Children

Growing up, getting on, or leaving the countryside?

Growing up, getting on, or leaving the countryside?

Education is seen as the driving force in helping unleash Britain’s potential and rebuild after COVID-19. The Department for Education (DfE) is aiming to drive economic recovery and level up opportunity for all by improving educational standards and giving children the best start in life. Will this boost opportunities for children and young people in rural areas? Jessica Sellick investigates. 

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In the UK no one law defines the age of a child. Under health and safety rules, a child is anyone who has not reached the minimum school leaving age and a young person is anyone under 18 years of age. The Children Act 1989 and 2004 and Children and Families Act 2014 combined this to define children and young people as up to age 18 years; with ‘vulnerable young people’ entitled to support beyond 18 years. The Children and Social Work Act 2017 includes provision for extending services for care leavers up to the age of 25 years. The NHS Long Term Plan sets out actions in relation to children and young people aged 0-25 years – while the General Medical Council (GMC) guidance applies to those aged 0-18 years where ‘children’ refers to young children who do not have the maturity and understanding to make important decisions for themselves; and ‘young people’ to older or more experienced children who are more likely to be able to make decisions for themselves.  

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests between mid-2009 and mid-2019, the number of children [defined as those aged under 16 years of age] increased, by 8% to 12.7 million. According to mid-year population estimates, in England in 2020, 4.6% of all rural residents were aged 0-4 years, 5.5% aged 5-9 years, 5.8% aged 10-14 years, 5.2% aged 15-19 years and 4.2% aged 20-24 years. 

How have public policy and decision makers supported children and young people? 

Government focus on children and parenting encompasses pregnancy and birth; fostering, adoption and surrogacy; financial help; childcare; schools and education; separation, divorce and legal issues; and training and employment. Support for children and young people can be found across the Departments for Education; Health and Social Care; Work and Pensions; Levelling Up, Housing and Communities; Culture, Media and Sport; and The Home Office. 

Back in 2003, the Government published a Green Paper outlining proposals to reform and improve childcare, following the death of Victoria Climbie and subsequent investigations by Lord Laming and various inspectorates dealing with children matters. Entitled ‘every child matters’ the policies contained in the document were designed to focus on the universal services which every child uses from birth to 19 years of age, and on more targeted services for those with additional needs. The intention was to reduce the number of children experiencing educational failure, engaging in offending or anti-social behaviour, suffering from ill health or looking to  become teenage parents. The paper identified five outcomes that mattered most to children and young people: (1) being healthy – physically and mentally; (2) staying safe – being protected from harm and neglect; (3) enjoying and achieving – developing skills for adulthood; (4) making a positive contribution – being involved with the community and society; and (5) economic wellbeing – achieving full potential in life. The Children Act 2004 reinforced the central premise of the Green Paper, namely that all people and organisations working with children and young people have a responsibility to help safeguard them and to promote their welfare. This was followed by The Children and Young Persons Act 2008 which provided support for Local Authorities to regulate official intervention in a child’s best interest (i.e., in relation to social work services, adoption and fostering).  

In 2010 the Cabinet Office and Department for Education (DfE) published Positive for Youth, a vision setting out the ways in which young people should be supported to realise their potential through the combined efforts of their families, local communities and the State. It was a joint statement, developed by nine Government departments in consultation with Local Government and the wider youth sector. The central pillar of the vision was that young people should inform decisions, shape provision and inspect quality. Once again, emphasis was placed on those working with young people to support them to have a stake in their futures. The vision was intended to be a call for action, shifting norms and returning power to young people, their families and communities. In 2013, the Government published a snapshot of its progress to date. This recognised the number of young people volunteering their time to represent their peers through Local Youth Councils (LYCs) and the UK Youth Parliament; the National Citizens Service (NCS) programme; an increase in the support made available to young people through the Pupil Premium; the steps taken to raise the age of compulsory education or training; and investment in a Troubled Families programme and Ending Gang and Youth Violence programme. Government also funded an Outcomes Framework for Young People’s Services, a tool for providers and commissioners to measure the impact of their provision. The snapshot concluded that youth policy should be primarily a matter for Local Government, and central Government’s role is one of giving Councils the freedom and flexibilities to make decisions.  

The Children and Family Act 2014 made changes to the law to give greater protection to vulnerable children, improve support for children whose parents were separating, create a new system to help children with special educational needs, and help parents to balance work and family life. The Care Act 2014 placed a duty on Local Authorities to conduct transition assessments for children, children’s carers and young carers where there is a likely need for care and support after the child turns 18 years of age. This was intended to identify young people as early as possible in order to plan for, or prevent, the development of care and support needs. 

In 2015, the Government published its Childcare Bill. This proposed offering 15 free hours of childcare for three and four-year-olds (and disadvantaged two-year-olds) and offering 30 free hours for all working parents. Paid for from a Government pot of some £3.5 billion, these measures were introduced in 2017. Both parents have to be employed and neither earning more than £100,000; and the free hours only apply during term time (38 weeks a year).

In July 2018, the Government published statutory guidance on how inter-agency working with children and their families is fundamental to taking a child centred approach to safeguarding. The guidance sets out the key roles for individual organisations and agencies to deliver effective arrangements for safeguarding. 

More recently, the DfE’s priorities have focused on providing children’s services, education and skills training in ways that ensures opportunity is equal for all, regardless of background, family circumstances or need. This includes a cross-cutting theme on levelling up – covering both educational standards so that children and young people in every part of the country are prepared with the knowledge, skills and qualifications they need; and raising productivity by supporting people to work. As part of its levelling up approach the DfE has identified 55 ‘cold spots’, these are areas where school outcomes are the weakest. Known as ‘educational investment areas’, and covering more than one-third of Local Authorities in England, these areas will be prioritised  as the location for new specialist sixth-form free schools where existing provision is limited. The DfE also intends to run a consultation to see how schools judged less than Good in successive Ofsted inspections could be moved to multi-academy trusts and receive more support to attract the best teachers.  

Taken as a collective, these definitions reveal how there is no one understanding of children or young people shared by all agencies; nor the broader context in which a young person moves from childhood to adulthood. Much public policy has focused around realising the potential of children and young people, whilst seeking to tackle disadvantage and ensuring their protection and welfare. Similarly, there is no single piece of legislation but rather a myriad of laws and guidance that are applicable to children and young people in England. There has been less specific public policy reference to children and young people living in rural areas: for those that want to, how can we use these policy levers to help them inform provision and decisions and have a stake in the countryside? 

What impact has COVID-19 had on children and young people? 

The Department for Education (DfE) has been publishing statistics on attendance in education and early years settings throughout the pandemic. The data shows that the attendance of pupils with an education, health and care plan (EHC), and pupils with a social worker, was typically lower than that for other pupils. The number of pupils eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) has also increased – from 17.3% of all pupils in January 2020 to 20.8% of all pupils in January 2021. Other research published by the DfE estimates the mean learning loss in reading and mathematics for primary and secondary school pupils. This reveals how all year groups have experienced a learning loss in reading (ranging from 1.7-2 months in primary and secondary pupils) and a learning loss in mathematics of 3 months (primary pupils only). Ofsted’s COVID-19 series  also found some children, of all ages and backgrounds, had lost basic skills and learning as a result of school closures and restrictions on movement. The DfE has announced it will be providing additional core funding amounting to £4.7 billion in 2024-2025, including £1.6 billion in 2022-2023. This investment is in addition to planned increases included in 2019 Spending Round.  

According to the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), 100,000 children have disappeared since schools returned in 2021. They describe the existence of “ghost children” as a national disaster – describing how children missing from formal education settings are vulnerable to gangs, county lines, and abuse within the home. CSJ research found nearly 800 schools in England with a class worth of children severely absent; with schools in disadvantaged areas 10 times more likely to have a whole class worth of children missing than schools in more affluent areas. The DfE has set up an attendance alliance group,  bringing together education, children’s, social and health services to raise school attendance. 

A report by the Carers Trust suggests throughout the pandemic child carers feel they have been completely forgotten. For many, school provides the only route away from their caring responsibilities. With teachers, social workers, nurses and therapists unable to visit in-person and checking-in on children virtually – and with many hospital appointments cancelled – some children ended up caring for a parent/carer around the clock without proper support or any break. 8% of young carers and 15% of young adult carers (those aged 18-24 years) reported spending 90 hours a week looking after relatives during the pandemic. According to the Disabled Children’s Partnership (DCP), 68% of children with disabled siblings took on more caring responsibilities during lockdown periods. 

Back in 2018 the then Prime Minister Teresa May committed to publishing a ‘State of the Nation’ report annually to integrate available evidence on children and young people’s wellbeing. The latest report, published in February 2022, suggests children and young people’s subjective wellbeing showed signs of recovery in 2021, following a small reduction in 2020. Nonetheless, there is substantial variation in wellbeing – with female respondents reporting lower levels of wellbeing compared to male respondents. Vulnerable respondents (e.g. those with special educational needs or eligible for free school meals) demonstrated more mixed patterns of wellbeing. Data also suggests rates of probable mental health disorders remained higher in 2021 than before the pandemic – analysts were unable to determine the extent to which these higher rates could be attributed to pandemic effects or reflected a continuation of general increases in mental health reported before the pandemic. The DfE has added a new module to the RSHE curriculum for primary and secondary schools specifically designed to focus on mental health. Government and the NHS have also invested in schools in mind, an initiative led by the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families which aims to embed good mental health across the whole school community.  

According to research from the Nuffield Trust, while children are 10 times less likely than adults to have been hospitalised with the virus, their access to health care has been badly disrupted and their mental health disproportionately affected. Around 1.7 million children in England have a long-term condition (e.g. asthma, diabetes, epilepsy) and almost one-third reported they had not been receiving enough support. Routine referrals to hospital care for children and young people fell by 89% in April 2020 compared to pre-COVID levels and by 79% for urgent referrals in the same period. There are significant backlogs for community paediatric services such as speech and language therapy.   

International evidence is beginning to suggest that the pandemic may already be influencing children’s lifestyles and increasing their risk of being overweight or obese. In the UK, researchers found children were snacking more. According to the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP), when children start school more than one-fifth of four-year-olds are classed as overweight and one-tenth as obese. By the time they finish primary school, more than one-third of children are overweight and one-fifth obese. In 14 neighbourhoods in England in 2020-2021, more than half of the children in year 6 were found to be overweight. The poorest tenth of children in year 6 are 72% more likely to be overweight than the richest. In September 2021 the Obesity Health Alliance published ‘turning the tide’, a 10-year healthy weight strategy. Drawing on the Government’s prevention Green Paper, it calls physically active play to be incorporated into early years settings, and for support for parents and children to play in and around the home.  

The Children’s Commissioner received more than half a million responses to ‘The Big Ask’, a national survey of England’s children. The findings illuminate how the dividing line between childhood and adulthood has been blurred – offices and schools and bedrooms all collapsing into one another. Children have seen the world of adult work come closer; adults, the world of school. If adults are to learn one thing from this report, according to the Commissioner it should be: this is not a ‘snowflake generation.’ It is a heroic generation. They are a survivor generation – a sleeves-up, pragmatic generation, with civic-minded aspirations.

Over the course of the pandemic much attention has been focused on shielding and protecting older people and the clinically vulnerable – with less attention focused on how children and young people have been impacted by measures taken to control COVID-19. The population in rural areas has a higher proportion of older people and a lower proportion of children and young people compared with urban areas. How can we respond to what children and young people need now – and what they need to thrive in the future – especially in rural areas?  

How can we support children and young people to have a stake in the countryside?  

In rural areas schools are about more than their performance as measured by Ofsted inspections, league tables or exam results. They often embrace the place, community and geography where they are located. For example. The North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) runs a fellfoot forward next generation project which aims to excite young people about the heritage on their doorstep – this includes schools programmes on archaeology, watercourses and climate change delivered with partners. Somerset County Council and partners offer schools training and resources on the Somerset Outdoor Curriculum. Schools can also be viewed as community assets – with some open for community use in the evenings, weekends and school holidays (e.g. for adult learning, skills and training, wellbeing). And yet analysis from the Rural Services Network (RSN) reveals how schools in areas classified as Predominantly Urban received some £332 more per pupil on average than those in Predominantly Rural areas in 2019-2020. In 2021 the DfE ran a consultation seeking views on how to simplify the funding process and ensure all schools are funded on a single, fair and consistent basis.

The RSN’s revitalising rural campaign, launched in March 2021, aims to ensure rural areas are not left behind in the Government’s drive to level up. Regarding rural schools, it calls for minimum staffing levels to be included in the national funding formula, a share of capital funding to be set aside for modernisation and maintenance projects in small schools; and for funding to be offered to help clustering and collaboration between small rural schools.   

According to the RSN, just over half a million young people aged 15-19 years live in rural areas – with those aged 20-24 years showing the largest outmigration. Students living in rural areas have longer journeys to access further and higher education than their urban counterparts. On average, those working in predominantly rural areas have lower skills levels than those working in predominantly urban areas. As part of its revitalising rural campaign, the RSN is calling on Government to explore a fully funded travel scheme for young people to access further education and training, and to provide in-person and online access to skills training to rural businesses and dwellers.   

