“You only get one shot at state-subsidised undergraduate education.”

John Blake, the Office for Students’ (OfS) director for fair access and participation, says this three times during his interview with Tes.

It might not immediately seem obvious that he is aiming this statement at schools, but it is meant not just as a clarion call to universities about the importance of what they do; teachers, he says, need to ensure that those students who go on to higher education are ready for the rigour it demands.

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“The education professional who is teaching phonics, the teacher who is doing vocabulary or trying to teach King Lear to key stage 4 students - they are part of something that runs all the way up to university English departments,” Blake says.

If reported proposals to change access to student loans become actual policy, the connection between schools and universities will become even closer: it was leaked to the media that, under the proposals, students would need to pass GCSE maths and English in order to receive financial assistance to attend university. 

Tes meets Blake on the day these proposals are making headlines. Critics are warning that the plans will close access to higher education for many.

Given Blake’s job title, you might imagine he would agree that the proposals risk jeopardising fair access to - and participation in - higher education. However, he argues that, as students only have that “one shot at state-subsidised undergraduate education”, the requirement actually makes a lot of sense.

Students ‘have been failed’

“Is a student who doesn’t have the knowledge and skill to pass those qualifications [GCSE maths and English] in the best position to benefit from going straight into higher education? Or do they need to make sure that they’ve got [those qualifications] so they can benefit best from [university]?” he asks.

“I think there are lots of ways you can try to solve that problem…But I don’t think it’s wrong to ask that question.”

A younger version of Blake may have balked at such a proposal - he says he has always been a “fairly centre-left liberal, having started further left” - but over time he has “migrated inwards - as people do”.

This migration may have been accelerated by his time working for, in his words, the “centre-right think tank” Policy Exchange, as head of education from 2017 to 2018. From there, a stint at Now Teach followed before he joined the Ark multi-academy trust, where he worked as head of public affairs and engagement before joining the OfS in January this year.

Before all that, he was a history teacher: he started in the classroom before progressing to various department head roles in a portion of his career that lasted for around 10 years.

It’s a CV that traverses different education areas, and this diversity of experience is what the OfS believes makes him a good fit for his current role. Chair of the OfS Lord Wharton says Blake’s experience made him “perfectly placed to lead further change so that talented students from all backgrounds are able to access higher education and succeed in their studies”.

Furthermore, he says Blake’s remit involves ensuring that universities are “working effectively with schools and offering courses that lead to good careers”.

Those are ambitious objectives, and they underline the fact that, despite his being in an organisation focused on higher education, Blake’s work has schools very much at its heart.

So, what might achieving these objectives mean in reality?

Well, Blake is keen to acknowledge that schools and universities have been doing good work over the past 20 years to open up avenues to undergraduate education.

‘I think the world we’ve created, because we decided we would expand access to universities, hasn’t been anywhere near as fair as it should be’

In particular, he says, efforts to tackle underachievement that have “rightly focused” on giving students from “disadvantaged backgrounds that have the real grades [the opportunity] to be going to our most selective universities” have been a real success - and must continue.

“We have to keep the pressure up on those institutions to be taking them in - they need to be doing that,” he adds.

However, Blake says that his time within education has shown him that the expansion of university places - which has resulted in more young people entering higher education - has not worked as well as it should have done. “I think the world we’ve created, because we decided we would expand access to universities, hasn’t been anywhere near as fair as it should be,” he argues.

In part, Blake says, this is because the university application process does not do enough to ensure that students end up on a course that is suitable for them and their learning level.

“There is a swathe of students carrying relatively alright grades who are trying to navigate a world in which it will make a massive difference which course and institution they choose,” he argues. “[But] they don’t have the guidance, and the incentives in the system aren’t strong enough to ensure that all institutions are taking that seriously and making sure that students don’t lose out.”

Blake says this problem is compounded because, despite efforts to “improve the quality of schooling” over the past two decades, attainment levels from schools are still not high enough to give students a fair chance at making that ”one shot” at higher education count.

“A huge driver of why our university intake is still not diverse enough, and why success from university is still ultimately too closely correlated with social class, is that attainment in schools just isn’t strong enough,” he says. “Those students who are disadvantaged are still not doing well enough and that middle tranche are not being pushed as hard as they can be, nor being offered the opportunity they need.”

Unless this problem is tackled, he believes, students will continue to be sold a false reality about higher education and what they can achieve.

“There’s been a lot of good work around things like aspiration raising,” Blake explains. “And that’s right - you should be introduced to worlds you may not be familiar with. That’s great and we should do that.

“But there’s no point taking some students around [the University of] York’s mathematics department when their maths isn’t good enough - they are not going to become engineers because they can’t do the maths.”

For Blake, such a situation is not the students’ fault.

“It’s not about saying, ‘You, the student, have failed.’ It’s, ‘You have been failed,’” he says. “It shouldn’t be possible to be educated for 11 years compulsorily and not have a fundamental basic grasp of English and maths.”

The final foot

If this is starting to sound a bit like teacher blaming - which, given that Blake used to be a teacher, would be surprising - then he is keen to head that idea off at the pass.

