Addressing Inequality and Creating Educational Opportunity in Feltham

SUMMARY

• Feltham in the Borough of Hounslow is one of London’s most deprived areas, with annual household income below the London and national average.
• Persistent inequality in London can be addressed through a place-based systems approach.
• For example, Feltham needs a better qualified and more varied workforce. A higher education experience tailored to local contexts can not only benefit the community but also address inequality in opportunity and outcome.
• The national Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) might also prove instructive here.

Despite London being the UK’s richest city, it continues to be its most unequal. This is in part due to the preponderance of too many lagging-behind areas in the capital which forms part of ‘ignored London’. This is a waste of both economic resource and human potential. Also, too often the effects of living in these ‘places that apparently don’t matter’ mean that birthplace becomes fundamentally connected to intergenerational socio-economic circumstance and limits educational opportunity. This leads to restricted educational choice, poor outcomes, and insufficient occupational success.

This ‘effectively maintained inequality’ allows more advantaged social groups to assemble various educational contexts around their own familial and personal needs and interests while leaving the others to navigate the complexities unaided. Lareau suggests that this hoarding of opportunity gives them a competitive edge which is aided by their store of social and cultural capital. This not only has strong roots but also has deep geographical correlations. This form of capital refers to the non-financial assets that are often passed on intergenerationally and maintain social advantage.

London already has some of the best levels of post-18 higher education engagement in the UK, but cold spots persist. One such spot is Feltham in the Borough of Hounslow.

Inequality in the London borough of Feltham

Feltham is in the London borough of Hounslow which is rich in ethnic diversity with a high percentage of young people (18 years or under). It is bordered by Kingston and Sunbury-on-Thames to the south and Heathrow Airport is adjacent to it — this being its biggest employer. Of its eight wards, Feltham, with a population of almost 71,000, makes up almost half the total population of Hounslow. However, it is an area where the annual household income is below the London and national average with a higher number claiming state benefits than those in the surrounding boroughs. The proportion of those below the lowest level of income threshold (£25,000 pa) is higher in the Feltham wards than the mean across Hounslow.

As a result, the percentage of the Feltham population that sits within the highest occupational classifications is much lower than in London and across England as a whole. As the figures show, Feltham needs a better qualified and more varied workforce. This makes getting those in Feltham onto the undergraduate and post graduate track even more vital.

How higher education can help

Feltham is an area with significant potential for greater access to, and progression through and beyond, higher education. Some in the borough do progress, but not to the same extent as their peers outside the area. Feltham has the capacity to flourish if potential learners are afforded fresh opportunities to progress to higher education, underpinned by a demand-driven economic core. These affordances would address the differential between levels of qualification gained by young people in Feltham compared to those in other areas of the capital. This approach might also help reshape much of the knowledge and skills required by the various local employers both small and large. It is now well recognised that in future, the large regional employers such as Heathrow will also need higher skill and ability levels and better qualified staff.

The national Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) might prove instructive here. The construction of ‘micro-credentials’, which could include, inter alia, a Certificate of Higher Education (CertHE), a Diploma of Higher Education (DipHE), and credentialed foundation-year modules of different lengths and levels, would add flexibility. These would be in addition to higher-level apprenticeships and undergraduate degrees. Enrolment on these micro-courses would be framed by the ‘pathways to progression’ model, which would allow each learner to access the LLE loan to the full entitlement of £37,000 once they had stepped onto the pathway.

Conclusion

It is my contention that greater equity of participation in higher education can have significant individual and collective benefits. These enhancements improve life chances, address issues of social mobility, and solidify community attachment. The economic benefits include up-skilling of the workforce, a greater variety of available jobs — especially higher-status roles — and greater community confidence. The approach suggested can also address the unjust inequalities that stem from the decline in social mobility and intergenerational unfairness that haunt the region. All this can be achieved by investing in people and widening opportunity to those who wish it.