Since 2019 the Government has been establishing a network of Institutes of Technology (IoTs). These are collaborations between further education providers, universities and employers and they specialise in delivering higher technical education. The Lincolnshire Institute of Technology, for example, brings together employers, schools and providers in sub-localities to deliver agri-tech, food manufacturing, energy, digital and engineering skills; and the East Midlands Institute of Technology  will provide access to training and skills development in digital, engineering and manufacturing skills at the point of need to support local communities. Linking local employers and professionals into local schools, providing training in or near rural communities, and providing skilled and well paid employment for local young people will ensure that ‘staying’ becomes a viable reality for young people who want to learn, earn and remain.

The National Youth Agency (NYA) describes how 85% of a young person’s waking hours are spent outside of the school day. In 2021 the NYA published a report highlighting an increasing trend of gangs targeting vulnerable young people in county-towns and rural areas, as well as moving young people across county lines. The NYA underlines how youth workers are known and trusted by young people in their area and the role of youth services in identifying early and supporting young people at risk from county lines. With some 2.25 million young people living in predominantly rural areas, and as part of the COVID-19 recovery, the NYA is calling for a core youth offer regardless of locality on which wider youth provision can flourish. 

At the same time, a report from the YMCA identified a 70% funding reduction in youth services across England and Wales between 2010 and 2019-2020. According to the analysis, every region saw their funding for youth services cut by more than 60% – with further breakdowns at a local level revealing deficits of more than 90% in areas such as Gateshead, Nottingham and Norfolk. Since 2010 more than 4,500 youth work jobs have been lost and 760 youth centres have closed The figures demonstrate the weight of funding pressures facing Local Authorities and how, if youth policy should primarily be a matter for Local Government, the need for Government attention. This also involves recognising the role that Parish Councils, community groups and voluntary organisations play in rural areas – they have infrastructure, networks and are often ‘filling the gaps’ left by other agencies.  

Back in 2020, the National Federation of Young Farmers’ Clubs (NFYFC) published the results of their survey, ‘Your Post-Brexit Rural Future’. 528 young people responded, with many highlighting the impact of COVID-19 on not being able to meet face-to-face and socialise. More broadly, respondents described a lack of recreational facilities, youth clubs and schemes such as Wheels to Work available in their locality. The most important facilities they wanted to be made available included a community centre/village hall, youth club/youth service, Wheels to Work and church. Over 70% of respondents had sought advice about training, employment, farming, money and health over the past 12-months.

Similarly, research carried out by CPRE with 1,019 young people aged 16-24 years found affordable housing was their top concern (72% of respondents) – and more than three-quarters of respondents (76%) said they wanted to move away from a rural area, partly due to poor connectivity and/or because they were experiencing loneliness.  

While there are examples of employers coming together to attract talented young people into rural communities (e.g. Rock the Cotswolds, Lincolnshire Talent Academy) – for me all of this research demonstrates the need to find innovative solutions to help children and young people, live, work and thrive in the countryside.  In practice, that means providing somewhere for them to learn (school, youth club), earn (a well-paid job, help to start a business), live (affordable and safe housing), access services (transport, broadband and mobile connectivity), have fun (culture, leisure, sports and recreation) and thrive (reduce loneliness and isolation, address hidden poverty, participation in decision making). 

If levelling-up is about children and young people in every part of the country being prepared with the knowledge, skills and qualifications they need, how can we ensure this supports young people to have a stake in the countryside? All-too-often children and young people in rural areas are not visible or on the radar of numerous policies and initiatives targeted at their age category. How can we better integrate evidence on children and young people [State of the ‘Rural’ Nation?] and do we need a “Big Rural Ask” to fully see, hear, and understand the experiences of our young people and find solutions and ensure they are recognised and feel valued in our rural communities? 

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Jessica is a researcher/project manager at Rose Regeneration and a senior research fellow at The National Centre for Rural Health and Care (NCRHC). She is currently working with young farmers to gather their views on future land use; helping public sector bodies to measure their social value; and evaluating employability schemes and a veteran programmes. Jessica also sits on the board of a Housing Association that supports older people and a charity supporting Cambridgeshire’s rural communities. 

She can be contacted by email jessica.sellick@roseregeneration.co.uk. 

Website: http://roseregeneration.co.uk/https://www.ncrhc.org/ 

Blog: http://ruralwords.co.uk/ 

Twitter: @RoseRegen 

Taking a longer-term view: do we need a new intergenerational contract?

Taking a longer-term view: do we need a new intergenerational contract?

Back in May 2018 the House of Lords appointed a Select Committee on Intergenerational Fairness and Provision. The Committee, which published its report in April 2019, found that while the relationship between older and younger generations was defined by mutual support and affection; an ageing population, the global financial crisis and successive Government policies had failed to fully consider generational issues. More recently, a number of debates and discussions on intergenerational fairness have taken place to try to better understand what impact COVID-19 is having on and between generations. If the pandemic is leading us to think much more about our obligations to each other, how can we keep society together and not favour one generation at the expense of another? Jessica Sellick investigates. 

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What is intergenerational (un)fairness? In May 2018, the House of Lords launched a Select Committee to consider the long-term implications of Government policy on intergenerational fairness and provision. It was established in response to a concern that intergenerational unfairness was growing as a result of the millennial generation appearing worse off than the baby boomer generation. The Committee’s work was intended to build upon earlier Lords reports on demographic change and social mobility and a debate on intergenerational fairness; as well as a House of Commons report on intergenerational fairness.   

The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee report published prior to the Committee’s work in November 2016 described how intergenerational fairness is ‘not simply a matter of comparing the circumstances of different age groups at a given point of time, but instead the economic experiences of generations over the course of their lifetimes – but it should not be confused with valid concerns about inequality within generations.  The report centred on an implicit social contract between generations and how this underpins the welfare state – with the older population funded by the taxes of the working population who, in return, expect to receive similar benefits when they are ready to retire. 

In 2019, the House of Lords Select Committee on Intergenerational Fairness and Provision took a broad definition of generations; grouping together people by their current stage of life and their common lived experience rather than by their year of birth. The Committee defined intergenerational fairness as ‘the idea that each cohort should retain a fair expectation of social improvement and can have a fulfilling life without being unduly harmed by the actions of a previous or subsequent cohort’. The Committee suggested this sense of fairness extend to generations just born, or about to be born, that have no voice to advocate for them. The Committee’s view was that ‘unfairness results from not providing appropriate support to people at different stages of the life course’. 

Similarly, according to the Intergenerational Foundation (IF), intergenerational fairness is ‘the idea of fairness between different generations alive today as well as those generations yet to be born….younger generations should have the same standard of living as generations who have gone before’. 

What unites these definitions is their focus on the need to provide support to people at different stages of the ‘life course’ – highlighting the bond between younger and older generations. The ‘fairness’ dimension becomes apparent when they compare the situations of different generations (their economic and lived experiences). 

How much of a problem is it?The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee report back in 2016 highlighted how the State Pension triple lock [which was introduced in 2012 and annually uprates the state pension by whichever of price inflation, average earnings growth or 2.5% is highest] is leading to the state pension expenditure to account for a greater share of national income at a time when public finances are fragile. Combined with increases in the state pension age, this was seen as disproportionately affecting young people and those socio-economic groups with lower life expectancies in retirement. The report therefore recommended benchmarking the new state pension and basic state pension at levels relative to average full-time earnings they reach in 2020 – with the triple lock replaced by a smoothed earnings link ‘that is more fiscally sustainable and more intergenerationally fair’. In response to COVID-19, the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) fiscal outlook forecasts how the triple lock will deliver a cumulative increase of 19.3% over the six-year forecast period between 2020-2021 and 2025-2026, compared with 15.2% cumulative growth in average earnings and 9.6% cumulative increase in CPI inflation over the same period.

The Select Committee on Intergenerational Fairness and Provision’s report in 2019 highlighted particular problems and perceptions of younger people. Examples included the student loans system and cost of a university education to students, which were cited as a “fiscal illusion” with many student loans not paid off in full within a 30-year period leaving the taxpayer to foot the bill. Expecting future taxpayers to bear the brunt for funding today’s students was regarded as unfair. According to the Committee, the system also risks perpetuating unfairness within a generation – between those who can access Higher Education and those who cannot. Other examples concerning young people cited in the report included difficulties in finding employment that is secure and well paid, and access to affordable housing. The Committee also collected evidence which highlighted how some Local Authorities charge a lower rate of Council Tax on second properties. This was also viewed as an unfairness that should be redesigned so the rate is related to the size and capital value of the property alongside additional protections for people who are asset-rich but income poor through a system of delayed payments. The Committee reached six main conclusions that had led to unfairness: 

  1. Accounting for the future: policy data is not published on generational differences in income and wealth, nor on the potential effects of policy on different generations at the time the policy is being considered.  
  2. The housing challenge: an insufficient supply of affordable homes to buy and rent by younger people. 
  3. Educating generations: the education and training system is ill equipped for the needs of a rapidly changing labour market. Post-16 vocational education is underfunded and poorly managed. Options to retain and reskill in later life are incoherent and underfunded.  
  4. Working: younger generations are more likely to experience slower pay progression and find themselves in insecure employment. They are also unlikely to enjoy the same generation-on-generation income gain that their predecessors received. 
  5. All-age communities: communities and a strong sense of place strengthen intergenerational bonds by bringing generations together and sustaining shared loyalties. Communities may also help to tackle skills, care and housing shortages through innovative local initiatives. 
  6. Intergenerational taxation: the failure to make proper provision for the costs of social care in the older age category, particularly for people now entering a lengthy retirement who will rely on smaller, younger generations to pay for them. Retired people were found to have higher incomes, on average, than younger working age groups. 

These examples often focus on the barriers and obstacles people in the younger age groups face – although many of the issues highlighted also affect older age groups. They also place an emphasis on central Government to update and revise policies to meet the challenges not only faced by young people but also by people across the life course (e.g. pensions, social care). 

Generations apart – how much of an issue is it in rural areas? There is little work exploring intergenerational fairness in the countryside. Papers and studies that do reference rural focus on ‘age segregation’; that is, the outmigration of young people and older people moving to (and wanting to remain in rural places) – and the increasing divide this leads to (i.e., how some rural places have no children or young people living in them). Research carried out by the IF, for example, found rural areas have aged nearly twice as rapidly as urban ones over the past 25 years and for the typical child in the 25 largest cities, only 5% of their neighbours are now over 65 years of age. The pattern that emerges is one where urban areas are seen as more youthful than rural areas.  

The Select Committee took evidence from Professor Elspeth Graham (University of St Andrews), who suggested, at the extreme, that segregation could threaten social cohesion, because people might vote for different self-interests, or age-related interests. David Kingman (IF), added that a political system based on age-segregated geographical representation would be likely to contribute towards political polarisation, given that age is now the most accurate demographic predictor of which way someone will vote. The Committee also referenced the work of the Pub is the Hub campaign. 

Outside of the Committee’s work, literature on age segregation often cites a lack of affordable and appropriate housing options; the role of connectivity and technology; and access to public transport – and while these issues may resonate with younger people they can affect rural residents of all ages and abilities.  

What has been done to tackle unfairness? The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee report back in 2016 recommended Government collate and make available reliable and comprehensive information about the intergenerational distribution of public and private resources to estimate the balance of fiscal contributions and withdrawals by different generations over their entire lifetimes. The House of Lords select committee in 2019 extended this view in calling for: 

  • A new fiscal rule focused on the Government’s generational balance of debt and assets and a more transparent spending review process. This should draw out a sense of equivalence and fairness about what is contributed over a lifetime and what is received by successive generations. 
  • Giving Local Authorities stronger powers to develop housing on publicly owned land and borrow to fund house building. 
  • More investment in vocational education and lifelong learning to prepare younger generations for a 100-year life. 
  • Further consideration of employment rights by ensuring worker status is the default position; and consider initiatives such as flexible working, mid-life career reviews and tackling ageism in the workplace. 
  • Changes are needed to age-related benefits and the taxation system to make proper provision for the costs of social care.  

The Government responded to these recommendations in July 2019: 

  • Accounting for the future: The Government agreed that “fully considering the long-term implications of policies is important”. It argued this was evidenced by its fiscal rules, which aimed to ensure “sustainable public finances which lessen the debt interest burden on future generations”. The Government added that it had already “committed to requiring departments to show how their bids deliver long-term” following a National Audit Office report that made recommendations in this area. It also said HM Treasury’s guidance on appraisal and evaluation for programmes, policies and projects (contained in the Green Book) already recommended steps be taken in the preparation of business cases to “ensure that the impacts of an intervention on future generations are fully captured and appraised”.
  • Housing: The Government said it was committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing and outlined policy responses designed to increase the supply of homes, including allowing Local Authorities to borrow more to build council homes; releasing Government-held land for home building; and making changes to the planning framework.
  • Education: The Government said it was aiming to improve the quality of education provision, particularly in relation to apprenticeships and further and technical education. It added that it was also engaged in testing various retraining and life-long learning programmes for effectiveness.
  • Work: The Government said it had committed to a “wide range of policy and legislative changes to ensure that all workers can access fair and decent work, that both employers and workers have the clarity they need to understand their employment relationships, and that the enforcement system is “fair and fit for purpose”. It said it supported flexible working and highlighted that it was now standard practice for all civil service roles to be advertised as available for flexible working unless there was a strong business case otherwise.
  • Communities: The Government said it was “committed to bringing people together and enabling communities to influence and act” and outlined different funding streams available to support community organisations and wider civil society in local areas.
  • Taxation: The Government disagreed with the committee’s recommendation that the triple lock for the state pension should be removed. The Government said it was “committed to ensuring economic security for people at every stage of their life, including when they reach retirement”. 

