About this project

How can we drive local economic growth and innovation through education and skills policy? What needs to happen to close regional gaps in education and skills?

The local skills base is critical for sustaining and building regional economic growth and innovation. This project aims to develop the policy solutions that are needed to close gaps in education and skills across the UK to ensure opportunity is not constrained by geography.

The UK is one of the most spatially unbalanced advanced economies in the world. Substantial geographic gaps in economic activity and growth exist between regions, especially when comparing London and the South East with the rest of the country.

There is increasing concern about the most peripheral regions and local economies - especially post-industrial, coastal and rural areas - which often face acute social and economic challenges. Some post-industrial areas of the UK have never really recovered from the effects of deindustrialisation and have lasting scars, notably in terms of their local skills base.

It is in these areas that we see some of the most stark geographic gaps in education. For example, over two-thirds of people across many London boroughs hold degree-level qualifications; compared to less than a fifth of people in coastal towns like Blackpool, post-industrial places such as Doncaster, and rural localities like North East Lincolnshire.

What we'll do during this project

This project will undertake the first quasi-experimental evaluation of a major £108 million Government intervention that aims to close regional gaps in education and skills. We will use this knowledge to develop evidence-based policy that seeks to grow local economies through strengthening their skills base.

We will study the impact of area-based education initiatives using the case of the Opportunity Areas programme - launched in 2016 by the UK’s Department of Education - and make recommendations for future policy initiatives. This will be the first major quasi-experimental evaluation of the programme – which the researchers will use to develop recommendations for future policy-making to tackle regional social and economic divides.

Area-based initiatives of this kind have a long history in the UK, from Harold Wilson’s Education Priority Areas in the 1960s, to New Labour’s swathe of programmes during the 1990s. But there is a long-standing policy debate about the relative merits of place-based (targeting particular places) vs people-based (targeting particular groups across all places) initiatives. This project will generate rigorous new evidence on a recent area-based programme to feed into public policy debates in this area.

Project team

This project will be led by the University of Bath, with input from colleagues at the University of Bristol and Durham University.

• Professor Michael Donnelly (University of Bath), Principal Investigator
• Dr Ceri Brown (University of Bath), Co-Investigator
• Professor Matt Dickson (University of Bath), Co-Investigator
• Professor Richard Harris (University of Bristol), Co-Investigator
• Professor Nick Pearce (University of Bath), Co-Investigator
• Professor Nadia Siddiqui (Durham University), Co-Investigator

Project partners

We will work closely with the below local authorities:

• Blackpool Council
• Cambridgeshire County Council
• City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council
• City of Doncaster Council
• City of Stoke-On-Trent County Council
• Derby City Council
• East Sussex County Council
• Norfolk County Council
• Oldham Council
• Somerset Council
• Suffolk County Council

How the project will work

Working with the UK Government Department for Education, the Local Government Association and 12 Local Authorities where the intervention took place, we plan to carry out a substantial programme of knowledge exchange and research activities.

The evaluation will take place across two sequential stages, with stage 1 isolating the impact of Opportunity Areas using large-scale administrative and survey data, followed by the purposeful selection of ‘matched’ localities to explain the mechanisms driving any identifiable impacts (stage 2).

At stage 1, we plan to use both the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) dataset and the longitudinal household survey, Understanding Society, providing granular detail on objective measures like education choices, attainment and earnings (using LEO), but also subjective measures about the value of education and career aspirations (drawing on Understanding Society).

Using these data, our proposed quasi-experimental approach is aimed at isolating the impact that the intervention had over and above what was happening to outcomes in comparable areas. Based on this analysis, our selection of 6 ‘paired’ fieldwork sites then allows us to elaborate on the mechanisms driving any identified impact through in-depth research with those designing, delivering and receiving the intervention.

At the heart of the proposed evaluation is a series of knowledge exchange activities that provides crucial input from our project partners throughout the evaluation, maximising its policy- relevance. It is an ideal time to provide a robust evaluation of Opportunity Areas to learn lessons for any future education and labour market area-based interventions, especially the new Priority Educational Investment Areas which launched in 2022 and absorbed Opportunity Areas.

Our planned evaluation will produce evidence on what mechanisms are impactful in closing gaps in education and skills - which is vital to informing how this new intervention, and any future area-based interventions, are designed and delivered.

Related outputs

• Gorard, S., See, B., & Siddiqui, N. (2022). Making schools better for disadvantaged students. Routledge
• Gorard, S., Siddiqui, N., & See, B. H. (2023). Lessons for addressing educational disadvantage from a range of studies. Cogent Education, 10(2), 1-14
• Better to Stay or Go? A Longitudinal Study of Mobility over the Compulsory Educational Life Course. Sweet, A., Harris, R. & Manley, D., 15 Sept 2019, In: Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy. 12, 3, p. 697-717 21 p. Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review
• Space, Identity and Education: A Multi Scalar Framework. Brown, C. & Donnelly, M., 11 Jul 2023, 1 ed. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. 186 p. Research output: Book/Report › Book
• The impact of undergraduate degrees on early-career earnings. Belfield, C., Britton, J., Buscha, F., Dearden, L., Dickson, M., Van der Erve, L., Sibieta, L., Vignoles, A., Walker, I. & Zhu, Y., 30 Nov 2019, Department for Education. 82 p. Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report
• The earnings returns to postgraduate degrees in the UK. Britton, J., Buscha, F., Dickson, M., Van der Erve, L., Vignoles, A., Walker, I., Waltmann, B. & Zhu, Y., Sept 2020, Department for Education. Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report
• Accent and the manifestation of spatialised class structure. Donnelly, M., Gamsu, S. & Baratta, A., 31 Oct 2022, In: The Sociological Review. 61, 101630. Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
• Geographies of elite higher education participation: An urban ‘escalator’ effect. Davies, J., Donnelly, M. & Sandoval‐Hernandez, A., 31 Aug 2021, In: British Educational Research Journal. 47, 4, p. 1079-1101 23 p. Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
• 'Home and away': Social, Ethnic and Spatial Inequalities in Student Mobility. Donnelly, M. & Gamsu, S., 2018, (Acceptance date) The Sutton Trust. Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report