Nick Harrison

Private schools still have a vice-like grip on Britain’s elite. We need many more pathways to the top of our society to level the playing field and stop wasting talent.
New @suttontrust research. 👇

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Keeping children cool enough to learn and do exams in the summer is clearly a priority.

@DeSmog estimates that pupils in England and Wales lost more than 15 million teaching hours during June’s heatwave, through school closures and increased absence.

@NEUnion calling for a retro-fitting programme to fix it. We do need to do something. And unfortunately summers are only likely to get hotter!

@DanielKebedeNEU @suttontrust

Family wealth buys time at university. Nearly one in three Russell Group students avoided maintenance loans with family support, while poorer students can take the maximum loan and still need paid work to get by.

@suttontrust research found that essential costs exceeded the maximum loan for 57% of students living away from home outside London - meaning that they have to work to make ends meet.

This has a knock on effect on their academic work. In separate Sutton Trust polling, 49% of undergraduates said they had missed timetabled teaching to do paid work.

Poorer students were also twice as likely to have missed a deadline or requested an extension because of paid work: 16% compared with 8%.

Fair access doesn't stop at admission. At a minimum we need maintenance loans to increase so students can live on them - and ideally some form of grant brought back for the least well off students.

@thetimes.

Apprenticeships are presented as one of the main answers to the NEET crisis. But the system currently reaches very few young people already outside education or work.

The number of under-19s starting an apprenticeship has almost halved over the past decade. Previous @suttontrust research found that just 2% of starting apprentices were previously NEET.

Alan Milburn’s reported proposal for a national pre-apprenticeship route could help. Delivered through FE colleges, it would combine English and maths, technical learning and proper experience with an employer, giving young people who are not yet ready for a full apprenticeship a route into one.

Potentially a good idea. Other countries - Austria, Germany, Ireland for example - do already have pre-apprenticeship programmes.