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) also responded to the Select Committee, confirming that the body was “already in the process” of taking forward specific aspects of the Committee’s recommendation, including a generational breakdown of the effects of tax and benefits on household income data set and backdating this to the extent that the data allowed.

What has been the impact of COVID-19? Public Health England (PHE) carried out a review of data into disparities in the risk and outcomes from COVID-19. The largest disparity found was by age. Among people already diagnosed with COVID-19; people who were 80 years or older were seventy times more likely to die than those under 40 years of age. Risk of dying among those diagnosed with COVID-19 was also higher in males than females; higher in those living in the more deprived areas than those living in the least deprived; and higher in those in Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups than in White ethnic groups. These inequalities largely replicate existing inequalities in mortality rates in previous years, except for BAME groups, as mortality was previously higher in White ethnic groups. Several studies, although measuring the different outcomes from COVID-19, report an increased risk of adverse outcomes in obese or morbidly obese people. 

A publication from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), examined how living standards – most commonly measured by household incomes – were changing in the UK up to the eve of COVID-19. The report found the COVID-19 crisis had hit at a time when income growth had already been extremely disappointing for some years. Median (middle) household income was revealed to be the same in 2018−2019 (the latest data) as in 2015−2016. For people aged 60 years or over, median income was 12% higher in 2018−2019 than before the previous recession in 2007−2008, and amongst the rest of the population it was only 3% higher. Trends among lower-income households had been worse still – they had experienced five years of real income stagnation between 2013−2014 and 2018−2019. Workers whose livelihoods look most at risk during COVID-19 already tended to have relatively low incomes, and were relatively likely to be in poverty, prior to the onset of the crisis. Employees working in ‘shut-down sectors’, such as hospitality, for example, were already almost twice as likely to be in poverty as other employees, and poverty rates were higher still for self-employed people working in these sectors. Cleaners and hairdressers were highlighted as groups with higher poverty rates than other workers who are unlikely to be able to work from home. Despite temporary increases in benefits announced in response to the pandemic, the benefits system in 2020 was found to provide less support to out-of-work households compared to 2011. Average benefit entitlement among workless households is 10% lower in 2020 than it would have been without any policy changes since 2011, and among workless households with children it is 12% lower.

The IF’s index of young adults’ wellbeing 2020 found average wellbeing declined by 8% in people aged 18-26 years between 1991 and 2017-2018. While overall wellbeing began improving between 1991 and 1999, it worsened (by 19%) at the height of the financial crisis and economic downturn and has not recovered since. Another variable which measures the closeness of relationships between family members has also declined significantly: the proportion of young adults who say that one of their three closest friends is also a relative has fallen from 34% in 1991 to 16% in the most recent year for which data was available. Physical and Mental Wellbeing measures subjective changes in young adults’ physical and mental health. The indicator which measures mental wellbeing suggests that one in five young adults reports suffering from symptoms of moderate mental distress. Economic Wellbeing has improved by a small amount since 1991, but the average working member of this age group is earning only 1% more in real terms than their counterpart in 1991 was, despite being much more likely to have a university degree. The average income of a worker in this age group remains 11% below the pre-2008 level in real terms. Overall, the results of the IF Index suggest that today’s young adults were already falling behind the level of wellbeing which previous generations enjoyed when they were at the same stage in life, and this was before the COVID-19 which may reduce their standard of living yet further.

The Resolution Foundation and Nuffield Foundation published an intergenerational audit in October 2020 to examine the impact of the initial phase of COVID-19 for different generations in Britain. There were four key findings. Firstly, COVID-19 has had profound physical health risks for older adults, and there is a clear distinction between the experiences of older people and working-age families during lockdown. Secondly, the labour market has hit a U shape, affecting the youngest and oldest workers most – although actual incomes fell most during lockdown for those in their late 40s. Thirdly, consumer debt usage accelerated for 35-44 year olds and falling equity prices have dented the wealth of people in their 50s. Fourthly, post-lockdown impacts may be more clearly tilted towards the bottom of the age range. By July 2020, younger adults had become the most likely to fall behind with housing payments; young people risk long-term employment and pay ‘scarring’ effects from starting careers in a downturn; the prospects for a post-coronavirus home ownership increase among aspirant buyers appear limited; and any removal of temporary welfare boosts look set to provide a major drag on the incomes of younger generations.  

Debates have also taken place in the Lords and Commons since the start of the pandemic that have picked up the issues covered in the Select Committee’s 2019 report. This includes a debate in March 2020 which highlighted the importance of intergenerational thinking: “the best old people are those who remember that they were once young, because it is that idealism, vision and hope young people have which carry us to do our best things at all ages. Of course, younger people are only older people in waiting. We all have a common intergenerational interest” (Lord True, chair of the Select Committee). In a debate on COVID-19 recovery strategies in June 2020, Baroness Hayman indicated that “we need fairness between generations, between regions and between industries’; with Lord Tunnicliffee noting that “doing this will require new policies rooted in a new consensus. We need to change, from how we engage with businesses and citizens to how we restructure central Government…the scale of the challenge we face is significant. Very little will come out of COVID-19, but acceptance of the need to reshape our economy could be one glimmer of hope”. Lord Robathan highlighted how “young people in this crisis have seen their education trashed, schools and universities closed, and exams missed. When lockdown is lifted, unemployment will shoot up; it will not be a good time to look for a job. We are facing a deep recession, possibly a global depression…Our prosperity and quality of life will be severely lessened and healthcare will suffer. If we older people are “all right, Jack”, and while our futures are largely behind us, we have mortgaged our country’s future and our children’s future”. Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick concurred in highlighting the number of companies cancelling graduate placements and internship opportunities. Lord Ravensdale called for an evidence-based plan for recovery that fits regions and provide a key reference point linked to the Government’s levelling up agenda. In an economy debate in November 2020 Lord Agnew of Oulton posited that “intergenerational solidarity is vital as we come through this crisis. I worry about the cliff edge of debt that we are generating”. A written statement made by Lord Greenhalgh (Minister of State for Building Safety and Communities) in December 2020 described how the Government ‘want to build more homes as a matter of social justice, of inter-generational fairness and as one of the best proven ways of creating jobs and economic growth’. 

While still at an early stage, all of this work highlights the impact of COVID-19 on different generations – illuminating the disproportionate effects so far on younger and older generations. ‘Unfairness’ has been laid bare during the pandemic in its disproportionate (health, economic, societal) impacts on some people more than others. This is leading to debates about whether fairness should be a core principle in our evidence base, policy making and delivery interventions post COVID-19.  

What more can be done to address unfairness? In March 2020, the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill was introduced into the House of Commons for its first reading. If it becomes law – and it is not currently supported by the Government – the Bill will require public bodies to act in a way that accords with the ‘future generations principle’ i.e., balancing short-term needs with safeguarding long-term needs, deploying resources to prevent problems occurring or getting worse, forecasting and managing emerging risks. Public bodies would be required to publish future generations impact assessments and a new Commissioner for Future Generations would be appointed to oversee the implementation of the Act. It would also lead to the establishment of a Joint Parliamentary Committee on Future Generations. The bill would build upon the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 in making provisions for the principle to apply across the UK.  

A briefing paper from the Social Market Foundation (SMF) in April 2020 discussed the need for the economic costs of responding to the pandemic to be shared fairly across the generations. The paper suggests the economic costs of tackling COVID-19 will fall heavily on those of working age, especially in terms of redundancies and lost income – and how the lockdown has been aimed at saving the lives of those at greatest risk (a group that is largely, though not exclusively, made up of older people). While the economic sacrifice is the right things to do, the report argues as we emerge from the crisis ‘older generations must uphold their part of the [social] contract by bearing a fair proportion of future tax rises and welfare reforms’. Echoing other research, the SMF has also called for the replacement of the triple lock with a double lock, whereby the basic state pension is tied to increases to earnings or inflation (whichever is higher). This could contribute £20 billion to deficit reduction over the next five-years. Pensions would still rise, but more slowly, reducing the fiscal burden of the working-age population.  

In January 2021, the House of Lords held a debate on tackling intergenerational unfairness. Contributors raised issues around loneliness, wage levels, debt, the unaffordability of house prices, a low-wage poor-health equilibrium, the state of the welfare safety net, the importance of having a good state pension, the gig economy and the role of churches and faith communities. According to Viscount Chandos “although COVID-19 has posed a far greater direct threat to the health of older people, the broader social and economic impact of the measures taken to control the spread of the virus has affected every generation, and in many respects, particularly the younger ones…that the greatest poverty and unfairness now lies with younger working-age people, is likely to be emphasised by the effects of the pandemic-combating policies of the past year and the months still to come”. As a state and a society the Lords were clear that we need to do more in real-time to get to grips with some of the extraordinary policy challenges that have arisen as a result of the pandemic. 

COVID-19 has brought the Select Committee’s report into renewed sharpness. For the pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated existing intergenerational economic and social inequalities and tensions. On the one hand, research has explored the differential impacts of COVID-19 on different generations. On the other hand, illuminating what different generations have in common and the mutual self-support and aid provided have also been highlighted. Where the ‘intergenerational contract’ fits in a policy context and how plays out in practice [perhaps through the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill] as we recover from the pandemic is now in focus. 

Whatever we do, and whatever the future holds, this implicit contract between generations lies at the heart of our society. While we are all in this, clearly we have not all been in it together. Whether it’s housing, wages, social care, the environment, or the welfare system, all require some reform so we can create a fairer and better society for all. Importantly, this requires thinking about generational relationships through a rural lens – where the generation gap between young and older is more pronounced. What are the lived and economic experiences of different rural residents? How can we improve data collection to better understand generational similarities and differences in rural areas? And what more can we do to ensure all generations can enjoy healthy and fulfilling lives in rural areas?  

Finally, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Future Generations is carrying out an inquiry into long-termism into policymaking. The inquiry is covering four main questions: (i) to what extent is a lack of long-term thinking a challenge in policymaking – and why is long-term thinking important? (ii) What are the root causes of failures in long-term thinking? (iii) What are some of the success stories – and what are some examples of poor long-term planning? (iv) How can we better incorporate long-term thinking in the policy making process? If the situation we face cannot be solved with short term election cycles or economic production and growth measures such as GDP; will the current inquiry help shift our thinking to address intergenerational challenges? In May 2018, the Wales Audit Office published its assessment of how public bodies in Wales have responded to the 2015 welsh Act. This found public bodies supported the principles of the Act and were taking steps to change how they work (e.g. undertaking wellbeing impact assessments); but inserting change into planning and decision-making processes is a gradual process. Will the Bill and the work of the inquiry help to embed longer-term thinking? And what could it mean for rural places? Watch this space.  

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Jessica is a researcher/project manager at Rose Regeneration and a senior research fellow at The National Centre for Rural Health and Care (NCRHC). Her current work includes supporting health commissioners and providers to measure their response to COVID-19 and with future planning; and evaluating two employability programmes helping people furthest from the labour market. Jessica also sits on the board of a Housing Association that supports older and vulnerable people. 

She can be contacted by email jessica.sellick@roseregeneration.co.uk. 

Website: http://roseregeneration.co.uk/https://www.ncrhc.org/ 

Blog: http://ruralwords.co.uk/ 

Twitter: @RoseRegen 

Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships – training people for (rural) jobs of the future?

Back in 2012, the Richard Review of Apprenticeships explored what apprenticeships should be like in the future, and how they could meet the needs of a changing economy. Upon finding an extraordinary number of qualifications, which could be stitched together in an infinite number of combinations leading to any number of possible outcomes Richard’s called for turning the system on its head by having fewer, clearer standards (preferable one per occupation), that covered what employers required for an apprentice to be competent in that occupation. In Vision 2020 Government set out its programme for the reform and growth of apprenticeships. As part of a concerted attempt to address skills shortages and meet employers’ needs Government was aiming to increase the number of apprenticeships significantly. What are apprenticeships, how does the current system work and what needs to be done to ensure more are on offer in rural areas? Jessica Sellick investigates.   

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What are apprenticeships? 

According to Government, an apprenticeship is ‘a real job, with hands-on experience, a salary and the chance to train while you work. You’re treated just like all the other employees, with a contract of employment and holiday leave.’  Apprenticeships combine practical training in a job with study (the equivalent of one day a week). Apprentices have the same rights as other employees and are entitled to be paid at least the apprentice rate of the national minimum wage and may receive a nationally recognised qualification on completion of their apprenticeship. 

Apprenticeships are available to anyone over 16 years living in England [separate schemes operate in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales]. Apprenticeships take between one and four years to complete and cover some 1,500 occupations across 170+ industries. 

Apprenticeships can be studied at different levels. From intermediate (Level 2) which is equivalent to an educational level of 5 GCSE passes at grade A*-C or 9-4; to advanced (Level 3) which is equivalent to 2 A Level passes /level 3 Diploma or International Baccalaureate; to higher (Levels 4, 5, 6 and 7) which is equivalent to foundation degree and above; and degree (levels 6 and 7) which is equivalent to a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree.  

