COM0013

Written evidence submitted by City Year UK

1. City Year UK welcomes the Education Committee’s invitation to comment on the Child Commissioner for England’s five commitments.

2. City Year UK challenges and equips young adults to tackle social and educational inequality through the life-changing power of a year of service in schools. Our vision is of a society where all children are inspired to believe in themselves in order to achieve their hopes and dreams and are supported to excel by a generation of young people whose commitment to a year of voluntary service is universally respected.

3. Accordingly, this submission will focus on the Child Commissioner’s fourth commitment to ‘see sustained action to reduce inequalities for children’. Our evidence will demonstrate that the work of City Year UK will help the Child Commissioner for England meet this aim and we would be delighted to explore how we can work with her office to deliver this.

What we do

4. We bring together 18-25 year olds, referred to as “corps members”, who spend 11 months volunteering full-time from Monday to Thursday in schools as near-peer mentors, tutors and role models to children living in disadvantaged communities.

5. We aim to have a transformative effect on the lives of both the children that we support and the volunteers that serve with us. To achieve this we carefully select a group of diverse young adults – our corps members – who we train intensively each Friday to deliver City Year’s unique Whole School Whole Child programme. Our programme utilises a group of highly trained young adults who provide individualised support to at risk students, (Tier 2 or focus list children), while also establishing an overall positive learning environment to all children (Tier 1 children) in school.

6. Our corps members become an integral part of each of our partner schools, helping to make it an enjoyable place to be and a natural place to learn by developing positive relationships with the children and supporting them by:

• giving one-to-one or small-group tutoring

• running after-school clubs and social action opportunities

• leading energetic morning greetings for the whole school to create a more encouraging learning environment

• coaching regularly late or absent pupils

• sending positive communications home to advise parents and family on the positive progress their children are making

• organising and leading events, celebrations and projects to bring the school and community together as a whole.

7. This includes ‘nudge’ coaching to encourage positive character traits such as responsibility, sense of duty, curiosity, optimism, perseverance, patient, self-control, emotional resilience, confidence and ambition. This allows us to help prevent children experiencing anxiety, low self-esteem and depression. As a result of our work, City Year UK has been awarded funds from the Department for Education’s Character Education Fund and won a Character Award.

8. The children we work with come from different racial, socio-economic and religious backgrounds, and have widely differing home lives, values and educational support. A high proportion of the children speak English as an additional language and many have special educational needs with behaviour, emotional and social difficulties.

9. While we work with all children in a school, City Year UK also helps identify 10% of a school’s population for closer support (focus list pupils).The pupils we work with often face emotional and social challenges and we help them to develop the skills they need to face these issues head-on.

10. Pupils who are at most risk of not fulfilling their potential at school typically exhibit poor attendance, disruptive behaviour and low achievement in English and maths. We focus on helping schools support pupils who show one or more of these three early-warning signs from when they start in reception through to when they sit their GCSEs. Our 1:1 coaching, which largely focuses on these pupils, is timetabled for short periods and we also use multiple contact points inside and outside of the class. Contact includes interventions supporting attainment in English and math (15% of corps members’ time), and our own behaviours and character coaching – 50 Acts of Leadership – which encourages pupils to move beyond limiting negative behaviours to embracing positive behaviours in their school and community.

Where we work

11. City Year UK has teams of corps members in 24 primary and secondary schools across London, Birmingham and Manchester supporting 14,300 students. We are most effective in schools where the leadership teams are strong and many of the school children come from disadvantaged backgrounds. As with the Child Commissioner for England, we share the drive to work in primary schools so that interventions can be early and effective.

12. Schools which enter into partnership with us usually have at least 50% of their school community eligible for the pupil premium and the children come from communities with a high Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI) score. For example:

• 83% of all our school partners are located in the top 25% most deprived areas in the UK

• All of London schools are located in the top 30% of the most deprived areas in the UK

• All of Birmingham school are located in the top 30% of the most deprived areas in the UK

Impact

13. The investment schools make in City Year UK through the use of pupil premium funding gives children in the poorest areas of the country an opportunity to turn around the odds through the practical support we provide.

14. City Year is making a difference to academic attainment in schools and the personal development of corps members. In a recent evaluation of our 2013/2014 programme, we found a range of positive impacts as a result of City Year’s service. These included higher academic performance (10% faster progress made by targeted pupils in maths), improved classroom behaviour for pupils we work with (two-thirds reduction in negative behaviour), as well as increased confidence and employability of City Year corps members.

15. City Year has been directly referenced in 10 Ofsted reports since September 2013. Within these reports the City Year programme has been recognised as an effective use of schools’ pupil premium budget that is having a positive impact on students’ motivation to learn. 100% of our 10 Ofsted mentions in Ofsted have been highly positive.

16. This is just a snapshot of what 500 young people have already achieved in the UK for 14,000 pupils. By 2020 our vision is that we’ll have 500 young people a year, reaching 40,000 children across five cities.

Conclusion

17. City Year UK welcomes the Child Commissioner’s five priorities and the invitation by the Department to respond to these.

18. We are passionate about implementing sustained action to reduce inequalities for children and urge the Child Commissioner and the Department to explore further collaborative working with City Year UK in order to allow us to help meet this goal.

October 2015