The UK government’s Opportunity Areas programme (2017-2022) focussed on improving young people's outcomes in 12 social mobility cold spots. The ‘From the Centre to the Periphery’ project, a major three-year quasi-experimental evaluation of the impact of the OA programme, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and bringing together a research team spanning the Universities of Bath, Bristol and Durham, began in October 2024. Working closely with stakeholders, it seeks to achieve meaningful change by using the evaluation’s insights to help inform the design of future place-based education and labour market initiatives, including the government’s ongoing Priority Education Investment Areas programme.
Working closely with stakeholders is a key element of the ‘From the Centre to the Periphery’ project, and so we officially launched with a stakeholder event at the Museum of Making, Derby Silk Mill on 2nd December 2024. Derby was one of the 12 Opportunity Areas, and Derby Silk Mill - widely considered tobe the world’s first modern factory - seemed a fitting venue given its key role in the industrial revolution, a revolution which also stimulated much greater opportunities for social mobility. Stark social and geographic disparities across the UK remain however - the reason why the Opportunity Areas programme was so vital, with each of the 12 areas focused on addressing key local barriers. In the case of Derby, these priorities were early years, school improvement and broadening horizons - priorities which local leaders continue to strive to address under the new Priority Education Investment Areas initiative.
We were thrilled that so many passionate individuals from across the UK, committed to achieving positive change in their local areas joined us at our launch to share their thoughts on our planned evaluation. We were also pleased to have representation from a broad range of stakeholders, including some of the key architects of the programme at the Department for Education, chairs and members of the independent Opportunity Area boards, local school leaders and third sector actors, and young people benefitting from the intervention.
No magic bullet in a place-based approach to promoting social mobility
It was notable the varied approaches that Opportunity Areas employed in aiming to plug the education and skills gaps they faced. Interventions aimed to tackle multiple barriers, including a focus on attendance, school exclusions, wellbeing, early years provision, and extra-curricular activities, as well as approaches more squarely orientated on raising literacy and numeracy levels. The broad range of interventions funded through the programme challenges the legacy policy narrative framing educational underachievement and worklessness as issues caused by low aspirations, and poor choices made by young people. Against these narrow understandings of low social mobility, delegates pointed to the influence of familial, social relationships, institutional and structural factors that are external to individual control. Despite the range in intervention approaches taken, there was consensus among delegates that young people required long term and preventative action right from early childhood, in order to meaningfully raise young people’s educational achievements and life chances.
Partnerships: A key legacy at risk?
A recurring theme throughout the day was the importance of partnerships. With the decreasing role and capacity of Local Authorities to support local educational ecosystems, there has been a gap left in bringing all the educational stakeholders – schools, agencies, support groups – together within local areas. As one delegate pointed out, policy over the last 20 years has in some ways encouraged less collaboration because of greater individual competition between providers. The design of Opportunity Areas was inherently collaborative in nature – it was based on the creation of education partnership boards that brought people within local areas together to tackle common challenges they all faced – no matter which academy or academy chain they were part of. One of the striking things we heard was that in some local areas the Opportunity Areas programme put people from neighbouring schools together in the room for the first time – to work together collaboratively.
This legacy of the Opportunity Areas programme in building strong local partnerships seemed crucial, and many of these partnerships continue to thrive even as funding dissipated. Some delegates regarded this establishment of local education partnerships and networks as the main beneficial outcome of the programme. For example, delegates from Derby highlighted the development of their Inclusion Charter to reduce permanent school exclusions which 102 of the city’s 108 schools are signed up to, whilst a delegate from Blackpool drew attention to a mentoring programme run by the local football club which has been effective in early intervention, helping to plug some of the gaps in access to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) for local young people. Similarly, a delegate from Bradford spoke proudly of much-needed collaborative projects for local young people focused on life skills and providing opportunities beyond the classroom. Some of these partnerships, many of which have continued into the Priority Education Investment Areas initiative, may now however be at risk. Structures such as Primary and Secondary Strategy Groups which the Opportunity Areas programme paid for are now funded by subscriptions, but as school budgets get tighter and competition increases again, schools may not continue to pay these costs and the benefits of this collaborative approach could be lost.
Greater devolution: the next step?
Several stakeholders expressed a desire for greater devolution in the ongoing Priority Education Investment Areas programme, running within all 12 former Opportunity Areas and an additional 12 areas of entrenched deprivation. A key barrier to doing so however will be in identifying who to devolve to. Following widespread academisation, many schools are no longer under the control of their Local Authority, so according Local Authorities this power may not be appropriate. Equally, according individual schools or academy chains this power over local areas is questionable for they may have their own vested interests. In the recently published English Devolution White Paper, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Angela Rayner, advocates much greater devolution to regional Mayors. Our evaluation may be able to help inform the feasibility of this for the Priority Education Investment Areas programme and future place-based education and labour market initiatives.
Ensuring an effective evaluation
Stakeholders highlighted several factors that will be crucial to account for in ensuring a fair evaluation of the Opportunity Areas programme. The first of these relate to the OA programme design, for the initiative gave each of the 12 areas control of their own priorities. Each area was also awarded the same level of funding (around £6 million) despite significant differences in population size. Other factors relate to data, for the secondary data planned for use cannot identify involvement with OA programmes at the individual level, and in some OAs there is a greater existing evidence base that can be drawn upon than in others. Finally, there are key contextual factors to account for. The Opportunity Areas have very different local geographies, some areas had similar initiatives to those of the OA programme running concurrently and, while each area was impacted by the Covid pandemic, the impacts of this varied significantly depending on the area and local population.
Next steps…
Our project will take a mixed-methods approach to evaluating the Opportunity Areas programme, combining insights from both quantitative and qualitative research strands. We will shortly begin the first quantitative phase of work, undertaking granular analysis of administrative and survey data, to allow us to identify the impact of the OA programme on educational and labour market outcomes in the affected areas, as well as young people’s aspirations and attitudes towards education. This will then be used to purposefully select 6 ‘paired’ fieldwork localities to closely investigate the generative mechanisms of the impacts identified in the first research phase.
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If you would like to receive updates on the project and be invited to future events we hold, please email Dr Jo Davies (jd2042@bath.ac.uk).
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of the IPR, nor of the University of Bath.
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