There are two different types of apprenticeships: Frameworks and Standards. Government is aiming to move from Frameworks [which were established by sector bodies to assess apprenticeships and are qualification led] to Standards [which are employer driven and occupation-focused] by 2020. Standards were first introduced in September 2014 and are developed by trailblazer groups representing groups of employers and sector organisations.  As of 25 March 2019, there were 421 Standards approved for delivery, 166 Standards in development, and a further 73 proposals in development.  

How many apprentices are there? 

According to the Department for Education (DfE), there were 192,100 apprenticeship starts recorded between August 2018 and December 2018 for the 2018-2019 academic year. This compares to 175,100 reported in the equivalent period in 2017-2018; 230,400 in 2016-2017; and 224,400 in 2015-2016. Of the 192,100 apprenticeship starts reported so far in 2018-2019, 59.1% (or 113,500 people) were on apprenticeship standards. 

In the 2017-2018 period, there were 48,150 higher level (Level 4+) apprenticeship starts, compared to 3,700 in 2011-2012. Between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 higher level starts rose by 31.7%. In contrast, both intermediate (Level 2) and advanced (Level 3) apprenticeships declined between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 – by 38.1% and 15.9% respectively.  The average expected duration of an apprenticeship has increased from 529 to 612 days in the first half of 2017-2018; with the expected off-the-job training hours also increasing from 560 to 700 hours.

83% of apprenticeship starts in 2017-2018 were concentrated in four sectors: business, administration & law (30% of all starts); health, public services & care (24%); engineering & manufacturing technologies (16%); and retail & commercial enterprise (14%). 

814,800 people completed an apprenticeship in 2017-2018 – down 1,600 on the previous year. All regions saw a fall in apprenticeship starts between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018: with apprenticeship starts in the North East falling from 34,000 in 2016-2017 to 23,000 in 2017-2018 (down 33%); the West Midlands falling from 60,000 in 2016-2017 to 43,000 in 2017-2018 (down 29%) and the East Midlands falling from 48,000 in 2016-2017 to 34,000 in 2017-2018 (down 29%). The lowest falls were recorded in London and the South East (both down by 17%). 

Since March 2017, public bodies with a headcount of 250 or more employees in England in each year from 2017 to 2020 are required to meet a minimum target set by Government of 2.3% apprenticeship starts each year [this can be applied to new recruits or existing staff]. This means Government expects public bodies to ‘have regard’ to this target in their workforce planning decisions and use the Apprenticeship Activity Return to demonstrate how they have had regard to the target.  

In March 2019, the National Audit Office (NAO) published a report looking at whether apprenticeships are providing value for money.  According to the report, for the period 2017-2018 public bodies reported that 1.4% of their workforce had started an apprenticeship. This figure was based on returns from 676 bodies and equated to 45,300 starts in total. 

While there was an increase in starts in April 2017 the NAO suggests it is unlikely that the Government will meet its target of 3 million apprenticeship starts by 2020. In 2017-2018 there were some 375,800 starts – 26% lower than the 509,400 starts in 2015-2016, with falls marked at Level 2. To achieve its own target, this means the Government would need new starts to double for the remainder of the period. Indeed in May 2019, The Rt Hon Anne Milton MP (the Minister of State for Apprenticeships and Skills) suggested not only will Government miss its own target but it will have to rethink its strategy next year. 

The NAO further described the DfE metrics for measuring performance – with a focus on starts rather than the 32% of people who completed their apprenticeship in 2016-2017 who did not achieve it. There is also insufficient data to determine whether people remain with an employer at the end of their apprenticeship and reap financial gains (what are the financial earnings gained according to level, sector). Further, the NAO identified an oversight gap in how the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) ensures apprentices spend at least 20% of their time on off-the-job-training. 

How are they funded? 

Since April 2017 Government has been implementing changes in the way apprenticeship funding works – much of this can be traced back to the Government’s Industrial Strategy. In April 2017 the apprenticeship levy came into effect for all UK employers with a pay bill of more than £3 million and/or employers connected to other companies or charities which have in total an annual pay bill of more than £3 million. The levy is set at 0.5% of the value of the employer’s pay bill, minus an apprenticeship levy allowance of £15,000 per financial year. The levy is paid into an apprenticeship service account with funds in it then spent on apprenticeship training and assessment. Employers pay their levy to HMRC each month through the PAYE process – with the amounts paid dependent upon each month’s pay bill. The Government applies a 10% top-up to the funds paid by an employer through the levy.  Levy-paying employers register for an apprenticeship service account which is then used to pay for apprenticeship training and assessment.  The funding expires 24 months after it enters to service account – employers are able to transfer 10% of their funds to other employers (capped at a maximum of 10% of their annual funds). 

Since May 2017, employers paying the Apprenticeship Levy have been able to select a provider from the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers. The Register lists: (1) main providers: organisations that be selected by levy paying employers to deliver apprenticeship training; (2) employer providers: levy paying employers that can provide training to their own staff and/or apprentices in connected companies; and (3) supporting providers: organisations that can only deliver as part of a subcontractor for contract values of between £100,000 and £500,000 per year. Organisations that would like to deliver apprenticeship training but at a value of less than £100,000 are not required to register.

In April 2018, the OECD carried out a review of Apprenticeship programs in England. The OECD found English apprentices receive 50-100 hours of general education over the course of their apprenticeships, with general education only mandatory for those not meeting the minimum requirements in mathematics and English. This compares to around 400 hours of general education covering a range of subjects in German and Swiss apprenticeships, and nearly 600 hours in Norwegian apprenticeships.   The report also found apprenticeship workplace training in England was not systematic and subject to little quality assurance. Lack of standards with regard to training in workplaces increases the risk that employers will substitute apprentices for unskilled workers, the OECD argues. The reviewers recommended increasing the amount of education in apprenticeships for young people; supporting the development of systematic training provision; keeping apprenticeship qualifications broad and few in number; reviewing the assessment market; providing pre-apprenticeship programmes for disadvantaged young people to progress into full apprenticeship programmes; and ensuring that all apprenticeships include a substantial element of work-based learning with an employer. 

According to the NAO report, £1.6 billion of public money was spent on the apprenticeships programme in 2017-2018 alongside the £2 billion contributed by levy paying employers. While these seem large sums, the average cost of training an apprentice on a standard is double what was expected; raising concerns that the programme will overspend in the future. This is because employers are now choosing more expensive and higher level standards than the DfE expected. The average cost of training an apprenticeship in 2017-2018 was approximately £9,000. Projections show that, even if starts remain at current levels, spending could rise to more than £3 billion a year once frameworks are withdrawn and all apprenticeships are on standards. 

Back in October 2018, the House of Commons Education Committee recommended increasing the top funding band, doubling the time employers have to spend their funds, allowing more levy transfers and providing greater flexibility to the 20% off-the-job training requirement. 

What do employers and apprentices think? 

The Open University commissioned independent market research among 750 senior business leaders from small, medium and large employers across the UK. 84% of respondents supported the apprenticeship levy in principle. 4 in 5 businesses in England either already employ apprentices or plan to do so in the future; and are using apprenticeships to build up skills amongst their existing staff (27%) or to train new staff (54%). Some business leaders have found apprentices make the rest of their workforce more productive and that they pass on what they learn leading to a more motivated and satisfied workforce. From an employer perspective, 34% believe apprentices bring a fresh approach and positive attitude to the workplace; 23% that apprentices are more loyal and easier to retain than other staff members; and 20% that apprentices are more productive than other members of staff. 51% of employers agreed that apprenticeships were less disruptive to their business than other forms of training. In the words of one employer “in my experience, people have a natural desire to pay you back if you invest in them. Apprentices may stay with you for longer, as they feel appreciated and well recognised. Longer-serving employees see apprenticeships as a great opportunity to leave a legacy and get benefit from developing their potential.” Employers suggested greater flexibility in apprenticeship content, including modular apprenticeships (modelled in a similar way to The Open University’s open degrees), would be beneficial going forward.  

Some employer groups have called on some of the levy to be spent on pre-employment engagement with schools, parents/carers and pupils – which takes up much time and requires additional resourcing.   

Other organisations query if the apprenticeship changes have diminished the quality of apprenticeships – with the list of roles covered often offering minimal training and representing low wage jobs that do not constitute skilled occupations? The suggestion here is that some employers may rebadge existing training courses as apprenticeships to shift the training costs onto Government.  

In 2017 Investors in People conducted research into how young people perceived apprenticeships. Of the 1,000 young people surveyed, 45% had considered an apprenticeship. Of the 53% who said they had never considered one: 62% of them said they wanted to do A Levels and go to university; 28% that the industry they want to work in does not offer apprenticeships, 26% thought apprenticeships were known for giving low pay; 16% said their school or college didn’t provide them with information about apprenticeships and 11% thought apprenticeships were for low skilled occupations. The research reveals that while young people have heard of apprenticeships, many are not aware of what they are in practice (e.g. career opportunities, pay) leaving many unsure ‘what’s in it for me?’ 

The Social Mobility Commission 2018 barometer found respondents were more likely to think an apprenticeship offers the best opportunity for young people to progress in life and career than other routes – with 30% thinking apprenticeships offer the best route compared to higher education (26%), further education (14%) and just starting work (8%). However these figures differ by age with those aged 65+ years more likely to suggest apprenticeships than those aged 18-24 years – in the younger cohort 20% would choose an apprenticeship compared to 34% wanting to go into higher education.  

In November 2018, the Government commissioned a learners and apprentices survey. The findings, based on 12.872 interviews (2,287 online and 10,585 by telephone), reveal that while half of all apprentices are young people (aged 19-24 years), the apprenticeship sector is serving people in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. Typically apprentices are already working for their apprenticeship employer (62%) or had started their apprenticeship straight after finishing full-time education (18%). The main reason for starting an apprenticeship was because their employer had offered it to them or had made it a requirement of their job. Three-quarters of apprentices that had never worked before completing their apprenticeship had moved into and remained in paid work at the time of the survey. Nearly three-quarters of apprentices who completed or were still working towards an apprenticeship agreed their chances of earning a higher wage in the future had increased; with 8 in 10 agreeing their chances of going on to higher levels of training had increased. There was some evidence that where apprentices had left it was for other employment or training. 

According to Government, the monetary benefits of completing an apprenticeship to an individual over their working life are estimated to be £48,000-£74,000 for Level 2; £77,000-£117,000 for Level 3 and £150,000 for Level 4 or above.  

In a series of blogs, young people have described their positive experiences of apprenticeships – see Hyo, an apprentice in the Cabinet Office; Hugh Gaffney, an apprentice at The Careers & Enterprise Company; Rob O’Connor, an apprentice at Accenture, Dominic and John, apprentices at RSA; and Joanna, an apprentice at Argies Coffee.   

What about apprenticeships in rural areas? 

According to Defra’s Statistical Digest of Rural England (March 2019), the proportion of working age population with at least one qualification, with an NVQ2 and/or an NVQ4 has been consistently higher for the total rural category than for those living in the all urban category. But the proportion of people with NVQ4 or equivalent is much higher for people working in rural areas – 44.7% compared to predominantly rural areas (35.4%). A higher percentage of people working in urban areas receive on-the-job training than people working in rural areas – 12.9% in predominantly rural areas compared to 13.3% in urban areas. However, some people who live in rural areas will travel to urban areas for work so these skills will not necessarily be used in rural areas. 

If you do a key word search on apprenticeship standards entering the word ‘rural’, generates 1 result (for highways maintenance skilled operative); countryside generates 1 result (countryside worker – this standard is in development), agriculture generates 3 results (professional advisor in agriculture/horticulture – in development, land-based service engineer, land-based service engineer technician); and there are 20 results for natural environment (including crop technician, forest operative and poultry worker). Aside from the apprenticeship standards; many RSN members will be familiar with apprenticeships offered in their own areas – from those in national parks (e.g. the Lake District, North York Moors); to those across England – from Cornwall to Cumbria; from Hampshire to Hertfordshire; and from Leicestershire to Worcestershire. The search facilities on existing platforms do not always reveal the geographical and sectoral diversity of opportunities available in rural areas. 

While there is often little difference in the sectors between rural and urban areas, the context is very different and this can bring additional challenges when providing apprenticeships. 

Jo Maher, principal and chief executive at Boston College, highlights some of the rural challenges and opportunities facing colleges, apprentices and employers.  For apprentices living in rural areas the greatest challenge is the time and distance it can take to access an apprenticeship. The greatest challenge for rural college leaders is that assessors have the same time and distance issues as the apprentices they need to assess – compounded by the fact that many employers in rural areas are micro-businesses and only employ one apprentice. Colleges have to model delivery on an assessor spending an hour with a maximum of four apprentices a day to allow for this travel time whereas in an urban area an assessor might be able to train up to seven apprentices in a day. The challenges for employers in rural areas include size, scale and breadth. Maher’s recommendations to better support apprenticeships in rural areas include: providing an uplift [calculated in a similar way to the disadvantage uplift in full-time FE funding]; setting up an apprenticeship loan system – where a larger company is able to loan an apprentice to an SME with a view to bringing them back a year later to progress their employment and leaving the rural SME with a regular supply of apprentices; and establishing a ‘quality mark’ to enable apprentices to select employers in the same way as they can look at a college’s Ofsted grade and feedback score; this means employers could better able evidence their role in providing high quality training.  

