The Fair Education Alliance welcomes focus on education in levelling up strategy but tangible investment and broader action is needed to drive real change in left behind areas
The Fair Education Alliance welcomes the release of the flagship Levelling Up White Paper today, particularly the fact education is at the heart of the strategy and the government’s announcements to target investment in Britain’s forgotten communities.
Why education matters to levelling up
The Fair Education Alliance exists because fairness in education is crucial to fairness in wider society. Unfortunately, in 2022 education is far from fair: poorer pupils were more than 18 months behind their wealthier peers in 2019, and the pandemic has surely widened the gap. In some areas – including those targeted here – that gap is more than two years. If this inequality in education continues, social inequality will continue to entrench, making ‘levelling up’ impossible by the time young people reach adulthood. To achieve a more equal country across different areas we need to get education right for all young people wherever they live, however wealthy they are and whatever background they are from.
Our collective vision for a fairer and more inclusive education system is already being driven by a wide range of Fair Education Alliance organisations from across businesses, charity, social enterprise and the third sector. We want to work with Government to ensure that these cross-society efforts are supported and invested in fully to achieve our four priority areas:
· Developing the whole child including wellbeing, skills, and attainment
· Engaging parents and communities of all backgrounds in education
· Preparing young people for accessing employment, education, and training
· Supporting teachers and leaders in the most disadvantaged areas
What we welcome in the levelling up strategy
We welcome the focus on education today including:
· Ambitious targets for literacy and numeracy, which are foundational to every child’s education.
· Increased investment in 55 Education Investment Areas, which focuses resource on some of the areas where children have fallen the furthest behind.
· The £560 million National Youth Guarantee, focused on youth services and enrichment
· Retention payments to schools to keep teachers in high-priority subject focussed in areas of need, and;
· Support for schools ‘to address wider issues’ in Education Investment Areas.
What more would we have wanted to see
The White Paper fails to announce any new funding and falls short of the ambition we need to bring greater equality. Notably, to tackle literacy and numeracy, we need more focus on wellbeing and skills and ‘rounded’ support for young people outside and inside school. We ask for the Government to consider the following:
· We need more acknowledgement of the wider factors that impact literacy and numeracy progress– such as parental engagement, wellbeing, and cultural education. Our Literacy Advocacy working group has produced a manifesto laying out the scale of change needed to achieve true literacy for every child.
· Evidence does not support new specialist sixth-form free schools in Education Investment Areas as a way to narrow the gap between richer and poorer students. Selection in the state school system is likely to benefit a small proportion of pupils -- many of whom are already better off than their peers. Investment would be better directed toward a range of post-16 options, where additional funding is desperately needed.
· The 55 Education Investment Areas named contain a diversity of schools within them; more detail is needed about how resource will go to the schools that most need it.
We recognise the commitment being made. However, we hope that the Government can consider increasing the existing funds for policies outlined in the White Paper – particularly the ‘wider support for schools’ in Education Investment Areas - so that we can truly 'level-up' and create an inclusive education system.