Education Corner Podcast Interview with Dr. Lee Elliot Major OBE

EDUCATION CORNER PODCAST

EDUCATION CORNER PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH

EXETER UNIVERSITY

Professor Lee Elliot Major OBE

Professor Lee Elliot Major OBE is the Professor of Social Mobility at the University of Exeter. He is also an Honorary Professor at the UCL Institute of Education and an Associate Member of Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

Lee is Britain’s first professor within this field and his work aims at improving the prospects of young and disadvantaged people. His research is dedicated to things which can have a direct impact on policy and practice, and he works with schools, universities, employers and policymakers. Could you tell us a little about your role as Professor of Social Mobility at Exeter University and what this involves?

My role is quite unique, we think that I might have been the first Social Mobility professor in the world; there are a couple others now. What this means is that I am particularly interested in the prospects for disadvantaged learners. That might be in the early years, it might be in schools, it might be access to university, or indeed the workplace. My work focuses on really trying to improve the opportunities and outcomes for the poorest learners. I’m in the education department for learners at the University and I’m an unusual professor in that I’m very much focused on practice and policy. I do lots of research. Most of my time is spent interacting with other people, whether it’s school leaders, University vice chancellors, ministers, policymakers, even company chief executives. The constant in all of that is, how do we improve the prospects for all of the learners? It’s a very worthy goal, and I am increasingly busy with all of this.

What are your targets for improving social mobility at Exeter University?

Within the UK or extending that too, there could be a global application process. My work is about increasing social mobility generally for children across the country.

In 2020, Exeter released an Access and Participation Plan, which is ‘committed to the principle that everyone with the potential to benefit from higher education should have equal opportunity to do so.’ Could you tell us a little more about this Plan and what it involves? What changes do you hope to see around the University?

Exeter University Focus

“As a university, we want to educate and help young people from all backgrounds, so we have some ambitious targets for over the next 5-10 years as a part of the University strategy. This is mainly to try to enrol more state school students and more students from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

Exeter University is an amazing university, but one of the challenges that we have had is with attracting talented young people from all backgrounds. If you look at our intake, it tends to be from quite privileged schools, whether state or private schools, so whilst we don’t want to put anyone off from applying, what we do want to do is encourage more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to come to Exeter and to give it a try. It is something that we have been thinking about

TURN TO PAGES 14 -15 to read about getting the best out of maintained schools for a long time. If you look at our admissions, they are very skewed towards a particular demographic. As a university, we want to educate and help young people from all backgrounds, so we have some ambitious targets for over the next 5-10 years as a part of the University strategy. This is mainly to try to enrol more state school students and more students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

We are also looking at mature students. There has been a real drop in the enrolment of mature students across the sector. One of the things that we were thinking about, is how do you help young people when they get to university as well? It’s not

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just about attracting them to the University, it’s what pastoral support they might get offered once they’re actually in Exeter.

Exeter is an amazing place, and it’s in one of the most beautiful parts of the world in the Southwest, but I think that some students, especially those that come from cities and different environments, can feel a bit isolated. This is a real holistic strategy. So, trying to flag up the University as somewhere that many people should come to, if it’s the sort of place they want to, and giving them the support once they’re in Exeter. So that is part of the very exciting plan for over the next 10 years.

You have written a new book Good Parent Educator, do you want to tell us a little more about that?

Yes, I am really excited by this book, because it is the first book I’ve done that is dedicated to parents. I’ve done lots of books for school leaders. Lots of books that summarise the field of social mobility. We know a lot about social mobility across the world. What is interesting to me is that a lot of parents feel increasing pressure, in terms of helping their children in education, but they have got very little advice on actually how to do that. We also know for a fact that parents play a huge role in shaping young people’s outcomes. What I decided to do was to review all the research out there. I have looked at thousands of studies. It’s taken quite a long time to write this book, and I’ve come up with practical tips for parents, particularly those that are busy. I am hoping that this will be read by parents from all backgrounds. I give them a number of, I hope, good and useful tips. For example, when they’re very young, when they’re toddlers- I know it sounds obvious, but I also know a lot of parents that don’t do this - you should spend around 20 minutes a day sharing a book with them, just listening to them or reading to them. The evidence shows that just 20 minutes a day can have a huge impact, so that when they do start school they’re not behind others. As, what we know is, when they are behind at age 5, then they often stay behind, right up until the age of 16 or 18.

I’ve also got tips on what parents should do in terms of questioning schools when they’re looking at different schools, what questions to ask those teachers, all the way to how you can help children in relation to revision tips. One thing that I talk about is how the best revision technique is testing. It’s asking questions, maybe doing it with flashcards and doing actual proper tests. Getting your sons and daughters to actually do that, rather than doing the highlighting or rereading that children often do. It’s a much more effective technique…

Furthermore, I talk about homework, I talk about applying to university and I even talk about the early job/career area. How you can help your children when they come back from university, in terms of developing skills like how to shine in that interview. It explores early years right through to looking for a job. It’s out now, in all good online bookstores.

A lot of your research explores the current systems in place to encourage social mobility within the school system. What do you think are some of the biggest flaws with the current system at the moment? How do you think these can be solved?

Great question. I speak in many countries about this now, and a few weeks ago I was in Norway

“What is interesting to me is that a lot of parents feel increasing pressure, in terms of helping their children in education, but they have got very little advice on actually how to do that.”