He sees this problem as representative of structural issues in the education system - not least the fact that teachers are so overburdened they are not given enough time to focus on what matters most: the teaching and learning of pupils in the classroom, or what he calls the “final foot” of teaching.

“It’s not that these people [teachers] are deeply inadequate and we should replace them. It’s that we should make sure they have the right tools so they’re doing the right work,” he says. “For far too long, we didn’t think about the way the system operated to help make those teachers the best teachers they could be without demanding of them a level of work that was frankly unfeasible.”

He says the reforms to initial teacher training over the past few years have helped in terms of upskilling new teachers - but argues that more needs to be done for all teachers.

Blake likens the situation to world-class athletes who train for the Olympics to ensure that their potential is fulfilled. “They’re great - but the point is that they can be better, and they can make better use of their time and they can have a better experience doing it,” he says.

So, if this is an analogy for teachers, who are the coaches in this scenario? “I think universities have a role to play in that,” Blake says.

He does not want a coach-trainee relationship in which universities tell schools what to do to get them performing to a higher level. Instead, he is very keen for any relationship to be a meeting of equals that brings the two sectors together to ensure that students have the knowledge to be ready for the rigours of university education.

“We need to have a way of [schools and universities] collaborating and meeting together, so that students have a much more coherent and cohesive journey through education,” he says. “[Schools] don’t want to feel that HE providers are riding in on their white charger and telling them, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ It has to be collaborative, it has to be built together and it has to recognise the expertise of the school leaders in the school sector.”

‘Schools don’t want to feel that HE providers are riding in on their white charger and telling them, “This is what we’re going to do”’

So, how can this be achieved and what will Blake, as the regulator, be doing to get such a system up and running?

Well, firstly, he is keen to avoid a dogmatic “you must” approach - having seen first-hand, as a teacher, the damage this can cause.

“I lived through the ages in schools of ‘Ofsted wants’ being the most powerful and terrifying words,” he recalls.

As such, he returns to his above mantra of the importance of partnership and working together.

“I don’t think it’s my job, as a regulator, to say, ‘You must do the X very particular thing to Y school’ - it has to be collaborative, it has to be built together and it has to recognise the expertise of the school leaders in schools,” he insists.

But if Blake does want universities and schools to work together and he is a regulator, then surely there will, in time, need to be some idea of what this work might look like?

A world of knowledge 

Blake turns to his time teaching to offer some ideas.

“I think, from my own experience, curriculum design is incredibly demanding, subject specialist teaching can be really problematic, keeping updated on things like understanding how to craft really effective assessments…I think there is a world of knowledge in universities,” he says.

Blake adds that it might be that universities could share new insights on the “new knowledge they are generating all the time” to help teachers continue to learn, too.

“Maybe someone’s come up with a brand-new shiny theory about, you know, what Wordsworth was talking about - how does that get into the school system? How do we begin to pass that through?” he asks. “I don’t mean by that that it’s a simple, ‘We’ll just ship in the academics and…they can lecture about it,’ but it’s about thinking about how universities can use their convening power, their resources, their capacity to help bridge that gap.”

To those sceptical about the idea of universities turning up at schools and offering their advice and expertise, Blake says this is already going on: “I’ve heard comments saying, ‘Universities can’t do this work,’ but universities are doing this work and lots are doing vast amounts of this work.”

One example he cites is Sheffield Hallam University, which launched a social mobility project called South Yorkshire Futures in 2017, with the goal of working with schools to improve pupils’ social mobility opportunities.

Another example is Bournemouth University and its work on literacy in primary schools: student ambassadors worked with Year 6 pupils on a 10-week reading programme, which led to an increase in the reading ages of two-thirds of participants.

A third example, the University of Birmingham School (UoBS), located on the Selly Oak campus of the University of Birmingham, is perhaps the most telling because its website lists many of the sorts of cross-phase educational activities that Blake sees as being key to the success of these collaborations. 

For example, school pupils are encouraged to “attend seminars or public lectures alongside undergraduate students”, and some of the “most exciting academics” at the university give talks to pupils on everything from “black holes to the latest research on Islamophobia”.

Teachers at the UoBS benefit from being regularly involved in research projects, and subject leaders from the school often end up as associate members of the university, which gives them access to “physical and intellectual resources to enhance their own subject knowledge and pedagogy”.

And academics regularly share research relevant to teachers and educators from across the West Midlands in after-school sessions dubbed “Rush Hour Research”.

Blake does not say that this is the exact model that he wants all universities and schools to be involved in - but rather that it encompasses the sort of innovations that should serve as a catalyst for the sector.

“I don’t think every HE provider should be running a school, but they should be looking at it and thinking, ‘If we’re not going to do that, why are we not doing that? What are we doing? And how are we building that relationship with schools?’” he says.

‘Schools are the experts’

To help drive innovation, the OfS will be hosting a hybrid event on 7 April with schools and HE leaders to “discuss and showcase how the higher education sector can work effectively with schools” with the aim of “raising attainment across the student life cycle at scale”.

