Access to education: How do we solve a problem like the northeast? An interview with Phil Latham.

As part of Social Mobility Week, it was our great pleasure to speak to Phil Latham , CEO of Endeavour Academies Trust in Middlesbrough. Macmillan Academy, a large 11-18 secondary school within the trust, has been working with the Elephant Group for the last two years.

Hi Phil, thanks so much for taking the time to meet us. To give us some context, can?we start with a little introduction? A whistlestop tour of your career so far!?

In a nutshell, I came to Macmillan as an NQT in 1997 and I am still here!?I started my career as a History teacher, before becoming Head of Sixth Form from 2001-2005. It was an interesting time; Middlesbrough was benefitting from initiatives like Excellence in Cities and The Excellence Challenge.

In case you haven’t heard of it, The Excellence Challenge was a programme proposed by the government at the time to widen participation of young people in Higher Education. The Excellence Challenge programme provided elements very similar to some of the activities offered by the Elephant Access Programme. The stark difference is that 20 years ago this was funded; in this respect it feels as though the charity sector is stepping into a space that was once occupied by the education sector.??

I progressed from Head of Sixth Form to Deputy Head and became Principal in 2010. In 2018 we joined the local primary school to form Endeavour Academies and we now have an all-through model.

You must have seen some huge changes over the past 25 years. How do you think that priorities for schools have changed?

Priorities in the early 2000s were similar to now. Young people from Middlesbrough were underrepresented at most competitive careers and most competitive university courses. We most certainly had students with the potential to achieve the grades for Oxbridge, but we simply didn’t have the resources to support them in that process. ?? ?

When we came through Covid, it was clear that Middlesbrough had some serious challenges that schools couldn’t deal with themselves. We looked at charities and local assets to support our needs and were surprised and delighted at the different organisations locally who wanted to work with us.?

We are delighted that The Elephant Group was one of those charities! You have had incredible results so far with the Elephant Access Programme. What prompted you to join us??

I first heard about The Elephant Group via a Department of Education online presentation. Following a little research, I felt that The Elephant Programme resonated with my experiences because it aligned so closely with the Excellence Challenge that we had seen so much success with in the 2000s. The various activities and support for students and staff, and the collaborative network of partners felt like a really good fit with the post-pandemic circumstances in Middlesbrough and our desire as a trust to be better connected with different charities, services and organisations.??

What were the biggest challenges faced by your staff in raising aspirations and supporting applications to university??

Young people have seen the decline of the town in the last five years, and we worry that this could translate into a lack of confidence and aspiration. ?A lot of the interventions we put in place have helped to mitigate that to a certain extent – in particular, our work with The Elephant Group has helped our year 12 & 13s to become more aspirational.?

One challenge is the ability to support students who do have high aspirations. Previously, those year 13s who have made aspirational choices such as Oxbridge and medicine have not been successful, particularly with Oxbridge applicants.? Although students know that they are applying to highly competitive courses, a real danger of unsuccessful applications is that younger students see this and become disillusioned. One of the key motivations of partnering with The Elephant Group was to specifically to support those aspirations.??

We have had two Oxbridge offers this year, the first since 2019. This was thanks to The Elephant Group who provided subject specific interview practice, including one on a Sunday morning! The student in question had a mock interview for MFL in their bedroom over the weekend. We didn’t have the contacts to make that difference, so the connections from The Elephant Group have been invaluable in this respect.

In fact, the interview support has been one of the most valuable elements of the programme for us so far. We brought our problem to Lynsey, our Regional Manager, and a bespoke solution was created. Until that point, our Oxbridge interviewees were having negative experiences leading to dented confidence; this year’s success has raised aspirations and made us confident for future cohorts.??

A lot of schools, particularly the more under resourced ones, find that time is a big challenge when presented with opportunities such as the Elephant Access Programme. What would you say to those schools??

We haven’t found that to be a huge problem. Within the 6th form curriculum, you have got a degree of flexibility, and you can take sixth formers out of lessons for sessions. We are lucky to have a full-time Careers Officer who doesn’t have a teaching timetable, as well as a dual Head of Careers and Assistant Head of Sixth Form, so we have two non-teaching staff members who can support external events without it impacting their teaching. ? ? There is an ever-increasing selection of opportunities within the Elephant Access Programme. I always look at the activities and wonder if we could do more. We are just seeing our first cohort complete the programme and we have given them good access; particularly at the in-person conferences where students can meet student ambassadors and university staff and talk to employers and The Elephant Group industry partners. Physically going to universities and meeting employers and students is incredibly powerful, and these are things that our students wouldn’t be able to experience otherwise.

Funding the programmes can be a challenge, especially for schools considering joining the programme. From a business perspective, how do you justify the costs???

We consider that the Elephant Access Programme might have a positive effect on student recruitment. This is the first time that we have advertised the programme to year 11 students, and we hope that the programme will help us to retain our more able students in sixth form. In the long term, we would love the programme to become a 3-year journey; for now, we have created a sense that we provisionally pick a year 11 cohort, and they know the level of support that they can expect from us if they progress to sixth form. There is a concern at the moment that we could lose more aspirational students to a selective school planned for Middlesbrough in the next couple of years; our hope is that our partnership with The Elephant Group will provide us to retain these students as we are better able to provide them with the support, resources and connections that they need to reach their full potential.

At The Elephant Group, we focus on the Three As: Aspiration to achieve potential, in this case attending a top university, Attainment to facilitate that progression and creating a strong Application to university. What challenges do you think are particularly prevalent in the North East when it comes to these three points??

There is no clear answer to this. I sit on the advisory board of Schools North East, and it is a big geographical area! The challenges in North Northumberland are different to the Tees Valley for example. Disadvantages are more significant post pandemic, and it is inevitable that through no fault of our students, this can translate to low self-confidence and low aspirations. We closely follow child deprivation and child destitution surveys, and schools in the North East are facing some pretty unique challenges. Our response to that is that we will face it head on, but we can’t do it alone. We need to seek opportunities and harness the support of community partners and organisations. We have seen a tremendous response with people wanting to roll their sleeves up. While the challenges in terms of aspirations and access to Higher Education have never been greater. we have a lot of people who want to make a difference. The Elephant Group may not consider itself to be a northeast charity, but I think of them as one! ?