Research
Educational Backgrounds The Trust has published a series of surveys documenting the school and university backgrounds of leading people in professions in the UK. A study by the Trust found that over one third (35%) of MPs elected in the 2010 General Election attended fee-paying schools, which educate just 7% of the school population. Additionally just under two thirds of the Cabinet went to independent, fee-paying schools. The review also documented that serving as a Member of Parliament has become a graduate profession with nine out of 10 MPs having been to university.
Summer Schools A report published by the Trust in 2012, showed that summer school attendees were more likely to get into a highly competitive university than children with similar academic profiles who didn't. Researchers at the University of Bristol revealed that more than three-quarters (76%) of children who attend a summer school then go on to a leading university, compared with just over half (55%) of children with a similar academic and social background who did not apply for a summer school place.
Social Mobility A key objective of the Sutton Trust has been the promotion of social mobility through education. A 2005 report funded by the Trust revealed that social mobility in Britain was at a very low level and had fallen in recent decades. Researchers from the London School of Economics found that one reason for this trend was that the expansion of higher education in the UK has disproportionately benefited those from better off backgrounds. A follow-up report by the LSE group in 2008 concluded that social mobility had levelled off, with children born in 2000 facing the same mobility prospects as those children born 30 years earlier. In the Mobility Manifesto commissioned and published by the Trust is 2010, the Boston Consultancy Group analysed a range of new innovative educational policies to access their relative effectiveness in terms of boosting social mobility.
Pupil Premium Toolkit The Toolkit, developed by academics at Durham University provides an easily accessible guide for teachers and schools on how best to use the Pupil Premium to improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. The toolkit assesses over 20 different approaches to improving learning in schools, estimating the extra progress over the course of a school year that an ‘average’ student might expect if this strategy was adopted. It identifies the strength of the existing research evidence and makes an estimate of the costs of adopting the approaches.
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