No speakers are listed yet for the event, but Tes understands that Sheffield Hallam University - one of the examples cited by Blake for good practice - will be in attendance.

Interestingly, despite the fact that no one yet knows who will be speaking, the in-person element of the event is already sold out (you can still watch online), suggesting that a lot of people are keen to find out whatever they can about this new initiative - which, given the implications for both sectors, is perhaps not surprising.

Those in universities will be wondering if another framework is imminent - perhaps a School Engagement Framework to complement the Research Excellence Framework and Teaching Excellence Framework to which they are already beholden - while schools may expect yet more accountability metrics on the horizon.

Blake does not envisage that arrangements will be this formal, though: “I think what we want is the common understanding of how best and most effectively to engage [but] I don’t think we’re at the point where we would set it through that kind of framework.”

So, perhaps both camps can breathe a small sigh of relief?

Not yet. It does sound like some form of guidance-cum-requirement will, in time, appear. “Certainly we want to get to a point where there’s a common understanding across the sector about what are the most effective ways of going about this,” Blake clarifies.

Do schools really want all this, though? Do they need to hold welcoming committees for university lecturers, student welfare liaisons, well-meaning vice-chancellors and the entourage they bring? To host more “stakeholder engagement meetings” or “outreach events” and all that these entail?

Blake is confident the school sector will be receptive. “I’ve had some really good chats with sort of sector leaders and, I think, there is enthusiasm for it,” he says.

Leora Cruddas, chief executive officer of the Confederation of School Trusts (CST), is one sector leader who agrees. “We are delighted by [Blake’s] appointment to the OfS and I really like his direction of travel and the priorities he outlines,” she says.

“CST believes trusts are new civic structures [and we are] promoting to our membership that they should try to be involved in civic university agreements with universities that are local to them.”

Director of policy at the NAHT school leaders’ union James Bowen is, while not quite as enthusiastic, able to see the logic behind the ideas being proposed around bringing universities and schools closer together.

“This could be good [because] if universities have expertise they can use in terms of working with schools [to] bring in their research background and skills to support schools and work with them…there could be a lot of merit in that,” he says.

Bowen notes, though, that it has to be collaborative. “It’s imperative that universities come from a place of recognising that the schools are the experts when it comes to working with that age,” he adds.

Blake, as we have heard, agrees.

Bold vision

But as a man who is keen on hard data and results, how will he - and everyone else -  know whether all this effort is having any tangible benefit for pupils?

Blake acknowledges that this is a big question he needs to answer, but he believes part of the solution is that schools need to move beyond the idea of simply stating “we got X number of students to go to university” as a mark of success.

Instead, he says, it should be about saying: “We got X number of students who went to the right university, had the right course [and] had the right experience.”

He adds: “I don’t think it’s a mistake that schools have not thought that way up to now…but I think this is a good moment to invite them to start thinking on that much more longer-term basis.”

Many a headteacher will argue that they have, in fact, thought this way already, but Blake believes more work needs to be done: there is “no way around that” if we are to have a better understanding of how schools and universities are working together to make that “one shot” of undergraduate education as good as it can be, he says.

“We have an emerging sense of data in the HE sector and in the school sector - we need to begin bringing that together much more and allowing people to have those conversations much more,” he adds.

How, though, can you measure the impact that a school may have on a pupil’s life - via university - in a way that has weight?

The obvious outcome to measure might seem to be a good job and salary. But Blake says that alone won’t do.

“Money isn’t [the only metric],” he argues. “I don’t think it’s about saying there is one single metric that encompasses all of those things. I think it’s about having a view of a breadth of things.”

He cites an example of a friend who works in set design after being at university who “earns less than no money” but loves what they do. “That’s not an invalid outcome,” says Blake.

How would that be measured in a way that proves they ended up going down the right route?

“That’s what we’re currently consulting on. I think it’s sensible that there are thresholds for ensuring there is space for the unusual without implying that unusual outcomes are regular,” says Blake.

So, could those other metrics include something like life satisfaction or happiness? “I think that’s harder to do, although I think one of the advantages of the access and participation plan programme is that we’re not necessarily just bound by performance metrics or quantitative metrics,” he adds.

While specifics on this and much else detailed above are a little sketchy - to be fair to Blake, he’s only two and a half months into his role - what is clear is that there is an intent to bring in systems that can measure the impact of all elements of education on children’s later life.

Get this right, says Blake, and a new era of education that gets the best out of schools and universities awaits - and one that could have the biggest impact in a generation.

“If we can build a system where we have that evaluation architecture, with a strong commitment to a properly functioning education sector that talks to each other, builds the evidence that identifies what works most effectively and deploys its resource appropriately then we’re talking about a step change that is as large, if not larger, than in 2003 when we started access agreements,” he concludes.

That’s a bold vision and it shows that Blake is not going to let his own “one shot” at enacting the change he believes is necessary for not just one but two education sectors pass him by.

“It’s hugely exciting,” he says.

Dan Worth is senior editor at Tes