goes with it, is arguably the biggest social challenge of our times. No more is this true than in the financial services sector. Research from the Sutton Trust into the country’s professional elites found that nearly six in ten (57%) of leading people in financial services attended private schools – which educate just 7% of pupils. Less than one in ten had attended a state comprehensive school. The remainder were educated at grammar or former direct grant schools.

It’s figures like these that motivate the work of the Sutton Trust. Founded and led by the successful philanthropist Sir Peter Lampl, the Trust’s aim is simple: to improve social mobility through education. The Trust is expanding its programmes, working with a range of partners, to provide life-transforming opportunities for talented pupils from low and middle income homes. The Trust’s summer schools are now the largest national access scheme for universities – benefiting nearly 2000 students this year at nine prestigious universities.

The Trust’s Pathways to Law programme, supported by the Legal Education Foundation and leading law firms, meanwhile supports state school pupils thinking about a career in law. It works with students over a number of years: from sixth form onwards, crucially enabling students to get work experience in law firms.

Could a similar programme be established to attract such students into the City? This is the question driving work by Boston Consulting Group for the Trust. Their study of the financial services sector has uncovered many insights. While there are laudable schemes across a diverse sector, support for non-privileged students can be fragmented, with little evaluation of its impact. In major banks, efforts to improve social mobility are not linked to their actual recruitment. The full business case for social mobility has not been made.

The Trust will be sharing its findings with leading organisations across the sector. But the challenge for us is already clear: how can the City work effectively to ensure that it benefits from more talented youngsters like Thomas Wood in the future?

This post first appeared on TheCityUK blog

The Trouble With Boys

Conor Ryan reflects on David Willetts’ latest initiative to persuade more white working class boys to study at university.

Universities minister David Willetts was quick off the blocks for 2013 with his ideas on how to encourage white working class boys to go to university.

Young women are now a third more likely than young men to go to university, and there is a three-fold gap in applications between the poorest and richest neighbourhoods. In an article and interview for The Independent, Mr Willetts said that the education system “seems to make it harder for boys and men to face down the obstacles in the way of learning.

He told the paper that the Office for Fair Access  “look at a range of disadvantaged groups – social class and ethnicity, for instance – when it comes to access agreements, so I don’t see why they couldn’t look at white, working-class boys.”

The Minister has a point. Growing research in recent years suggests that white working class boys perform less well than many minority ethnic communities in their test and exam results.

Stephen Machin and Sandra McNally, in a 2006 LSE study, identified a stronger gender gap in secondary than primary schools. They argued that “the importance of coursework in the GCSE examination is likely to be a key explanation for the emergence of the gender gap at age 16.” They also identified differences in teaching and learning styles, and modes of assessment.

In 2007, Joseph Rowntree Foundation research, conducted by Robert Cassen and Geeta Kingdon, with some Sutton Trust input, found that nearly half of all students defined as low achievers were White British males. White British students on average – boys and girls – were more likely than other ethnic groups to persist in low achievement.

National College research by Denis Mongon and Christopher Chapman from Manchester University with the National Union of Teachers in 2008 suggested that some school leaders were better than others at narrowing this gap. They suggested a focus on clear strategies including relentless application of the highest standards in teaching and attention to data detail were key where the gap was lower.

They rightly pointed out that the social class gap is much wider than any gender gap, yet the data suggest that white working class boys are at an even greater disadvantage than white working class girls. This lower attainment can translate into lower ambitions, as reflected in applications to Sutton Trust summer schools – an important route for many low and middle income young people into leading universities.

Sutton Trust summer schools target the first child in families who might go to university. In 2012, there were 5,295 applicants from girls and 2,712 from boys, a ratio of 2:1. Even with a slightly higher acceptance rate among boys than girls, 62% of attendees were girls and just 38% boys.

Recent exam data bears out both the gender and socio-economic gaps. The 2012 Key Stage Test data suggests that 60% of White British boys eligible for free school meals reach level 2 in English and Maths, compared with 67% of White British FSM girls. This is larger than the three point gender gap among all other pupils. However, there is a six-point gender gap across all FSM pupils. The big difference is in English, where the gender gap among FSM pupils is 12 points.

On the main 5 GCSE indicator (including English and Maths), 2011  data (2012 data is due later this month). shows that 26% of White British FSM boys reached this standard compared with 32% of girls, a slightly smaller gender gap than exists for all other pupils, but one consistent with the gap at age eleven. On overall performance, only traveller boys perform worse now at GCSE. 33% of Black Caribbean boys, for example, now reach the 5 GCSE standard (though overall White British students perform ten points better than Black Caribbean students)

So what can we do? David Willetts is surely right to want universities to provide concerted help through summer schools over several years to lift aspirations. The Trust is planning to use this approach through programmes with Kent academies and working with University College London to support highly able pupils from Year 8 onwards over five years.

Of course, Michael Gove’s changes to the exam system and curriculum – more facts, more end-of-course testing – may reduce the overall gender gap, as girls are believed to perform better in coursework.

But, in addition to OFFA looking more closely at the data, a more concerted focus on white working class boys could also be productive. When the Labour government targeted Afro-Caribbean achievement in the late 1990s, after the Stephen Lawrence murder, it set clear goals and a strong focus that has particularly benefited FSM pupils.  The London Challenge will have been of particular benefit, with its strong focus on leadership, teaching and data.

Today, our sister charity, the Education Endowment Foundation is testing the most effective ways to lifting achievement for pupils in receipt of free school meals, and has the potential to make a real difference in narrowing attainment gaps. 70% of its target group is White British.