These insights chime with witness testimony provided to the Select Committee on the Rural Economy. For example, the Centre for Rural Economy (CRE) described how an apprenticeship criterion often favours larger firms, making it harder for rural SMEs to host apprentices. With a higher proportion of older people living in rural areas CRE advocated changing the age limits to attract people of working age at later stages of their careers. Countryside Alliance  identified that ‘affordability’ and time can be real barriers for land-based SMEs wanting to offer apprenticeships. On a more positive note, National Parks England noted that the Government’s 8 Point Plan for National Parks had led to a 91% increase in apprenticeships in National Park Authorities and that hosting an apprenticeship had doubled since April 2018.  

For me, what these findings reveal is the need to focus on rural communities and places rather than apply a one-size-fits-all approach to apprenticeships. This means communities thinking through how they can attract and retain employers and apprenticeships (e.g. Rock the Cotswolds): what rural assets and aspirations can be built upon and what locally defined rural apprenticeship priorities emerge? We also need to provide training and development opportunities for SMEs that works well in rural places; and ensure that adequate funding; support and assessment processes are in place. 

Where next? 

In September 2018, the House of Commons Education Committee called for ‘stronger, clearer oversight of apprenticeship training and assessment. New providers should get a monitoring visit from Ofsted in the first year….Ofqual should be given responsibility for the external quality assurance of all end-point assessments….we found enthusiasm for the opportunities apprenticeships can offer and commitment to seizing them. There can be no doubt that apprenticeships work. However, we think they could work even better and on a greater scale.’ Many of the Committee’s recommendations chime with rural areas, including: providing more bursaries, increased incentives for small and medium sized businesses and a new social justice fund to support organisations that help the hardest to reach.  

In January 2019 the Department for Education (DfE) launched a new campaign to promote apprenticeships among young people, parents, schools and employers. ‘Fire it up’ aims to shift deeply held views and drive more people towards an apprenticeship. With an increasing variety of apprenticeship options available for people of all ages and backgrounds, if we need to improve both productivity and social mobility; for Government apprenticeships will continue to play a central role in maintaining our skills base. 

In March 2019 the Skills Commission, Policy Connect and the Learning and Work Institute embarked on a new project to map the blueprint for an ecosystem that can adapt to current and future economic and social priorities. In asking whether the national skills system [including apprenticeships] is serving different communities and businesses across the UK; the project inquiry team is visiting Spalding (Lincolnshire), Middlesbrough and Bristol and are running a call for evidence until 27 May 2019. 

More recently, in April 2019 the House of Lords Select Committee on the Rural Economy published its report. Seeing apprenticeships as a route to addressing skills shortages in rural areas, the report contained a series of recommendations, including: (i) reviewing apprenticeship criteria to make it easier for rural SMEs to host apprentices and provide new land based apprenticeships; (ii) reviewing funding arrangements for apprenticeships to make it easier for smaller businesses to engage; (iii) increasing the amount of apprenticeship levy that can be transferred from large to small firms should be considered; and (iv) with local industrial strategies focusing on skills there could be a renewed focus and improvements made to support rural apprenticeships.  

In 2020 the Government has plans to refresh its apprenticeship strategy as part of attempts to increase the number of apprenticeships. 

How can we ensure that rural communities and businesses are ‘fired up’ and part of this policy conversation? Will the House of Lords select committee recommendations be taken into account?  And, ultimately, what more can be done to deliver apprenticeships in rural areas and what metrics do we have or can we develop to measure success?   

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Jessica is a researcher/project manager at Rose Regeneration. Her current work includes evaluating two veteran support projects (in Cornwall and North Yorkshire); supporting public sector bodies to measure social value; and evaluating a series of community safety and crime reduction projects. She was recently part of the team that successfully bid to create an Institute of Technology in Lincolnshire.   

She is also a senior research fellow at the National Centre for Rural Health and Care (https://www.ncrhc.org/). 

In her spare time Jessica sits on the board of a housing association. 

She can be contacted by email jessica.sellick@roseregeneration.co.uk or telephone 01522 521211. 

Website: http://roseregeneration.co.uk/ 

Blog: http://ruralwords.co.uk/ 

Twitter: @RoseRegen 

Food poverty

Hidden hunger – how can we tackle food poverty and insecurity in rural areas?

When we think of the word ‘hunger’ we often think about starving children in developing countries. Yet unfortunately this type of hunger is very much a reality for some people living in the UK today. Figures suggest 1 in 6 adults has skipped a meal because they couldn’t afford it and 1 in 12 has gone a whole day without eating. School holidays make up 13 weeks of the year – this means children and young people spend a quarter of their year not in school. This brings additional costs and challenges for families – with some 3 million children at risk of hunger during holiday periods. For too many children and adults the food runs out. Because it’s harder to spot in the UK it can be difficult to convey hunger exists. How many children and adults have hunger as their most constant companion? What causes household food poverty and food insecurity?  And what more can be done to respond to this urgent need? Jessica Sellick investigates. 

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How many children and adults are going hungry? 

The Food Standards Agency’s working definition of food poverty is ‘where the constraints are such that it is not possible for individuals or households to consume a nutritionally adequate diet, they could be considered to be in food poverty.’This is where an individual or households isn’t able to obtain healthy, nutritious food, or can’t access the food they would like to eat – forcing people to eat what they can afford rather than what they want. Some commentators draw on Peter Townsend’s concept of relative poverty in defining food poverty beyond these nutritional concepts to ‘the social functions that eating serves i.e., being able to modestly eat out once in a while, have friends over to eat or celebrate special occasions.’  

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines food insecurity as ‘a situation that exists when people lack secure access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active and healthy life. It may be caused by unavailability of food, insufficient purchasing power, inappropriate distribution or inadequate use of food at the household level…Food insecurity may be chronic, seasonal or transitory.’ 

According to UNICEF, in 2017, 10% of children in the UK were reported to be living in households affected by severe food insecurity [defined by UNICEF as ‘experiencing hunger’]. According to figures published by End Hunger UK, in January 2018 16% of adults in Great Britain either skipped or saw someone else in their household skip meals; 14% of adults worried about not having enough food to eat; and 8% of adults had gone a whole day without eating because of a lack of money during the last 12 months. Parents whose children were aged 18 and under were found to be particularly food insecure, with 23% either skipping or seeing someone in their household skipping a meal due to a lack of money; 23% worried about not having enough food to eat; and 13% had gone without eating for a whole day in the last 12 months. Parents with primary school-age children (aged 5-11 years) fared even worse: with 27% either skipping or seeing someone in their household skipping meals to make ends meet. 

“I work—two jobs—and my husband works full-time. We should be able to afford good, nutritious food. We should be able to afford food. The reality, though, is multiple days when dinner has been a tin of chopped tomatoes, some value dried mixed herbs, and 20p pasta; we have to regularly feed our family on around £1.50 for the entire meal—not per head. By the time our rent is paid, money put on the gas and electric keys, the bills paid…there’s nothing left. We drink water, we eat the cheapest food, but we struggle to afford even that.”

“It [Christmas] was a festival of all the things we couldn’t have. Adverts on telly show families spending loads of money and you’re just bombarded with it everywhere you go – this faux festivity and cheer. My worst year, I didn’t have a tree, didn’t have any decorations, I couldn’t buy any presents, I had unplugged the fridge, turned the heating off, taken out the light bulbs…I sent my son to his father’s for Christmas and I just sat on my own and got drunk on cheap lager on the couch and didn’t tell anyone.”

According to academics at Northumbria University, holiday hunger is a ‘condition that occurs when a child’s household is, or will, become food insecure during the school holidays.’ When there is no school there is no Free School Meals (FSMs). Eligibility for Free School Meals (FSMs) extends to all children in England and Scotland who are in Year 2 and below. For pupils in other years FSMs is means tested. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), in April 2018, there were some one million children receiving means tested FSMs, with two-thirds of these children living in the lowest income fifth of households with children. A change to the rules governing FSMs led by the Department for Education (DfE) is now taking place due to the introduction of Universal Credit (UC). The IFS estimates that this will lead some 210,000 extra children will be eligible for FSMs after the rollout of UC. However, 160,000 children who are currently entitled to FSMs will lose out under the new system – meaning an overall increase of 4% or some 50,000 pupils in receipt of FSMs. In many cases, school dinners can be the main source of nutrition for children and young people living in low income households.  

Research by Feeding Britain suggests 3 million children are at risk of hunger during school holidays; and that the loss of FSMs during the holidays costs a family, on average, £30.00-£40.00 per week. Work in Glasgow by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has highlighted some of the cost pressures facing families during holiday periods – with many parents reporting falling into debt or borrowing money to pay for heating, eating and uniform for new the new school term.  

A survey funded by Kellogg’s found more than six out of ten parents with household incomes of less than £25,000 said they were not always able to afford to buy food outside of term time [this figure increased to 73% for parents on incomes of less than £15,000]; and that one-third of parents had skipped a meal during the school holidays so that their children could eat.   

No parent cuts out meals for themselves or their children through choice; they do so because they have no choice. But it is difficult to tell how many children and adults have hunger as a constant companion because there is no standard measures or data collection for measuring this across the UK.  

The FAO, for example uses the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) to measure food insecurity through people’s experiences. The FIES asks individual respondents for themselves or their household as a whole during the last 12 months is there a time when – because of lack of money or other resources – they: (1) were worried they would not have enough food to eat; (2) were unable to eat healthy and nutritious food; (3) ate only a few kinds of foods; (4) had to skip a meal; (5) ate less than they thought they should; (6) ran out of food; (7) were hungry but did not eat; and (8) went without eating for a whole day? Responses to these eight questions are then transposed onto a scale from mild food insecurity (i.e., worrying about the ability to obtain food); through to moderate food insecurity (i.e., reducing quantities, skipping meals) and severe food insecurity (i.e., experiencing hunger). 

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) collates data and information on ‘hunger’, ‘food security’ and ‘food insecurity’ as part of Government attempts to identify the economic and social factors that may lead to hunger.     

When it launched new research into destitution in 2018, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) described what it means to go hungry. By ‘destitute’ the researchers asked respondents if they, or their children, had lacked two or more of the following six essentials over the past month because they could not afford them: (i) shelter, (ii) food, (iii) heating, (iv) lighting, (v) clothing and footwear and/or (vi) basic toiletries.

How can we draw on some of these definitions and measures to develop some baseline data (and ongoing information) about children and adults experiencing hunger, on the verge of hunger, and at risk of hunger (including the nutritional and social functions of food) across the UK? 

Why are people hungry – what is causing household food budgets to become so restricted? 

The report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on hunger in the United Kingdom ‘a strategy for zero hunger’ describes how:  

“something fundamental is happening in advanced Western economies which throws into doubt the effectiveness of a national minimum below which no one is allowed to fall. It is the erosion of an effective national minimum that has led to the existence of hunger and the rise of the food bank movement in its wake” (page 9). 

The report illuminates the multifaceted reasons for hunger. These include: a reduction in real wages; benefits levels and changes (delays/errors in processing claims, benefit sanctions); juggling the budget for food, housing and utilities (which for some people means going without food in order to avoid becoming homeless or the utilities being turned off); people being overwhelmed by a sudden budgetary crisis; and/or the absence of FSMs. The APPG also identified some underpinning reasons including the size of debt which many families are struggling with and addiction (including addiction funded by debt).  

A Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) carried out for Defra back in 2014 asked food aid organisations who accesses their support and why. Food aid organisations identified immediate problems such as a sudden reduction in household income (job losses or benefits payments) as well as ongoing circumstances (continual low household income and indebtedness). The REA also revealed how people who struggle to manage their food needs adopt a variety of strategies to avoid having to ask for food help (e.g. cutting back, changing eating and shopping habits, juggling budgets, turning to family and friends). When they do turn to food aid – often as a very last resort – they are likely to draw upon as much assistance (food and non-food support) as they possibly can.   

More recently, in January 2018, the APPG on Hunger published its report into the ‘hidden’ problem of elderly hunger in the UK. This revealed more than 1 million older people at risk of malnutrition caused by social isolation (e.g. due to bereavement, illness, immobility or loss of driving licence) and cuts to public services. The report found malnutrition costs the NHS approximately £12-13 billion a year and this is being exacerbated by reductions in social care packages, cuts to meals on wheels services and local shop closures. 

‘Food aid’ is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of large and small scale local activities aimed at helping people to meet their food needs, often on a short term basis (during crisis or immediate difficulty). 

Food banks are one example of food aid. Foodbanks in the UK are typically run by charities, community groups, voluntary sector organisations and faith groups. People are usually referred to a food bank from an agency or body such as Citizens Advice, Jobcentre Plus, GP, social worker or school from whom they receive a voucher to take to a food bank where they receive 3 days’ worth of food. 

Since February 2017 the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) has been mapping the number of independent foodbanks outside of those operated by the Trussell Trust. So far, researchers at the IFAN have identified 801 independent foodbanks. This equates to 39.3% of the total number of UK food banks, with the Trussell Trust’s network currently extending to some 1,235 foodbanks. 

