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Teaching too focused on university applicants - Think tank warns of ‘forgotten half’ of young people.

Secondary schools across the country are failing to provide appropriate teaching for the 50 per cent of all young people who do not go on to higher education according to a new report from the think tank Demos.

With damning findings for the school system, The Forgotten Half calls for greater cooperation between schools and local business communities and for Ofsted to judge schools on work-related learning strategies to make sure that young people who don’t go to university get the same support to enter the labour market.

The report, produced in partnership with the Private Equity Foundation, criticises the tendency to privilege ‘teaching to the test’ over the development of skills essential for the workplace such as communication and practical skills.  Work-related learning was also found to be low quality and young people failed to benefit from compulsory Year 10 work experience due to poor links with local businesses and a failure to join up work experience with classroom learning.  It also found that schools severely undervalue the importance of part-time work, after school clubs and volunteering in building young people’s skills, experience and CVs.

The Forgotten Half found that careers advice in schools was biased towards attending university and that little or no information was provided about apprenticeships or opportunities to work in the local area.

Jonathan Birdwell, author of the report said:
“Our schools are teaching just half of the population. The education system needs to be less focused on pushing young people through the hoops of assessment that lead on to higher education, and more on equipping them with the skills to enter and progress through the labour market.”

Recommendations from the report include:

Ofsted should make career advice and employer engagement key components of assessing schools and colleges, encourage schools to provide career advice earlier than Key Stage 3 and assess school management on whether there is someone in the senior leadership team responsible for employer engagement and employability skills.

The Department of Education should work with schools to develop Diplomas as the framework for a high-quality vocational curriculum that includes teaching maths and English within practical contexts and links practical learning opportunities to local businesses.

Young people should be discouraged from studying NVQ at levels 1 and 2 and any other low level vocational qualification that have been shown to have little labour market value and sometimes lead to negative wage returns.

The ‘targeted support’ remit of the failing Connexions service should be taken over by charity and private sector organisations that can provide personal coaching models similar to Bolton Lads & Girls’ Club or reforms in Hamburg, Germany. Schools must undergo a culture shift to open up more routes of cooperation between schools, businesses and charities.

Work experience must be improved with greater preparation before the placement and the extension of work experience from two weeks to three weeks in some cases, as well as offering work experience earlier in Key Stage 3 so that young people can be better informed about their educational choices pre and post-16.

The development of practical skills should be incorporated into the teaching of the National Curriculum, including more project-based learning and community-based projects. This should not be through prescription from Whitehall but by the development and diffusion of innovations made by leading schools.

Schools and colleges must encourage extracurricular activities that help build life skills for employment and add to young people’s CVs.

Invest in mentoring schemes modelled on Big Brother, Big Sister for children between the ages of 8 and 11 from disadvantaged backgrounds to help them make the transition to secondary school.

The Government must address fundamental weaknesses in some apprenticeship programmes with the aim of expanding these programmes. The focus must be on longer, employer-led, largely self-financing schemes, with more ambition over formal educational elements.

Dr Matt Grist, co-author of the report said:
“What the ‘forgotten half’ need is not the endless rebranding and reorganisation of qualifications. Rather, they need opportunities to learn the skills that will be valuable in today’s tough labour market. That means much better provision of practical learning, as well as more creative approaches to the teaching of maths and English.”

Shaks Ghosh, CEO of the Private Equity Foundation said:
"This is a wake up call – as a society we are failing 50 per cent of our young people and we each have a vital role to play in supporting this forgotten half.

“Well-intentioned teachers strive, often in difficult circumstances, to do the very best for their pupils but many kids are leaving school holding a piece of paper which helps them only in joining the NEET waiting list. Voluntary organisations are providing vital services yet many young people have entered a revolving door of service dependency. Businesses complain that young people do not have the premium skills to make them employable. Alongside Government, we can all create the step change together.

“This report understands and answers these issues. It is a call to action: we must all make sure we are on the side of the forgotten half.”