The experience of minority ethnic communities suggests cultural change is also important. Bangladeshi students used to perform relatively poorly in schools. Now they out-perform White British students overall, and 56% of Bangladeshi students eligible for free school meals – including 53% of FSM boys – reach the five GCSE benchmark. That change owes a lot to a community’s desire to learn, backed by parents and teachers working to meet that desire.

Harnessing a similar will to learn in white working class communities must be a part of the solution to the low attainment of too many of their boys – and girls.

On your bike – social mobility outside London

James Turner says that a priority is spreading the riches of opportunity beyond the capital

A young man from a deprived borough of London, with immigrant parents, was describing his aspiration to read Law at Oxbridge. He listed the opportunities he’d accessed over the last two years in pursuit of this dream: an internship programme, a leadership development initiative, one of our Sutton Trust summer schools – and he was being mentored by a senior partner at one of the world’s leading law firms.

It was a tremendous story of determination, aspiration and – very likely – social mobility.

But a question struck me.  How likely is it that he’d have these same chances if he lived not in Hackney, but in, say, Blackpool, Scunthorpe or Hastings? Almost certainly nil.  And our society would be poorer as a result.

It is always striking how much activity is focused in London. There are good reasons for this – London has poverty and inequality; it is the centre of business for many of the wealthiest and most active corporations who sponsor much good work; and there is no better place to get your work noticed than within spitting distance of Whitehall.

But London’s school results are out shining other urban areas.  Its university progression rates are higher.  Spend per head in schools is generally greater – even before you factor in the spending of charities and corporates.

And some of the most pressing issues of social mobility lie outside the capital – in coastal towns, ex-industrial heartlands in The Midlands and the North, and in forgotten rural areas.  Not only do these areas face material poverty, but often cultural deprivation too.  The signs of aspiration a young Londoner may see out of his or her window – Canary Wharf, The City, the towers of Westminster – seem a million miles away from a crumbling social housing estate in the North East.

The challenge for organisations like ours is to reach these communities directly through our work – and to make it feasible and cost effective for others in the capital to access this national pool of untapped talent.  It is a redistribution of opportunities from the capital outwards.

There are some good schemes underway. The Social Mobility Foundation’s programme to provide City internships to disadvantaged young people from the regions is a great example – and we plan something similar thing in the legal sector next year as part of Pathways to Law. And one of the advantages our summer schools bring to London universities is a truly national reach – with students recruited from all corners of the UK.

But there also needs to be a more systematic way – through funding, partnership work and collaboration – of ensuring activity is not focussed on a few lucky ones, but spread where it is most needed. The Education Endowment Foundation is doing sterling work.  The projects it has supported range from Bournemouth in the South to County Durham in the North, via almost every local authority region in between.

Social mobility is about more than turning on the tap of talent for one city, important though that is. The country is awash with young men and women with great potential who equally deserve a chance to shine.

The Sutton Trust at 15

By Sir Peter Lampl

It is fifteen years since I set up the Sutton Trust to improve social mobility in this country. I wanted to ensure that bright children from low or middle income homes had a fair chance of going to a top university and into a leading profession or occupation.

There has been progress in the last fifteen years, but our elites remain largely closed to those without the right school tie and networks, as our research report based on the birthday lists of national newspapers highlighted again this week.

Perhaps most importantly there is now a political consensus that improving social mobility is the major social issue of our time. The 120 research projects and over 200 programmes that we have funded have helped put it there.

At our anniversary lunch on Tuesday, which was attended by 200 supporters and allies of the Trust, it was great to be joined both by David Blunkett – the secretary of state with whom I first worked as chair of the Trust – and Michael Gove, who gave a characteristically eloquent and generous speech about our work.

We have had strong support from all the leaders of all three main political parties over the years, and I was delighted with the generous comments made by David Cameron and Ed Miliband for our anniversary video.

The Trust’s first major programme – university summer schools at leading universities – have helped to narrow the participation gap at our elite universities. In 1997, 49 per cent of entrants to Oxbridge were from state schools; now it is 59 per cent, though it is still below the two-thirds from state schools when I was there.

Recent research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that there has also been some narrowing of the gap in higher education participation more widely: at age 18 or 19 the gap between state school students from the most and least deprived fifths of the population fell from 40 percentage points in 2004-05 to 37 percentage points in 2009-10.

At the same time, some professions, notably law, are now reaching out more to young people of all backgrounds with the help of programmes like Pathways to Law which we developed in partnership with the College of Law and major law firms. More generally, the quality of teaching and leadership is better in urban schools, especially in London.

But we still have a long way to go to open up opportunities. This week’s report showed again how our independent schools educate 7 per cent of the population, but 44 per cent of leading people were privately educated. More than 12 per cent of our elites went to just ten independent schools, with one in 25 at Eton alone.

Our schools are still the most socially segregated among advanced nations. Our independent day schools remain closed to 90 per cent of families who can’t afford the fees, unlike the situation when I was growing up, when 70% of them were principally state funded.  That is why we continue to argue for a state-funded Open Access scheme which half the independent day schools have said they would adopt if funding were available. This would transform mobility at the top.

So what about the future? Improving social mobility is like the war on cancer. It will never be won. Yet with the right research, the right programmes and working closely with government, we can improve mobility and make a real difference to many more lives.

So I’m determined that the Sutton Trust will continue to provide the vehicle for that work, long into the future.

We’re expanding our work, so we can do the research and undertake the programmes that will make a difference from early childhood right through to access to the professions. We’re keen to build on existing partnerships and develop new ones.

Working together, we have made a big difference. I hope that we will continue to make an even bigger difference.