By Robin Chu, CEO and Founder of CoachBright
“While the government seems unable to devote the necessary energy and focus to the social mobility agenda, I have been heartened that others in civil society – from local councils to major employers – are actively embracing it.” These are words lifted directly from Alan Milburn’s resignation letter from being Chairman of the Social Mobility Commission 2 weeks ago. Most of the press coverage has focused on the first part around poor political leadership and the lack of energy outside of Brexit from our nation’s politicians. We must instead look to those who are actively supporting the social mobility movement.
Our campaign around #EducationalJusticeUK concludes this week and we made a conscious choice to focus on what works and what is being done to improve social mobility for our most disadvantaged pupils. We do acknowledge, however, that more needs to be done and quicker. At our current rate, it will take 15 years to narrow the ability gap between rich and poor at the age of five, and 80 years to close the gap in higher education participation rates.
While the progress of social mobility may be slow, it is heartwarming to see so many individuals and organisations driving significant change. Take our live tweetchat around the issue. Headteachers, teachers and education organisations from across Manchester, Essex, Exeter and London all engaged:
There is a swell of energy and excitement driven from the ground up - passionate committed teachers launching #TeachMeet’s #WomenEd, #BameEd events across the country. Clearly, as educators, there are key examples of us taking the fight to social injustice.
This very fight is at the top of CoachBright's agenda - our work aims to help close the educational gap between the rich and poor. This seems like a great moment to release our Annual Report 2016/17 (last academic year) to the public! In it, we detail the impact, successes and mistakes we have made. Here are some quick highlights below:
Class of 2017: 70% of CoachBright pupils have gone to the UK's top third most selective universities.
Grade impact: CoachBright pupils improve their subject grade 2.2 times more than their non-coached peer.
CoachBright has supported 343 pupils over last year.
Please do have a read here and we would love to hear your thoughts.
If you are interested in what we do as a school leader, corporate or to volunteer please do reach out and get in touch at robin@coachbright.org
We’re not talking about learning to win cash prizes from the postcode lottery you see advertised on TV. This is about the education of future generations.
Daniel Griffin gives us the low-down on how the education system can combat inequality arising from the ‘postcode lottery’.