Notes to Editors

Earlier this month Demos warned of a future boom in the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET).  Research found that the numbers of NEETs could reach 1.2 million by 2015 without action to tackle the high levels of exclusion of young people from the workforce.  Demos recommends a tapered National Insurance break for businesses employing people under the age of 26 to encourage the creation of entry-level positions.

In England, 16 per cent of children make no progress at all in English and maths between the ages of 7 and 11, and 8 per cent leave primary school with very low levels of literacy and/or numeracy. The percentage of young people reaching expected levels for writing at 11 years old, having increased from 54 per cent in 1999 to 67 per cent in 2006, has reached a plateau at 67 per cent between 2006 and 2009. At secondary school, only 57 per cent of young people achieved five A*–C grades in maths at GCSE and only 27 per cent of young people on free school meals achieved five A*–C grades including maths and English. In a 2007 CBI survey 52 per cent of employers were dissatisfied with the basic literacy of school leavers and 50 per cent with basic numeracy skills.

Despite the rise of service sector jobs, the proportion of young people going into sales-related employment has fallen significantly since 1997 – from 32 per cent to under 10 per cent. Similarly, the percentage of young people in secretarial or clerical work has fallen from 13.4 per cent to 4.7 per cent. On the other hand, the percentage of young people going into labouring and other elementary occupations has risen from 3.5 per cent to 21.9 per cent.

These shifts in employment patterns for 16–18-year-olds suggest that those who are entering the labour market are doing so in dead-end jobs, which offer no progression and training. Although this provides some minimal protection from future unemployment, it does not offer these young people the chance to progress through the labour market via either training or in-work progression. This leaves many young people entering the labour market at 16–18 exposed to years of low wages and employment instability.

Case Studies:

Big Brother, Big Sister

In Germany, the Big Brother Big Sister (BBBS) mentoring programme provides an example of a holistic, charity-led programme: it works with schools as well as parents, with mentoring sessions taking place outside the school environment. Young people aged 6–11 participate (with an average age of 10), though it can extend to the age of 16. In the USA, BBBS works more closely with schools and teachers to identify young people who are at risk and could benefit from mentoring, but in Germany mentoring more often takes place outside school. This difference was attributed to shorter school days in Germany than in the USA, and less engagement among head teachers due to of lack of time. As a result, BBBS in Germany works more closely with parents, requiring a greater time investment to ensure parents’ involvement and to mitigate potential concerns and feelings of jealousy among parents towards mentors.

There is a body of research analysing the impact of one-to-one mentoring schemes on the young people who participate. According to the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation, vulnerable young people who receive mentoring at an early age:
• are more likely to have better educational outcomes (better school attendance, achievement and attitudes towards education)
• become more engaged with school (and have a lower chance of exclusion)
• show an increase in self-esteem and confidence
• increase their liking for school and have a more positive attitude.

Research on BBBS in the USA found that young people who took part in BBBS:
• had better motivation and performance
• had improved communication and social skills
• showed a more positive attitude to life and future
• were less likely to use drugs and alcohol, or be delinquent.

One of the key elements of the success of BBBS is the attention paid to matching mentors with mentees. The Hamburg BBBS office has two ‘mentoring consultants’ who work on matching young people and mentors based on interests, personalities and expectations. These consultants tend to have backgrounds in psychology or pedagogical experience and operate on what was described as the ‘four eyes’ principle, where two people make all decisions. They also have a database system that facilitates the matching process.

BBBS emphasises to teachers and other partners that the scheme is not designed for ‘fire fighting’ severe manifest problems amongst young people. Rather, its goal is preventative – targeting those at risk of disengagement. Young people might qualify for the scheme if they need additional support because of poverty, if they live in a single parent household, or if they have a migrant background, for example. The ratio of children from migrant backgrounds is about 40 per cent in most German cities, and this is reflected in the children who participate in BBBS: 60 per cent of participants have a migrant background, with 47 nationalities in the programme. Approximately half of all participants are children from single parent homes.

