The 12 post-industrial, coastal, and rural localities
The University of Bath has been awarded £1.5 million to study how to solve the problem of geographic inequalities in UK education by assessing the effectiveness of area-based education initiatives - drawing on the case of a government programme which aimed to improve schooling in 12 post-industrial, coastal, and rural localities.
Professor Michael Donnelly of the University of Bath Department of Education will lead the research.
Area-based initiatives of this kind have a long history in the UK, from Harold Wilson’s Education Priority Areas in the 1960s, to New Labour’s swathe of programmes during the 1990s. But there is a long-standing policy debate about the relative merits of place-based (targeting particular places) vs people-based (targeting particular groups across all places) initiatives.
The grant from the UK Research and Innovation national funding agency (UKRI)will enable University of Bath researchers to study the impact of area-based education initiatives using the case of the Opportunity Areas programme - launched in 2016 by the UK’s Department of Education - and make recommendations for future policy initiatives.
This will be the first major quasi-experimental evaluation of the programme – which the researchers will use to develop recommendations for future policy-making to tackle regional social and economic divides. Over five years, the Opportunity Areas programme invested £108 million into improving school standards, attendance, teaching quality and recruitment, careers training and advice, literacy and maths skills, alongside tackling barriers to learning that exist beyond the school gates.
The University of Bath research is part of a £9.7 million package of funding from UKRI for 17 projects to tackle various aspects of regional inequalities, including health, living standards, housing, employment, and homelessness.
“The UK is one of the most spatially unbalanced advanced economies in the world, with substantial geographic gaps in economic activity and growth between regions, especially when comparing London and the south east with the rest of the country,” says Professor Michael Donnelly.
“There is increasing concern about the most peripheral regions and local economies, especially post-industrial, coastal and rural areas, where we see some of the most stark geographic gaps in education. Over two thirds of people across many London boroughs hold degree level qualifications, compared to less than a fifth of people in coastal towns like Blackpool, post- industrial places like Doncaster, and rural localities like north east Lincolnshire,” Professor Donnelly says.
The Opportunity Areas programme aimed to close these gaps in education and skills between places, specifically selecting 12 post-industrial, coastal and rural localities. The programme was the first to target peripheral places beyond urban centres, with ambitions to improve educational attainment, educational and career decision-making, and labour market access in these socio-economically marginalised areas.
Professor Donnelly said researchers will work with the UK Government Department for Education, the Local Government Association, and the 12 Local Authorities where the intervention took place, to carry out a substantial programme of knowledge exchange and research activities and identify what was effective.
The Opportunity Areas programme targeted Blackpool, Derby, Doncaster, Hastings, Fenland and East Cambridgeshire, Bradford, the North Yorkshire coast, Norwich, Oldham, Stoke-on-Trent, West Somerset, and Ipswich.
“It is an ideal time to provide a robust evaluation of Opportunity Areas to learn lessons for any future education and labour-market-area-based interventions, especially the new Priority Educational Investment Areas which launched in 2022 and absorbed Opportunity Areas.
Our planned evaluation will produce evidence on what mechanisms are impactful in closing gaps in education and skills - which is vital to informing how this new intervention, and any future area-based interventions, are designed and delivered,” Professor Donnelly says.