Thread by @JohnnySRich

This piece for @HEPI_news by @Cis4Community (Beka Avery, Pathways to HE) is a really excellent dissection of some of the problems with HE outreach and the mismatch of priorities between unis and schools/colleges. hepi.ac.uk/2020/01/02/lif…
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community This is largely down to a lack of joined-up government in DfE over #CareersEducation and #SocialMobility – a failure to think through how conflicting incentives play out in reality.
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community There’s a fundamental dilemma at the heart of #HEaccess: to be a fairer society, we want more disadvantaged people entering HE, but it is unethical and sanctimonious to attempt to tell any individual what choices they should make.
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community A positive choice not to go to uni needs to be respected in the data as much as a choice to do so. it’s an almost impossible ask to capture that degree of relativism in any data model.
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community Also, I could have added endlessly to Beka’s list of things that just don’t work in practice: for example,
@officestudents & @educationgovuk want outreach that targets the most disadvantaged, but you can’t ask a school to pull out ‘the poor kids’ from a class to be targeted.
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community @officestudents @educationgovuk We need to learn to live with the fact that, sometimes, raising the level for everyone is the best way of delivering the most help to those who need it most.
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community @officestudents @educationgovuk That doesn’t mean we can’t target support as well, but 'buy-in' (which Beka writes about in terms of schools, but from pupils too) needs to be won first. Outreach cannot be delivered with drive-through interventions.
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community @officestudents @educationgovuk Beka’s point about careers fairs is spot-on: this is sales, not meaningful outreach. The students who approach a stall aren’t the hard-to-reach. They’re the keen-to-buys. Realistically, it’s about changing where they go, not whether.
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community @officestudents @educationgovuk Careers fairs also depend on a school with the student numbers, the facilities, the progression rate and the proximity to several unis and employers to make it worth hosting a fair.
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community @officestudents @educationgovuk That still leaves the students we most want to reach out in the cold: this with potential in low progression schools in remote areas.

That’s not what the #GatsbyBenchmarks had in mind.
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community @officestudents @educationgovuk We've come a long way since I wrote this for @GuardianEdu (predating Gatsby, NCOP or even NNCO). At the time, it annoyed some people in HE outreach, but many – including Beka – now espouse an updated version of what I was saying then. theguardian.com/higher-educati…
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community @officestudents @educationgovuk @GuardianEdu There ARE ways to make outreach more effective. (Beka’s recommendations are great.) We need to be less hamstrung by poor proxies of disadvantage and more attuned to #WhatWorks in terms of influencing – but not determining – young people’s choices. (See @taso_he et al)
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community @officestudents @educationgovuk @GuardianEdu @taso_he Sorry to end this thread with a plug: but @PushTalks has been designed around exactly the interventions that win buy-in among the hardest to reach students. It’s based on the research about behaviour and choice, not the box-ticking of data about target groups.
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community @officestudents @educationgovuk @GuardianEdu @taso_he @PushTalks I’d be delighted to talk to anyone about how and why @Pushtalks works. Copy it. Steal it. Please. DM me.
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@HEPI_news @Cis4Community @officestudents @educationgovuk @GuardianEdu @taso_he @PushTalks We shouldn’t be surprised that, by thinking about what works, how and why, you can be more effective than by creating perverse incentives for schools and unis based on flawed data (eg POLAR).
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