Between 1 April 2017 and 31 March 2018, Trussell Trust foodbanks provided 1,332,952 people with three-day emergency food supplies – a 13% increase on the previous year. Some 484,026 of these emergency food supplies went to children – whose foodbank use increased 6% on the previous year. The top four reasons for referral to one of the Trussell Trust’s foodbanks were: being on a low income (28% of referrals), a delay in benefits (24%), changes in benefits (18%) and debt (9%). 

An animation, ‘Hunger by the Sea’, made by Bournemouth University contains first-hand accounts from people accessing support from a foodbank. The foodbank used to develop the animation was situated by the sea and this was used to produce images to accompany participant’s narratives about how they are struggling to keep their heads above water. The Trussell Trust also provides narratives of people using its foodbanks. 

The UK Government does not collect data on the number of foodbanks in operation, the number of people accessing them and the circumstances that lead them to do so. This would undoubtedly build a fuller picture about the ‘national minimum’ below which people should not be allowed to fall.  

How many people are hungry in rural areas – and how many people are struggling to access healthy and affordable food? 

An Evidence Review for the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger looked at the extent and geographical spread of hunger and food poverty. The review included a section on ‘rural hardship’ which identified several factors which may worsen the ability of low-income households in rural and coastal areas to be able to afford food. These factors included: struggling with the higher costs of heating their homes, higher costs of transport, distance to work or Jobcentre Plus and low-paid and seasonal employment. Evidence submitted to the review found some rural residents were living some distance from lower-cost supermarkets and could not afford the bus fare to travel to town to shop. The insecure and short-term patterns of employment in some rural areas led some residents to not be able to accrue savings or resources to provide resilience during difficult times; and how property costs are higher and comprise proportionately more of the family income which means families can be more vulnerable to shocks in their household budget. 

Food deserts are defined in the US as ‘parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas.’ 

A report published by the Social Market Foundation in October 2018 found about three-quarters (76%) of food deserts in England and Wales were in urban areas, with the remaining 24% in rural areas. While a quarter (24%) of urban super output areas are “food oases”; this is the case for 7% of rural super output areas. Overall, 95% of food oases are in urban areas and 5% in rural areas. Rural areas were found to have more restricted choice of food stores than urban areas; and for rural residents without access to a car, or with restricted mobility, accessing a range of food stores in a rural area was a challenge. 

Much is written about what happens when a supermarket opens up in an area but less is written about the consequences when a supermarket closes – particularly in a rural area which can lead to a reduction in the local community’s access to fresh food.  

Defra’s Statistical Digest of Rural England  (December 2018) monitors ‘accessibility to key services’ by looking at the time taken to travel from a rural place to a service location. Generally, people living in rural settlements have lower overall levels of accessibility to key services compared with people living in urban places – with people living in sparse rural settings having the lowest overall accessibility. For travel by public transport, the average number of key service locations accessible to people living in rural areas is highest for primary schools and food stores, with 9 available within a 60 minute journey time. 

Approximately 28% of UK food banks are located in rural areas, but their distribution varies across different rural districts. Even where there is a foodbank in a rural area some remote residents may struggle to access it (or get a referral from an agency) because of the distance and cost of transport. Research has further highlighted how the stigma often associated with using foodbanks can take on additional prevalence in rural areas where this is often a strong ethos of ‘making do’. 

Back in 2015 Hannah Lambie-Mumford and Carolyn Snell investigated the ‘heat or eat’ dilemma in rural areas, interviewing clients from Trussell Trust foodbanks in Cornwall. The report’s findings suggest neither fuel nor food is sacrificed for the other, but instead those with the lowest income ration both. The quantity and quality of food is reduced, whilst the use of fuel for cooking and lighting is often prioritised over warmth. 

Is it possible to collect data on the number of foodbanks in operation, the number of people accessing them (or not able to access them) and the circumstances that lead them to do so? 

Importantly, is it also possible to map sources of ‘affordable’ and healthy food in rural areas – not only taking into account distance to a food store  and number of stores available in a given area; but then overlaying this information with other indicators such as average household income, deprivation and availability of public transport? 

What is being done to address hunger?  

In March 2018 the Government announced a £2 million ‘Holiday Activities and Food Programme’ for new and existing holiday clubs to explore how to help disadvantaged children benefit from healthy meals and enriching activities. In November 2018, the DfE published management information about the children and young people attending the holiday clubs.  This revealed, of the seven organisations funded by the DfE to provide healthy food and enriching activities, 18,200 children and young people had received support. 

Holiday clubs provide free meals and activities during the school holidays for children who may otherwise go without and are often operated by charities, community groups, youth groups or Local Authorities. In 2017, the estimated 593 clubs across the UK provided over 190,000 meals to more than 22,000 children and young people during the summer holidays and October half-term. But their geographical coverage is patchy which means they are not reaching all the children who need help during the holidays.

Under the strapline ‘no child too hungry to learn’, Magic Breakfast provides breakfast food and expert support to schools. The DfE provided funding to Magic Breakfast to support schools to set up and run breakfast clubs in schools with over 35% of the pupils eligible for FSMs which had no existing breakfast club. The evaluation of the scheme found the delivery model worked well – with 184 schools recruited and 96% of schools continuing to provide a breakfast club after Magic Breakfast’s contract with the DfE ended. As well as reducing hunger, breakfast clubs were perceived to improve concentration and behaviour in class and to improve punctuality for some pupils. In March 2018 the DfE announced £26 million [funded through the soft drinks industry levy] towards a National School Breakfast Programme. To be delivered by Family Action in partnership with Magic Breakfast, the Programme aims to help improve breakfast for pupils in more than 1,700 schools by 2020. In addition to providing the National School Breakfast Programme, Magic Breakfast is continuing to provide nutritious breakfasts to more than 31,500 children during school term time. In the 2017-2018 academic year, Magic Breakfast provided 2,884,512 bagels, 2,016,727 bowls of cereal, 1,765,446 glasses of juice and 242,705 bowls of porridge.  

The Healthy Start Scheme is Government funded and provides vouchers for pregnant women or parents with children under the age of four years on benefits for them to spend on healthy foodstuffs such as milk, fruit and vegetables.  

Other non-Government initiatives include Fare Share’s, the UK’s largest food charity, campaign ‘feed people first’ which is working with manufacturers, processors, packers and retailers so that surplus food can be collected by local charities. Many foodbanks have joined the ‘more than food programme’, becoming community hubs and providing people with support people tackle debt and financial issues, get through and out of fuel poverty and providing holiday clubs for children when FSMs are not available.   

What more can be done? 

The Fabian Commission on Food and Poverty looked at how a fairer food system could be built that works better for people on low incomes. The Commission’s recommendations included a new cross-department minister with responsibility for eliminating household food insecurity in the UK; action to reduce acute household food insecurity caused by sanctions, delays and errors in the benefits system; an inquiry to remove poverty premiums for key living costs such as food, utilities, housing, household appliances and transport; and called for Local Authorities to establish food access plans that address physical barriers to affordable, nutritious food in their area. 

Other organisations are also calling for a coordinated Government strategy to tackle household food poverty and food insecurity (e.g. End Hunger UK, Feeding Britain, Church Action on Poverty and partners).  

The Poverty and Inequality Commission was tasked with looking at the Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2018-2022 by the Scottish Government. The Commission’s recommendations included: that the Scottish Government introduce an additional cash benefit during school holiday periods that at least matches the equivalent costs of school meals; that the Scottish Government and Local Authorities should work together to take a strategic approach to funding a package of school holiday support that address the full range of pressures faced by low income families; and that existing holiday club provision should be used to provide food as a core element of their work. 

Much of this work draws attention to some of the themes outlined above – particularly in calling for more government leadership [e.g. strategy, data, welfare reforms]; recognising the important work undertaken by local, regional and national charitable (food) organisations; and helping people to earn a decent wage. In addition to this strategic approach; another strand of work is seeking to encourage people who are struggling with food insecurity to feel more able to seek assistance without the stigma of shame or failure. This strand recognises the assets and resources that communities already have and how these might be built upon. 

What more can be done to support people in rural communities? We need to listen to people with first-hand experience of hunger in our rural communities and use these experiences to provide immediate and longer-term support. this means we shouldn’t just focus on food (nutrition and social functions) but should be much more holistic and wide ranging (e.g. work/wages, social inclusion etc.) No one should have hunger as their constant companion. As Sir Winston Churchill (1943) reminds us ‘healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.’ 

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Jessica is a researcher/project manager at Rose Regeneration. Her current work includes evaluating two veteran support projects (in Cornwall and North Yorkshire); supporting public sector bodies to measure social value; evaluating a hospital avoidance service; and undertaking a piece of work on migration. 

She is also a senior research fellow at the National Centre for Rural Health and Care (https://www.ncrhc.org/). 

In her spare time Jessica sits on the board of a housing association. 

She can be contacted by email jessica.sellick@roseregeneration.co.uk or telephone 01522 521211. 

Website: http://roseregeneration.co.uk/ 

Blog: http://ruralwords.co.uk/ 

Twitter: @RoseRegen 

Communication

How can we bridge the (rural) speech, language and communication divide?

On 4 July 2018 a Westminster Hall debate was held on Speech, Language and Communication Support for Children. In leading the debate, Rebecca Pow MP for Taunton Deane, described how “the most fundamental life skill for children is the ability to communicate, which has a direct impact on their ability to learn and develop friendships, and on their life chances. There are huge benefits to getting communication…right from birth, not just to the individual but to society and the economy as a whole. However, despite the best efforts of many involved in supporting children and young people, and some tremendous individual projects and programmes… awareness of the importance of children and young people’s speech, language and communication among the public and decision makers still seems sadly lacking.” If speech, language and communication skills are fundamental in helping children and young people flourish and achieve, why does support vary widely throughout England and what can be done to improve provision, particularly in rural areas? Jessica Sellick investigates.

Speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) is a term used to describe a situation(s) where children and young people find it difficult to listen, understand and communicate with others and/or may need support to develop the skills needed to do so. Children and young people with SLCN may have difficulty with one skill or several. In the Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice ‘children and young people with SLCN have difficulty in communicating with others. This may be because they have difficulty saying what they want to, understanding what is being said to them, or they do not understand or use social rules of communication. The profile for every child with SLCN is different and their needs may change over time. They may have difficulty with one, some or all of the different aspects of speech, language or social communication at different times of their lives.’  Here ‘needs’ refers both to the needs of the individual (learning, communication, socialisation) and what society needs to do to support their inclusion (within the school environment and the transition to and from home).   

There is no conclusive evidence about what causes SLCN – for each child it can result from a range of factors: as a result of hearing loss, general developmental needs, from a disability or medical condition. Risk factors are thought to include children with delayed speech (who do not go on to ‘catch up’ with other children), being summer born and therefore the youngest in a year group and/or having a family history of delayed speech and language development. While children and young people from all areas and backgrounds can have delayed speech, language or communication; there is data to suggest that the prevalence of SLCN is higher in socially disadvantaged areas – with some studies suggesting around half of the children in these areas may have significant language delays. Similarly, pupils entitled to free school meals are 1.8 times more likely to be diagnosed with a SLCN; and 2-3 times as many boys as girls have SLCNs.

SLCN is thought to be one of the most common disabilities amongst children. Estimates vary from 7-10% of children, some 2-3 children in every class or 1.2 million children. 1% of all children will have the most severe and complex SLCN requiring long-term specialist support. For pupils requiring Special Educational Needs (SEN) support or with a Statement of Special Educational Need or an Education Health and Care (EHC) Plan, SLCN is identified as their primary need in 29% of cases in state funded primary schools and in 10.8% of cases in state funded secondary schools. 

There is a growing body of work around the effects of having a SLCN now and into the future. For example, evidence suggests that children with SLCN do not perform as well as their peers in school: only 15% of pupils with SLCN achieve the expected standard in reading, writing and arithmetic by the end of primary school compared to 61% of pupils without a SLCN. In later life research shows between 66% and 90% of young offenders have low language skills, with 46-47% of these being in the poor or very poor range.  Among young offenders, studies have shown a mismatch between the literacy demands of programmes available in young offender institutes (which may require up to GCSE level English A-C) and the skills level of offenders (one-third have speaking and listening skills below Level 1, equating to age 11 years).  In October 2015 the Youth Justice Board (YJB) and Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) issued joint guidance for practitioners and managers in youth offending teams to help them work with young people with SLCN.

How many children and young people in rural areas have a SLCN and what can be done to support them, now and into adulthood?

‘A chance to talk’ was an initiative led by ICAN between 2010 and 2012 that worked with thirty schools in four Local Authority areas, representing some 8,303 children aged 4-7 years. It involved schools, speech and language service managers, funding partners and advisors working together, in clusters, to support children’s language. Four of the seven schools that participated in North Yorkshire were in rural areas. In a rural context the initiative found limited nursery provision led some children to arrive with limited school readiness skills and higher than average numbers of children having language difficulties. Some families described the difficulties they faced in accessing speech and language therapy services in rural areas because of the limited public transport available. 

In 2015 Family Action carried out a short piece of research to identify: (i) common challenges in early year settings in rural areas in developing special educational needs and disabilities provision and (ii) to identify examples of inclusive practices in rural school settings. The research found that while many of the barriers settings faced were also common to urban settings, other barriers were specific to rural (e.g. limited public transport, lack of professional/specialist support available locally and greater distances to travel to access provision). While rural settings noted an increase in the number of children with SLCN difficulties, accessing speech and language therapists and not being able to get short term quality extra support for specific children were seen as particularly challenging.

