The Missing Two Thousand
The Missing Two Thousand report – How independent and state schools work together to help the most disadvantaged students achieve their aspirations.
Forest is proud of its contribution to the drive to increase access to top universities in one of the UK’s most deprived boroughs through our partnership with the London Academy of Excellence in Stratford. 2010, fewer than 40 students from the whole of Newham progressed to Russell Group universities. In 2020, 37 LAE pupils received offers from Oxford or Cambridge. This state Sixth Form college has been founded on a model of partnership between the state and independent sectors and its success speaks for itself.
Schools Together’s The Missing Two Thousand takes as its start point figure comes from The Social Mobility Commission’s 2014 comparison of a cohort born in 1991-2 in the most disadvantaged homes to the top 20% of families in socio-economic terms. What they found was that of the 7,853 of the disadvantaged students performed well up to age 11 but only 906 secured places at highly competitive universities compared with 3,066 from affluent families. In other words, around 2,000 students were missing out on achieving their full potential at 18.
The Schools Together group comprises members from both state and independent schools in the primary and secondary school sectors, supporting their relationships so they can share valuable resources and knowledge. The Schools Together report on The Missing Two Thousand aims to show that partnerships between independent schools and state schools are part of the solution in reaching this missing 2,000 through a series of case studies.
Forest’s Critical Thinking Skills sessions are featured as part of this report and the case study details the weekly sessions that Forest runs in the autumn term of Y13 to support both Forest Sixth Form students and students from the London Academy of Excellence. These are particularly useful in preparing for thinking skills assessments such as the TSA and include focused exam practice for university tests. Students from both schools benefit enormously from sharing in the intellectual curiosity of these sessions and the initiative represents part of a range of shared activities between Forest and LAE Stratford.
Click here to read the report.