Class Divide responds to ‘Better Outcomes, Better Lives’ - Brighton and Hove’s draft strategy for tackling educational disadvantage
On the 10th of January a draft of Better Outcomes, Better Lives will be presented to Brighton and Hove City Council’s Children, Young People and Skills Committee on Monday the 13th of January.
Here councillors will have the opportunity to give their views on the draft document that aims to ensure that the least advantaged young people in our city leave school or college with a ‘positive relationship with education’ and to bring levels of attainment of this group of pupils in line with, and then exceeding the national average. Councillors will be asked to endorse the strategy before it goes out for full consultation.
Since 2015 Brighton and Hove City Council has not had an explicit strategy to tackle the unacceptably large attainment gaps between the least advantaged pupils and all other children and young people in the city. We therefore welcome this development.
Furthermore, Class Divide were pleased to be one of the groups in Brighton and Hove who were consulted on an earlier draft of this document and we are delighted that many points we made are directly addressed in this version.
We asked that Brighton & Hove City Council recognise the problem of education inequality for children and young people in Whitehawk, Manor Farm and Bristol Estate. Better Outcomes, Better Lives names Whitehawk and its surrounding areas alongside other parts of Brighton and Hove including Coldean and Moulscoomb North, North Laine and the Lanes, Hangleton South and Mile Oak as an area of particular educational disadvantage. It is heartening that it recognises as well that disadvantage goes beyond the FSM indicator: in the case of our community, issues such as public transport are key to shaping access to education.
We asked that a range of educational data for children and young people living in Whitehawk, Manor Farm and Bristol Estate be reported annually to the Local Authority to stop this pupil population from being hidden in the general school’s data, particularly at secondary as there is no local secondary school in our area. We note that there will be close monitoring of what difference if any, the implementation of the strategy makes to closing the gaps that will include an annual presentation to Brighton & Hove Education Partnership. We urge that data on the Class Divide population of children and young people are tracked over time and are included in this reporting and that they are monitored and reported on as a group.
We asked for all teachers in the city to be trained on the experiences of working-class children in education and we see there are concrete commitments in the strategy to train teachers on unconscious bias in relation to raising the attainment of disadvantaged pupils, and to work with Brighton and Sussex University to ensure that student teachers have a better grounding in the challenges faced by disadvantaged pupil and strategies for supporting them in the classroom.
We asked for the rate of school exclusions and placement of our children in alternative education provision to be reduced for our children to the Brighton and Hove average and there is a commitment in the strategy to develop new ways of working to reduce suspensions and keep the numbers of permanently excluded pupils low. There is also a commitment to creating specific actions relevant to the city-wide campaign with a particular focus on identified geographical areas of the city and targeted to specific groups of children and young people. We are also pleased to see connections being made to attachment approaches in schools, since punitive discipline measures can often more heavily target and discriminate against young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The strategy gives a commitment to ensuring that enrichment and after-school activities are accessible to all pupils We have secured a later bus from Longhill School departing after extra-curricular activities at the end of the school day. However, we do have to note again that if public transport is not available from schools after such provision, young people from our community will not be able to access them.
In our meeting with the LA we stressed the importance of children from Whitehawk, Manor Farm and Bristol Estate feeling welcomed and like they belong in school and we are pleased that there is a commitment in the strategy to do work specifically on this area.
Class Divide will participate again in the next stage of the consultation process but we would like councillors to note as areas of concern.
Families in Whitehawk, Manor Farm and Bristol Estate have been failed by both national and local educational policy for decades and this has resulted in a breakdown in trust between residents and educators and those responsible for education in Brighton & Hove City Council. Whilst we understand that it is important that local education leaders and teachers are not demoralised by the strategy we feel strongly that the framing of the current situation as ‘we’ve been working really hard but must do better’ does nothing to acknowledge the truly devastating impact this failure has had on the lives and life chances of multiple generations of people growing up in these neighbourhoods. It also does nothing to communicate the education emergency we believe is now taking place in Brighton & Hove for its least advantaged residents. The data – in enabling comparisons between BHCC and other authorities - support our argument that educational disadvantage cannot be blamed solely on individual students and families as too often happened in the past (eg speculating that families do not support their children’s education or that young people lack aspiration). Alongside training in unconscious bias, we suggest that it would help rebuild trust if the plan acknowledged the urgency of the issue and stated explicitly that ill-informed and victim-blaming explanations that seek to place responsibility for educational failure on families or students themselves will have no place in the strategy or its enactment.
The strategy does not mention the wider issues that impact outcomes for deprived pupils, including current catchment area arrangements, the cost of travel to school, and the lack of adequate public transport and/or feasibility of safe cycle routes to school for young people from our community. It therefore lacks boldness, vision, and joined-up thinking. We are sure that many school heads as well as council officers and councillors would like to see a fairer and more diverse social mix across all our schools and recognise that this would likely contribute to raising educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. Achieving such an aim may involve a number of progressive but controversial measures, including deprived pupils being advantaged in the school places allocation process. We call on councillors and education leaders to show the political bravery needed to make a real difference to the lives of our poorest pupils.
Much is made in the document about the importance of pupil voice but there is no indication beyond the references to poverty-proofing the school day that any deprived children or young people have been asked their views on what schools should do to support them educationally and no evidence that any of the strategic approaches listed have been co-designed or developed collaboratively with children or young people. We would recommend that pupil collaboration and feedback is sought in relation to all the objectives currently given.
The strategy only touches on the importance of the relationship between schools and the communities they serve. This is especially relevant to Whitehawk, Manor Farm and Bristol Estate as we do not have a secondary school located in our community. Among the consequences of this are that families lack easy access to school staff and decision-makers, and may even struggle to attend consultation events held at schools given the cost and lack of public transport. This is a significant disadvantage and means that much more effort is required by schools to understand the needs of our communities and create positive relationships with parents and families. The strategy should detail explicitly what expectations there will be on schools to build such relationships and what additional support they will receive to help them do this work.
Finally, efforts to improve the education of our least advantaged pupils will only succeed if all schools, headteachers, governors and parents across Brighton and Hove see the success of all pupils, not just those who attend their specific school, as a social justice issue and as vital for the health and prosperity of the city. We are particularly concerned that the review of school places to account for the reduction in pupil numbers over the next five years will result in schools that are already advantaged doing everything they can to maintain this position and in doing so potentially sabotage any chance of Better Outcomes, Better Lives making the difference that is so desperately needed.
Finally, Class Divide would like to reiterate its support for the principles of addressing the outcomes for disadvantaged students in Brighton and Hove. We have expertise and insights as a group that we would be delighted to share to help this happen.