Research by the University of Sydney highlights the communication delays, inequity of access to essential speech-language pathology services and poorer later life outcomes for children in rural and remote areas of Australia. Similarly a national survey of speech-language and audiology services in the United States found  children in underserved rural counties were not being served due to distance from the nearest provider. 

These studies point towards the lack of availability and accessibility of SLCN services in some rural settings – and a lack of clarity about how many children and young people in rural communities have unmet service needs.

What has Government done to support children and young people with SLCN? Back in 2008 – and following 10 months of evidence gathering and analysis – John Bercow MP published his report making recommendations to Government about the steps it should take to transform provision for and the experiences of children and young people with SLCN and their families. These recommendations covered five themes: (i) communication is crucial, (ii) early identification and intervention is essential, (iii) design a continuum of services around families, (iv) joint working is critical, and (v) the current system is characterised by high variability and a lack of equity.  The purpose of Bercow’s review was two-fold: to do better in providing help for every child or young person with SLCN; and to improve educational outcomes, promote public health, tackle anti-social behaviour, reduce the number of people who go through the criminal justice system, bolster the skills of the workforce, and increase the competitiveness of the country where SLCN services play their part in helping to deliver these outcomes.  Following the report, the Government published an action plan, ‘Better Communication’, which accepted many of the recommendations: from appointing a Communication Champion to raising awareness of SLCN and working with delivery partners to coordinate and improve services through to forming a Communication Council to monitor service improvements and provide advice to Government.

‘Bercow: ten years on’ was published in March 2018. An independent review of provision for children and young people with SLCN in England, the report reveals the findings of a consultation with 2,500 people, focus groups, research review and in-depth analysis of three Local Authority areas. The report highlights some of the key positive and negative changes since 2008. It cites the increasing evidence about SLCN through the Better Communication Research Programme, Government funding for workforce development in SLCN, a national service specification for Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC), increased recognition of SLCN in the justice system and language and communication gaining recognition in the early years school curriculum. Less positive changes that have taken place since 2008 include reductions to SLCN services, loss of specialist speech and language therapy posts, the removal of speaking and listening from the National Curriculum, the removal of communication from the Ofsted framework and no assessment of spoken language after age five. These changes are set against a backdrop of reforms and reorganisation with the NHS/health system, education system (e.g. academies and free schools, reforms to support children with special needs) and the (increasing) use of technology.

Overall the report reveals how public awareness of the importance of speech and communication is still not high enough on the agenda, how SLCN rarely features in national policies, and how services are not integrated enough (e.g. only 3 out of the 44 Sustainability and Transformation Plans reference SLCN). In practice, data tends to be collected on waiting times rather than outcomes, specialist services are being reduced (limiting services to only the highest needs children) and screening tools to spot the signs of SLCN need to be more sensitive. For children diagnosed as requiring support the report found over half of parents waited six months for an appointment and 34% had to wait more than a year for an appointment.

At the end of April 2018 the Department for Education (DfE) announced two funding initiatives: (1) a £5 million scheme run by the Education Endowment Foundation  to trial projects to provide practical tools and advice to parents so they can help their child learn new words through simple steps like reading and singing nursery rhymes; and (2) an £8.5 million programme for Local Authorities to fund projects to improve early language and literacy development for disadvantaged children. In July 2018 the DfE announced a £6.5 million scheme for voluntary and community groups to run projects that help disadvantaged families teach their child to read, write and gain language skills. ‘Opportunity areas’ are part of the Government’s national plan for addressing social mobility through education. Of the 12 Opportunity Areas, 5 are in rural and coastal locations: Fenland and East Cambridgeshire, Hastings, Ipswich, North Yorkshire coast and West Somerset. 

While many RSN readers will welcome these announcements, there remains a sense that not enough progress is being made. At the Westminster Hall debate Rebecca Pow MP highlighted how SLCN remains a Cinderella sector: “I surmise that that may be linked to the fact that the whole area seems to fall between two stools: health and education. Somehow, it fails to be allotted the place it deserves in this country’s national policy.” While children with SLCN may be identified by nurseries and schools (education), the commissioning of speech, language and communication support services comes from the health system.

While the Government will formally respond to ‘Bercow: ten years on’, it is already taking further steps around SLCN, including training for practitioners such as health visitors (working with Public Health England), and through a desire to work with the APPG on speech and language difficulties.

In Scotland, health visitors and family nurses play a key role in prevention, early identification and intervention for children in relation to SLCN – and NHS Education for Scotland has developed an online resource to extend their skills and support their continued professional development.

In England, the Westminster Hall debate highlighted organisations that seek to raise the profile of SLCN – from ICAN and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) through to the work of Gillian Rudd at Birmingham City University;  as well as a plethora of projects seen as national exemplars including Stoke Speaks Out,  Time to Talk – Warwickshire, No Wrong Door (North Yorkshire), A Better Start Southend and Bookbug in Scotland. In Wiltshire, the Speech and Language Therapy Service is jointly commissioned by NHS Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Wiltshire Council to provide training and a collaborative model of support to children with SLCN needs in Wiltshire. 

In a rural context, the ‘a chance to talk’ initiative highlighted the importance of accessibility to therapy within schools. In North Yorkshire, for example, ‘talk boost’ was implemented with groups of 4 children and they all made progress. Having regular specialist staff training opportunities and providing local in-school support were all found to be important.

I am currently evaluating the Linkage Community Trust’s sensory library project. This provides a fully-accessible converted bus for individuals and groups across Lincolnshire to access a mobile sensory room (and multi-sensory equipment hire), on their doorstep, at no cost. I have heard first-hand from children with learning disabilities, learning difficulties and other health conditions (and from their parents/carers and professionals) about the difference the project makes: from the fun and joy it brings (e.g. sensory balls, flying round the solar system, vibrating snakes, flashing balls and a waterfall with glittery bits) to the way in which it helps children engage with their environment and the people around them. While the sensory library has developed a unique proposition around being mobile, being affordable, being beneficiary led and being a catalyst for others; I am all too aware of the difficulties that many parents/carers now face over the summer holidays where the support they receive from other agencies “closes down for 6 weeks.”  I have also heard from brothers and sisters about the everyday things and activities they forgo to help support their sibling and family.   

Will the publication of ‘Bercow: ten years on’ provide renewed impetus to support the continuation of projects and programmes that we know are successful; to provide clear messages for parents/carers so they know when and how to access support; reduced waiting times; support for children and families during school holidays; and/or an overarching strategy for SLCN? 

What do successful SLCN rural pathways look like? How and where does technology fit into this pathway?  And how does this pathway join up with other public services – public health, health, transport, education, leisure?

What is clear is that if Government, Local Authorities, health bodies, nurseries, schools, charities, community groups, practitioners and the public all work together we will ensure provision for children with speech, language and communication is no longer a Cinderella sector.

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Following a briefing on nature I am indebted to Louise Beaton (Community Halls Consultant) for drawing my attention to provisions within the Lawton Report (‘Making Space for Nature’) and the National Policy Planning Framework (NPPF) for designating ecological networks or biodiversity corridors. Neighbourhood plans offer one means of doing this and Louise highlights the work of Aldingbourne Parish Council (over several years) as being one of the few in the country so far to designate biodiversity corridors. However, getting the Planning Inspectorate to understand biodiversity, whether the Local Authority Planning Committee will uphold the area designated in the face of development proposals, and more broadly ensuring the protection of these areas in legislation in ways similar to AONBs or National Parks, all remains unresolved.

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Jessica is a researcher/project manager at Rose Regeneration and a senior research fellow at the National Centre for Rural Health and Care. Her current work includes helping public sector bodies to measure social value; evaluating a mental health project supporting young people; and undertaking a piece of work on migration. In her spare time Jessica sits on the board of a housing association. She can be contacted by email jessica.sellick@roseregeneration.co.uk or telephone 01522 521211. Website: http://roseregeneration.co.uk/ Blog: http://ruralwords.co.uk/ Twitter: @RoseRegen

Childcare Rural Areas

High quality, affordable, convenient and flexible early years childcare in all rural areas?

We know the early years are a crucial time in every child’s life and that childcare provision can help close attainment and equality gaps and help to transform children’s lives. The Government is aiming to invest an additional £1 billion every year by 2019-2020 to expand early years provision. Will this funding deliver sustainable provision in rural areas? Jessica Sellick investigates.

The Childcare Act 2016 contains provisions which are intended to secure an additional entitlement of childcare support for working parents. The Act seeks to ensure that parents are able to access information about free childcare and about other provision/services which may help them to meet their childcare needs. It also places a duty on Local Authorities to publish information about childcare and other services available for parents locally. The Government’s overarching intention is to make childcare more affordable for working parents; and to increase the use of formal childcare by parents. What does this mean for rural areas? I offer three points.

Firstly, why provide publicly funded childcare support and what type of provision is available?

Successive Governments [Labour, Coalition and Conservative administrations] have considered evidence about the impact access to nursery care can have on a child’s life chances: from studies identifying a ‘gap in potential’ between children from middle and low income families evident among babies of 22 months and slipping away further by aged 3; to research on the ‘home learning environment’ which distinguishes between parents of all social classes who read, talk and sing to their children and those who do not. This evidence suggests that access to quality pre-schooling from the age of two can be the critical factor on outcomes not just through childhood but on into adulthood too. Those children that may benefit most are not only those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds but from all social classes. The Government’s drive therefore has been to invest public funding into informal play-based nursery settings for children from the age of two years to help them with the transition into formal school life.

Yet much of the resultant policy and childcare provision has been targeted at working parents. This has opened up a series of debates around whether it should lie with parents to provide for their children (should childless couples fund other people’s offspring?) and the lack of similar public childcare support available to stay-at-home parents.

In March 2017 the Department for Education (DfE) published guidance for Local Authorities detailing how they should pay providers to deliver free entitlement places. Crucially the guidance specifies the outcomes the DfE is looking for: that all children are able to take up their free hours in a high quality setting; that fair and transparent funding supports a diverse range of providers to deliver free places on a sustainable basis; that parents are able to work because childcare places are available, accessible and affordable and are delivered flexibly in a range of high quality settings; and that high quality provision amongst providers is promoted.

The driver here and now is no longer concerned solely with early years education but with helping parents to work. A study by IPPR, for example, has shown how making affordable childcare more widely available could raise revenues in the form of increased maternal employment rates. IPPR’s analysis shows a 5% increase in the maternal employment rate could generate £750 million a year in benefit savings and tax revenue.

Bringing both of these strands together, the European Commission analysed cross-national evidence to conclude “access to universally available, high-quality inclusive Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services…not only helps children to unlock their potential but can also contribute to engaging parents and other family members with related measures to improve employment, job-related training, parent education, and leisure-time activities.”

In 2015 there were some 1.5 million children receiving publicly funded childcare from 105,000 providers – with the DfE contributing some £2.7 billion of funding towards this. Providers include facilities run by local authorities (maintained settings) and those run by private, voluntary or independent (PVI) organisations. Some provision is group based (e.g. nurseries) and others home-based (e.g. childminders, childcarers). Other options include crèches, children’s centres and playgroups.

While social and economic cases for early-years childcare are now well rehearsed, funding and delivering it remains a challenge.

Secondly, how is childcare provision funded?

All families in the UK can receive some help with childcare through early education entitlements. The Government website ‘childcare choices’ provides information for parents about getting help with childcare costs, including a childcare calculator. The Government offers various schemes for children under 16 years old (or under 17 for disabled children): (i) Working Tax Credits – where the childcare element means families can claim back up to 70% of their childcare costs, up to a cap. (ii) Universal Credit –where working families can claim back up to 85% of eligible childcare costs. (iii) 15 hours of free childcare for all three and four year olds and some qualifying two year olds for 38 weeks of the year, equivalent to 570 hours a year. Similar schemes exist in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. (iv) Since September 2017 working parents, subject to a means-test, of eligible three and four year olds in England are entitled to an additional 15 hours of free childcare, on top of the existing universal provision of 15 hours. (v) Other schemes exist to provide support for childcare costs while studying such as care to learn, discretionary learner support and childcare grant.

In the 2017-2018 financial year the DfE introduced a new early years funding formula. This stipulates how much funding each Local Authority will receive from the DfE in respect of free childcare for up to 30 hours for three and four year olds. It remains for Local Authorities to determine the actual funding rate that providers receive. The formula comprises three parts: (1) a base rate of funding for each child; (2) an additional needs factor (based on free school meals eligibility, having English as an additional language, being in receipt of Disability Living Allowance); and (3) an area cost adjustment (a general labour market measure based on business rates data). Supplements are available on top of this base rate, including “sparsity/rurality to support providers serving rural areas less likely to benefit from economies of scale.” Local Authorities are required to pass a minimum proportion of funding from DfE onto providers – 93% in 2017-2018 rising to 95% thereafter; with retained funding for Local Authorities central services constrained to 7% in 2017-2018 and falling to 5% thereafter. The national average hourly funding rate was set at £4.94 for 2017-2018, with an average rate of £4.30 paid to Local Authorities who in turn pay providers an average funding rate of £4.00 an hour.

