Higher education may be a path to prosperity, but when Greg Burke, the director of Sheffield Hallam University’s ground-breaking social mobility programme, meets South Yorkshire school children they often quip: “It’s not for people like us.” The quote encapsulates an aspiration and attainment gap in a northern region with relatively high levels of deprivation – a legacy of deindustrialisation in the 1980s and later austerity.
Regional inequalities are a key factor in educational achievement. “In South Yorkshire people can be so isolated from opportunity that they cannot even envision how they would grasp it,” says Burke, with feeling. But he’s leading South Yorkshire Futures (SYF), a programme aiming to boost the region’s relatively low social mobility through increasing attainment, and supporting progression into higher education and work.
The government-backed scheme was launched in 2017 by Sheffield Hallam University in partnership with local authorities and schools to help young people achieve their potential and have a successful life. “We want to build up their social capital (networks) by bringing them together so they can capitalise on their academic attainment,” says Burke.
Highlighting the need for the programme is data showing that students in the Yorkshire and Humberside region are less likely to achieve good GCSEs and progress to higher education than peers with postcodes in south-east England and London.
But according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, going to university provides a £100,000 lifetime income boost, which underscores the positive impact higher education can have on a young person’s life.
“Where you grow up should not define your future,” says Dan Jarvis, MP for Barnsley Central and mayor of the Sheffield city region, who backs SYF. “Education has a fundamentally important role to play in improving social mobility.”
But even before school, attainment gaps are apparent between children of different backgrounds. On average, at the age of five disadvantaged children are four months behind their more privileged peers in language development. The gap grows wider as they get older and this has been attributed to a lack of learning opportunities at home.
“All children need a solid early years foundation that they can then build on as they go through school,” says Burke.
Not having access to this has a knock-on effect later in life, with children with a poor vocabulary more than twice as likely to be unemployed as those with a good vocabulary. “Children’s life opportunities are largely shaped in their first 1,000 days,” says Jarvis. “By the time they get to school they could already be on the back foot.”
To give children the best possible start in life and lay a foundation for them to thrive, SYF is leading a £1m project with local authorities to revamp speech and language services in South Yorkshire. It’s reviewing current provision to highlight areas for improvement.
In addition, SYF is working with Jarvis to expand across South Yorkshire the Children’s University, a nationwide initiative to improve uptake of extracurricular learning. Through the scheme, children take part in activities, from choir to hiking, and earn credits towards awards.
It proved effective at raising attainment in Sheffield, which has had a Children’s University since 2008. In a study, participants made two extra months of progress in reading and maths compared with children at schools that were not part of the scheme.
High-quality teachers are central to such progress, but a national recruitment crisis threatens to hinder further gains in attainment. So the SYF convened training providers and schools in South Yorkshire to create a blueprint for raising employment and retention.
Burke says: “We have transformed the approach. It’s much more focused on selling the profession, which is incredibly rewarding, rather than the training.”
SYF holds events where prospective educators receive advice and support on getting into the profession from current teachers, including how to apply for funding. A survey of those who attended last year’s event found that 95% said they were more likely to apply to a teacher training course. “We are making sure schools have fewer teacher vacancies. Educators contribute heavily to attainment levels,” Burke says.
He adds that, in all likelihood, this contributed to an 8% increase in postgraduate trainee teachers recruited in Yorkshire and Humberside between 2017/18 and 2019/20.
These gains are key to raising the quality of schooling: the region has the lowest proportion of primary schools rated good or outstanding by Ofsted in all of England.
One teacher working hard to raise education standards and outcomes is Pepe Di’Iasio, headteacher at Wales high school in Rotherham. His institution is one of many that joined a new partnership programme with the university and the Linacre Institute, a charity that strives to give pupils in northern state schools the confidence to apply to elite universities.
Di’Iasio says many do not bother to apply, assuming they won’t get in or won’t be able to afford to study away from home, deterred by steep living costs on top of tuition fees.
But he adds that some 50 year-12 students from across Rotherham have joined the programme, which starts this summer. “If we bring them together to look beyond what they think is possible, they may even raise the aspirations of students who didn’t gain access to the programme,” says Di’Iasio.
It’s just one example of how SYF is striving to give all young people in South Yorkshire a fighting chance of achieving their true potential, regardless of their background.