Despite BBBS being the largest mentoring programme in the world, it is surprising that it does not currently operate in the UK. Our research suggests there is a gap in supporting young people in the transition from primary to secondary school, and that the creation of BBBS (or a similar one-to-one mentoring programme) in the UK could help to support young people in their transitions.

Bolton Lads & Girls Club

Bolton Lads Club was founded in 1889, becoming Bolton Lads & Girls Club (BLGC) in the 1980s. It has strong brand recognition in Bolton and the surrounding area as a result of its long history and reputation, and its coordinators felt this was an important element of their success. BLGC first began running a pathways2success programme in 2008.

The programme is based in schools and seeks to work with young people deemed at risk of becoming NEET post-16 whom Connexions are unable to work with. In 2011 BLGC worked in five schools in Bolton and had the capacity to work with up to 400 young people. Previously, BLGC worked with students in Years 10 and 11 but has recently had to restrict its services to those in Year 11. Students are referred to the scheme by teachers and others in the school, and meet BLGC coordinators who introduce the programme. Coordinators then meet the young person’s parents in order to get their agreement about their child’s participation; the scheme is completely voluntary. Once everyone agrees to participate, the coordinator carries out an initial assessment with the student to determine their interests, aspirations, the challenges they face and areas of development that are important. Each student undertakes a ‘scale-based’ review every three months to assess the development of the student’s personal skills – what we term in this report character capabilities.

BLGC maintains a password-protected database for all the participants in order to track each individual’s progress and ensure data capture. The programme is divided into discrete pathways through which the young person progresses. The first is the Discover strand, which helps to engage participants in fun and exciting extracurricular activities in order to develop confidence and positive attitudes. Activities include climbing and football. The second pathway is called the Evolve strand. At this point the young person is meets an enterprise coordinator in order to make a plan for their education, employment or training beyond school. The enterprise coordinators work with local companies to provide work placements for their participants; for example, those in the scheme have visited the O2 and Warburtons, and these businesses have also provided work experience. Enterprise coordinators work with the young person to create a CV, practise for job interviews and provide other advice about the world of work. They also, crucially, provide young people with travel to interviews in the BLGC van if they are unable to get there otherwise.

In the schools that work with BLGC, the NEET figure has been reduced by an average of 3 per cent, with the biggest reduction being from 7.9 per cent to 1.8 per cent of school leavers NEET. There is also a 91 per cent retention rate for the young people participating.

The success of Bolton Lads & Girls Club’s pathways2success is attributed to three core aspects of the programme. First, as BLGC is funded by a range of supporters and not the local authority, they have freedom from ‘red tape’, which enables them to provide their services in a flexible manner which other organisations would find challenging. This independence also allows the organisation to challenge schools and mainstream advice. Second, participants are encouraged to meet their coordinator once a week. This frequency allows them to develop a closer relationship with the coordinator, and enables the coordinator to provide better information and guidance suited to the young person’s particular interests and needs. Finally, one of the participants we spoke to felt that the BLGC staff themselves were key to the success. This was mainly because they were perceived as young, fun and generally not like teachers or careers advisers, to whom participants felt they couldn’t relate to as easily.

The Forgotten Half was funded by the Private Equity Foundation. The Private Equity Foundation is a leading venture philanthropy fund that works with carefully selected charities to support disadvantaged children and empower young people to reach their full potential. Its mission is to reduce the number of young people who become NEET (not in education, employment or training) and its investments include not just money but also pro bono expertise from the private equity community.  By sharing its members’ business skills, PEF can maximise the social return on its donors’ investments and help charities achieve a step change in their impact to ensure even more young people benefit.  Further information is available at http://www.privateequityfoundation.org/

The Forgotten Half by Jonathan Birdwell, Matt Grist and Julia Margo is available to download  HERE

The authors are available for comment and interview. For more information on the report or media requests and case studies, contact:

Beatrice Karol Burks
Beatrice.burks@demos.co.uk
020 7367 6325
079 2947 493