This funding rate is interesting because back in November 2015 the DfE undertook an economic assessment of the early education and childcare market. The review considered the costs of childcare provision at provider level, the current demand for and supply of places for two, three and four year olds, how Government regulation and funding had shaped the market and future cost pressures facing the sector. The review revealed how costs varied according to staffing levels (statutory level or average level), the type of provider (private, voluntary or primary school), the age of the child (2 or 3-4 year olds), occupancy levels and the providers business model. The unit cost per hour of childcare was found to vary, for example, from £5.00-£5.87 for two year olds to £3.56-£4.25 for three and four year olds. The review suggested scope for efficiencies in the staffing model (staff to child ratios) which could save a typical provider in a private setting 15% of its unit delivery costs by staffing within the statutory requirements. The review also suggested providers would benefit from using spare capacity within their premises to care for other age groups of children and/or sharing back-office functions with other providers. In October 2017 the Department published insights from successful providers on business sustainability (e.g. understanding the local market, managing occupancy levels, diversification). How have some providers taken up the findings of the review to fit with the average hourly rate of £4.00 that many will receive?

Local Authorities are responsible for ensuring sufficient places for the funded hours and allocating money to providers. They are legally required to provide information to help parents find an appropriate place for their child, and should give support and training to providers to ensure childcare in their area is high quality.

As per the DfE guidance, the actual funding distributed to providers is set by Local Authorities so the choices they make and other factors such as demography and geography means they may pay different base rates to different types of providers and can make supplementary payments for quality, flexibility, deprivation and rurality. A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) found large variations in funding allocations. For example, the rate for two year olds varied from £2.75 in Torbay to £9.06 in Camden.

In April 2016 the DfE called for expressions of interest from Local Authorities looking to work with local childcare providers to bid for capital funding to expand childcare provision in their area. The funding is administered by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) and is aimed at allocating to projects in areas most in need of capital funding to deliver the additional 30 hour places needed to meet local sufficiency need. Funding is available for new-build nurseries; and extensions, conversions or refurbishments of existing buildings including the creation of kitchen facilities. The first projects approved under the bidding round were announced in January 2017; with the results of a second bidding round announced in April 2017.

If families can receive support for childcare, are also paying themselves for childcare and Government is investing £ 1 billion+ a year in early years entitlements, why isn’t childcare provision affordable, flexible and sustainable?

From a Local Authority perspective, the Family and Childcare Trust 2017 Childcare Survey found, on average, the price of 25 hours of childcare per week for a child under 2 years was £116 for a nursery place or £110 for a childminder. There are significant regional variations, with London and the South East the most expensive areas. It is more difficult to estimate the costs for parents of three and four year olds because of the universal free early education entitlements which is operated differently by providers and measured differently by Local Authorities. Parents of primary-school age children will pay an average of £53 a week for an after-school club and £67 for afternoon care from a childminder. Some parents are spending up to 45% of their disposable income on average childcare costs. The majority of Local Authorities in England reported they did not have enough care in their area available for two year olds entitled to free childcare, for after-school care, for disabled children and for the children of parents who work non-typical hours such as shift workers. Since September 2017 some working parents have been entitled to 30 hours a week free childcare for three and four year olds: only one-third of Local Authorities believe they have enough childcare in their area for eligible families.

From a parent perspective, analysis by Save the Children found over 450,000 mothers with children under five in England are looking for work/would like to increase their hours but are unable to do so because they cannot find convenient childcare – with the average mother losing £3,400-£11,400 a year because they are not able to work more.

From a provider perspective, according to the NDNA the majority of nurseries admitted being concerned about whether they could afford to extend the number of state-funded hours they offer, with the current 15 hours a week resulting in an average annual loss of £34,000 per nursery. Providers suggest the Government does not fund them enough to pay higher wages and keep childcare costs down. A study carried out by the Family and Childcare Trust found nurseries and pre-schools awarded a rating of ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted paid their staff an average of £8.37 an hour compared to £7.44 in nurseries achieving a ‘good’ rating and £6.92 in providers receiving a ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ ratings.

From a childcare professional perspective, research on the provision and use of preschool childcare in Britain by UCL in 2015 collated data from the Labour Force Survey and Ofsted registration statistics identified trends around declining workforce (a decrease of 5% for the childcare workforce between 2005 and 2015 and 7% in childminders over the same time period); the average age of the workforce is 36 years but 27% of the workforce are 25 years of age or younger; while qualification levels are rising (with a 12% increase in NVQ Level 3+ qualifications between 2005 and 2014) as the figures above show some are persistently low paid.

Thirdly, what does this all mean for childcare provision in rural areas?

Data on childcare provision in the Statistical Digest of Rural England reveals in August 2016 there were just over 8,000 Early Year Register (EYR) providers, comprising 4,700 childminders and 3,300 childcare providers – together offering over 152,000 places. Between March and August 2016 there was a 7% fall in the combined number of EYR childminders and childcare providers in rural areas, compared with a 2% fall in urban areas.

In 2016 the Family and Childcare Trust asked Local Authorities to use their childcare sufficiency data to estimate if they had enough childcare for different groups of children. This revealed 45% of authorities reported they had enough childcare for working parents, but just 14 Local Authorities in England (4 in Scotland and none in Wales) reported having enough childcare in rural areas compared to 23 Local Authorities in 2015.

An evaluation of the rollout of 30 hours free childcare in August 2017 found Local Authorities were paying higher rates to encourage childminders to participate in rural areas where there was concern about sufficiency; and because of a lower proportion of registered providers delivering extended hours in rural areas. In some instances early years provision was being jointly delivered alongside after school clubs and other nursery/education settings.

Amid this decline in providers and lack of sufficiency, we’ve heard first-hand from RSN members about some of the challenges you face in accessing childcare in rural areas. This is often exacerbated by the lack of affordable transport, access to other services and low incomes. From a provider perspective we’ve heard concerns about infrastructure (facilities), sustainability (smaller numbers), transport and workforce. We also recognise how alongside and outside of publicly funded and inspected provision a lot of informal care takes place (e.g. with parents/carers relying on grandparents, other relatives, friends or neighbours). While it is estimated that one-third of all childcare usage is from grandparents there is no national data collected on the type, volume and frequency of informal childcare. All of this suggests models of childcare provision are needed which fit rurality, involve working in partnership with others (e.g. health visitors, schools), and build capacity, capability and ties to local communities. What is currently missing is a comprehensive picture of the state of early years provision in rural areas.

In January 2018 the Treasury Select Committee launched an inquiry into the role high quality, accessible, flexible and affordable childcare can play in supporting labour productivity. The Committee is considering the effectiveness of the package of Government initiatives (are they delivering adequate provision that facilitates parental employment?) alongside the processes within which childcare schemes are delivered. Will the inquiry ‘think rural’ in helping children unlock their potential as well as improving the employment prospects of their parents? I certainly hope so…

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Jessica is a researcher/project manager at Rose Regeneration; an economic development business working with communities, Government and business to help them achieve their full potential. Her current work includes supporting a Lottery programme to help people into paid work; research for the NHS on rural workforce issues and a project looking to deliver higher level technical education and skills in rural areas. She can be contacted by email jessica.sellick@roseregeneration.co.uk or telephone 01522 521211. Website: http://roseregeneration.co.uk/ Blog: http://ruralwords.co.uk/ Twitter: @RoseRegen

Does every rural child REALLY matter?

If you had a choice where would you prefer to bring up your children, in the countryside or in a city? Does your answer change as children get older and need different things? What can be done to support young people in rural areas and champion their needs? Jessica Sellick investigates.

The Good Childhood Report 2012, prepared by The Children’s Society, signalled differences in the views of young people in urban and rural areas: children in rural areas were found to be less satisfied with local facilities but more likely to feel safe and have freedom in their local area. Yet other studies have shown that young people living in rural areas have been left struggling to find opportunities since the economic downturn –facing a number of rural barriers including access to transport, careers advice, training support and youth services. So what is it like as a young person living in rural England today? I offer three points.

Firstly, growing up in the countryside. While some people claim much of the countryside’s charms and the rural idyll have been eroded – when did you last see milk churn idling down a country lane? – for others, the rural sights, sounds and communities is preferable to living in a city any day; leaving many parents with a dilemma about where to bring up children. Their quandary resonates in the latest Family Friendly Hotspots Report which analysed 2,400 postcode districts in England and Wales to find the 20 best places to bring up children.

The ranking is based upon the Key Stage 2 scores of local schools, low crime rates, green spaces and favourable house price to earnings ratios. The national results identified ‘family friendly hotspots’ in the M4 corridor, Devon, Yorkshire, Powys, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire: with Chulmleigh/Devon (ranked 3 out of 20), Shebbear/Devon (ranked 5 out of 20) and Oakham/Rutland (ranked 6 out of 20). As not every family can (or will want) to live in a rural area such as Devon, the Report also lists the top 10 cities, with Bristol ranked first for families.

According to figures released by the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation (OECD), Britain was ranked 30th out of 57 countries in terms of results achieved by urban-based pupils but was10th in the world based on scores in rural areas. Although pupils in inner-city schools usually came from ‘more advantaged socio-economic backgrounds’, they were outperformed by pupils at village schools where student numbers were more settled and teachers catered to children’s abilities, interests and aspirations.

Yet Professor Mark Shucksmith (Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal) argues that schools in many rural areas could simply disappear in the next few years. The government’s new national funding formula aims to increase competition among schools by rewarding schools that can attract more pupils. In practice, this means each school will receive a lump-sum and an amount related to its number of pupils rather than its budget relating to size, (rural) location or age of pupils. This may lead local authorities to reduce the funding for small rural schools, thus threatening their viability.

What emerges here is a disjuncture between children, parents and communities fighting to keep rural schools open alongside other bodies seeking to provide teaching resources, activities and visits for urban children, introducing them to rural career opportunities and the world of work (e.g. FACE) and all amid the dropping of Land Based BTECs from league tables.

Secondly, how can you ‘get on’ living in the countryside? One of the most pressing concerns around the future sustainability of rural communities is the exodus of young people. According to figures from the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC), since the onset of the recession in 2008, the number of young people Not in Education, Employment and Training (NEET) has increased from 84,000 to 123,000 in 2012 (or 12.9% of all young people living in rural areas). Young people who are NEET are not a homogeneous group and there can be considerable churn as they move in and out of courses and temporary jobs. However, accessing transport (private car or bus service), having a higher proportion of small businesses, lack of affordable housing and competing for a job in a low wage (seasonal) economy presents rural challenges for young people, which can lead them to migrate.

Although it can be in the interests of young people to move away (for education or better employment prospects) they may prefer to draw upon the dependability and support from local people and organisations or may not have the option to move to another labour market (e.g. unable to move out of parental home). To what extent are some of the initiatives overseen by national Government able to tackle some of these challenges? For example, will some of the barriers to economic growth in the countryside be overcome by the activities of Local Enterprise Partnerships, Skills and Knowledge Transfer Programme or Rural Growth Network Pilots? Will these initiatives open up rural careers and the world of work?

Thirdly, how can we recognise the experiences and aspirations of children and young people in our rural areas? To date, there has been an oscillation between what young people want (often supported by youth workers) leading to youth centric views; and what policy makers want which can result in standardised and hard measures around education, employment and training. On the one hand, young people may be inexperienced in understanding public policy or disinterested in shaping policy; on the other hand, policy and decision makers are distanced from young people when designing their interventions. One way of thinking about rural youth from the perspective of children and young people is on a continuum: from them having free will (at one end) to having no life choices (at the other end).

And the secret is to unlock the barriers which prevent young people from realising their potential. For example, you could map where young people are on this continuum using the five indicators in Every Child Matters (introduced in 2003 as a key new move to help promote the well-being of children and young people but not carried on by the current Government). Namely, can young people: (i) be healthy, (ii) stay safe, (iii) enjoy and achieve, (iv) make a positive contribution and (v) achieve economic well-being? i and ii apply in a rural context (reinforced by the findings of the Good Childhood Report), so perhaps iii, iv and v should be a priority for policy and decision makers and rural communities and young people?

With the ‘town versus country: where’s best to bring up children’ debate ongoing, the RSN is holding an event on children and young people on 11 June 2013 at the University of Plymouth. The event will include presentations from Naomi Tyrrell (Plymouth University) on the challenges facing young people living in the countryside; Mike Leyshon (University of Exeter) who will be revisiting ‘A Place to Hang Out: 12 years of Survey Data on Rural Youth Lifestyles’; Naomi Griffith (Director CIC & independent consultant) highlighting the inspirational work of the Minehead EYE project; and Chris Ranford (Fisheries Community Animateur, Cornwall Rural Community Council) on how to support young people wishing to pursue a career in fishing. For more information and to book your place at this free event please contact Richard Inman by email richard.inman@sparse.gov.uk or telephone 01822 813693.

Jessica is a rural practitioner at Rose Regeneration which has particular empathy and enthusiasm for rural and coastal issues. She recently led a project for Oxfam on farm poverty, research for the Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE), The Farmer Network, Cumbria Fells & Dales and Solway Border & Eden Local Action Groups (LAGs) and The Princes Countryside Fund to understand how farmer networks operate; and a commission for Defra on alternative models of service delivery. Jessica can be contacted by email jessica.sellick@roseregeneration.co.uk or telephone 01522 521211. Website: www.roseregeneration.co.uk