The 2025 Opportunity Index published by The Sutton Trust published last week offers a unique constituency by constituency perspective on the level of educational and employment opportunities across England. The index ranks the constituencies by the school attainment, access to higher education, employment status and earnings of young people eligible for free school meals (FSM) at secondary school. This year’s index can be found here.
The key finding from the index is that the top 20 constituencies are all in London and just 8 of the top 50 constituencies for opportunity are outside of London. Contrastingly, many constituencies in the North East and North West of England are on the lower end of the Opportunity Index. From a School-Home Support perspective, it is particularly concerning, though not surprising, to see many of the areas blighted by lower levels of school attendance also on the lower end of the Opportunity Index – including constituencies in Blackpool, Bradford, Birmingham and Sheffield most notably.
This year’s Opportunity Index also offers a fresh set of recommendations for the Government to pursue to improve opportunity. We strongly support many of the proposals including the idea of universalising free school meals. But these should also be coupled with a focus on school attendance as the evidence is clear: even a few days missed from school has a strong impact on a child’s education and future prospects.
The recent data for the 2023/24 academic year noted that the rate of persistent absence remained at 1 in 5 pupils and the severe absence rate increased 0.3 points from last year to 2.3%. The severe absence rate represents 171,000 children and a 184% increase from the pre-pandemic levels (2018/19 data).
Moreover, recent research by the Department of Education has demonstrated the impact of school attendance on a pupils’ lifetime earnings and educational attainment. This has complemented existing research explaining the link between not attending school regularly and the likelihood of that child being Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) later in life. The benefits of attending school and their implications for improving opportunity are clear: if children aren’t in school they miss out on a variety of different learning opportunities that impacts: 1) their educational attainment; and 2) their ability to develop important skills for the workplace.
Our School Attendance Gap Day Campaign demonstrated the effectiveness of whole family support in addressing the school attendance crisis – with our impact data showing that, with access to whole family support delivered by a School-Home Support practitioner, ‘severely absent’ children improved their attendance by an average of 46 days, increasing their final school day from 4 February to 1 May.
The Opportunity Index speaks to a long standing point: that the geography and the family in which a child is born into, have a significant impact on their life chances. This reasserts the key finding from an October 2024 report by Demos that laid out the challenge that the UK faces in terms of social mobility as it noted that people from ‘lower socioeconomic backgrounds’ are ‘far less likely to earn good incomes’ with the World Economic Forum’s Global Social Mobility Index 2020 also ranking the UK 21st out of 82 economies.
While we welcome the measures taken by the Government through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the Government’s response does not match the scale of this challenge. Therefore, we need to see uptake from the Government on the vital recommendations in The Sutton Trust’s Opportunity Index and dedicated funding for a whole family support led approach to the school attendance crisis to improve opportunity across England.