Social Mobility

discussing this with school leaders. I think, for me, that my big message for schools in terms of how they can improve outcomes for all children - and I call this inclusive teaching and learning for all - the number one thing is to engage with your parents, which links to the book a bit. How do schools ensure that they’re engaging with all their parents and that the parents are helping their children? If you can get that right as a school, you can really improve outcomes, and often I find that with schools, parents are more worried about them than they are engaging with them. One thing is about developing what I call a Parent Engagement Plan, understanding your local community in much more depth. Thinking about how you utilise those parent-teacher meetings, how you communicate with parents properly.

One thing is parent engagement, the second thing we know is that teaching qualities vary hugely within each school. In every school in the world there is amazing teaching going on, but schools, I have found, aren’t very good at learning from the excellent teaching that is going on within that school. Again, I think that for parents this is a really good thing to know, to ask your son or daughter, what feedback did you get? If there is no feedback being given, then that’s an issue that should be raised.

All of the studies that I have been involved with suggest that you have to address the things outside school as much as inside school, so it’s early years, gaps before schools start, helping young people in the workplace, you have to do these things as well as schools. I worry that teachers are burdened with trying to solve all of society’s ills, and researchers suggest that they can only do so much.

I do work with schools a lot to improve what they do, but I also like to remind teachers that they are not responsible for everything. I speak to school leaders across the world and you tend to find that these problems are quite universal. I think that the UK has some really amazing teachers, I think that there is some excellent practice in our country.

TURN TO PAGE 13 to read Leslie Parr’s thoughts about making room for working class stories “I am the first in my family to go into higher education, I lived on my own at 15 and a lot of my friends now are amazed at what I’m doing because of my background and where I came from.”

In your TEDx Talk in 2019, you describe an “escalating arms race of education” in which the poorest children are increasingly illequipped to fight. This is something which we are passionate about changing. Could you expand on this for us? How have you attempted to solve this disparity in quality of education?

The great education arms race is something that I have written a lot about. I, myself, am a middle class parent now, but I wasn’t historically. I am the first in my family to go into higher education, I lived on my own at 15 and a lot of my friends now are amazed at what I’m doing because of my background and where I came from. It’s a classic story that now I have got kids, I’m doing all the things that I didn’t get given. I probably over compensate, to be honest with you. I have turned from a working class lad, into a middle class parent, no doubt about it. You can’t criticise parents for doing the best for their children, that’s not something you should stop. The problem is that if you don’t have parents supporting you, then you fall further behind.

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I think that what we’ve observed most in this is private tutoring outside of school. If you look at the levels of private tutoring, you will see that that has boomed in the last 20 years in the UK and in most other countries in the world. This is fine, but, if you don’t have the money, if you don’t come from a family with those resources, then you aren’t going to keep up with all of the kids who do have that. I have been involved in lots of lobbying in the government to improve the level of tutoring for poorer children. That is crystallised in something

“At the moment, sadly, we live in a society where, if you do come from a poorer background, you are really up against it, I think, even if you have all the talent in the world.”

called the National Tutoring Programme in England, which was launched by the government as the pandemic happened. It’s a long story, as it hasn’t been implemented that well, but the whole idea was a good one.

What I’m doing at the moment at Exeter is piloting a new programme, in which undergraduates volunteer to tutor local pupils, developing a model that other universities can use. This will credit the students, they will do an actual module in which they are trained with local schools, and they will get to help young pupils in the region in terms of basic literacy and numeracy. This is another way, I hope, that we can level up the playing field. There is a lot of talk at the moment in the UK about levelling up. In many ways, this is kind of what my business is about. It’s about looking at what we do in the middle classes to help our children, and trying to replicate that with children from poorer backgrounds. It means that young pupils from all backgrounds get a chance and what we all want is a fair chance.

Chloe Abbott

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National Tutoring Programme

“We’re trying to reform the personal statements in an attempt to equal that playing field.”

At the moment, sadly, we live in a society where, if you do come from a poorer background, you are really up against it, I think, even if you have all the talent in the world. I think that that is a tragedy. What I hope is that a little bit of my work will help a few children to fulfil their potential. That is what it’s all about.

You have warned of a clash of classes as students compete for elite university places. Could you expand on this idea for us? What is Exeter University doing to increase their diversity in terms of class, race and gender? Do you feel that there are some institutions who are leading the way in their methods to encourage social mobility?

So that was something I wrote about when there were suggestions that the number of university places would be fixed. Over recent years we’ve had an expansion of degree places, and the reason I wrote about the clash of the classes is that what we know from the evidence is that if you limit university places, then, if you have an effort to get children from a poorer background into university, then that will displace the number of children entering from a middle class background, who are trying to get the same university places. My hope would be that we can still expand university places for all. That is what you really want. There are all sorts of challenges to that, the government has in place the student loans, which students pay back eventually, but there is only so much money to go around. I believe that we shouldn’t limit places, but at the same time, I do worry about the lack of advice and guidance. This is something I talk about in the Good Parent Educator book.

I’m trying to make personal statements fairer for all pupils. Parents, teachers and tutors will help with personal statements, and we’ve found that it’s not really a reflection of these young people’s ideas or strengths. It’s more about who they’ve got around them supporting them in the process of writing those statements. It’s become a sort of game. We’re trying to reform the personal statements in an attempt to equal that playing field.

I wrote into The Times, calling for a reform of all personal statements. It created a big response. I’m now working with UCAS, The Admissions Service, and the Government to try and help reform those personal statements. This is a great thing for me, as we have said, my hope to affect change.

We would like to thank Professor Lee Elliot Major OBE from Exeter University for giving up his time to speak to us about his work on social mobility at Exeter University and his new book Good Parent Educator.

To buy this book click here

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TURN TO PAGES 50 - 51 to read about Free Learning at Dulwich College