Research School Network: From Cold Spot to Bright Future: Educational Isolation and Opportunity in the South West Nick Wakeling, Director of the Colyton Foundation, on isolation and opportunity in the South West
—
Blog
From Cold Spot to Bright Future: Educational Isolation and Opportunity in the South West
Nick Wakeling, Director of the Colyton Foundation, on isolation and opportunity in the South West
Share on:
by Devon Research School
on the
Nick Wakeling
Director of the Colyton Foundation
The South West contains some of England’s starkest social mobility cold spots — driven in part by low higher education progression for disadvantaged young people. In this article, Nick Wakeling, Director of the Colyton Foundation, explores the scale of the challenge, the roots of regional inequality, and the new cross-sector coalition working to change the story for high attaining pupils across the region.
The South West Landscape: Isolation, Overlooked Talent, and a Region in Need
In the South West, academic potential too often goes unrealised. Disadvantaged pupils face some of the steepest barriers to educational success in England: the results of a unique combination of geographical and socio-economic challenges.
Higher education remains one of the surest routes to social mobility, yet the South West consistently has the lowest rate of university progression of any English region. Just 10% of pupils who have received free school meals complete an undergraduate degree – again the lowest proportion of any region. Only 3% reach high tariff institutions, less than a quarter of the rate seen in Inner London.
These gaps have their roots in poor outcomes for disadvantaged pupils at every stage of the school journey. At Key Stage 2, the region has the lowest levels of high attainment for pupils who have received free school meals. And when disadvantaged children do attain highly at primary school, they struggle to continue to do so at GCSE: in 2023 the average Progress 8 score for disadvantaged high prior attainers was ‑0.89, significantly lower than the national average of ‑0.5. In London it was ‑0.16.
But the problem is deeper than statistics. The South West peninsula’s unique geography, demography and education infrastructure create a set of barriers, rarely acknowledged in national policy discussions.
Tanya Ovenden-Hope and Rowena Passey’s research on educational isolation makes clear that schools in rural and coastal communities often face a triple burden: remoteness from professional networks, low local aspiration, and stretched resources. In such contexts, academically able disadvantaged pupils are often isolated, lacking the peer networks and supra-curricular opportunities that nurture sustained academic engagement. Last month the body of evidence highlighting inequalities for children attending rural and coastal schools was strengthened by the publication of a report by The Ruskin Institute for Social Equity, which outlined the stark disparities in outcomes for pupils growing up in these areas, and those in towns and cities.
Resources and outreach programmes – whether from universities, employers, or charities – rarely reach the most remote and rural schools. While widening participation efforts often focus on urban areas with dense concentrations of need, the dispersed deprivation of the South West means many pupils fall through the cracks. Able pupils are too often invisible.
What’s more, the South West has been overlooked in oversimplified North/South narratives of educational inequality, areas of high deprivation masked by associations with sunny summer holidays.
The challenges faced by the region’s young people make it, as a 2023 report by the University of Exeter put it, “a special case for those wishing to increase educational opportunity and progression”. It is a region where old frameworks do not apply and new approaches are desperately needed.
At the Colyton Foundation, we believe this represents not just a regional crisis, but a national opportunity: to unlock the potential of thousands of young people and reshape the narrative of social mobility in rural and coastal England. We have brought together a powerful coalition of regional and national partners to bring about long-term, systemic change: raising attainment, expanding aspiration, and ensuring that geography and background no longer determine educational destiny.
Your Future Story: Sustained, School-Centred Support
Your Future Story is the Colyton Foundation’s flagship programme, developed with the universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Exeter, together with the Sutton Trust, and backed by a powerful network of regional partners, including leading Multi-Academy Trusts, the Devon Research School and the South West Institute for Teaching (SWIFT). It responds both to the specific regional challenges in the South West and to national evidence that high-attaining pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds often fall behind between ages 11 – 14 – evidence strengthened significantly by newly published research on pupil engagement by John Jerrim, with whom I spoke at SWIFT’s Summer Conference.
Beginning in Year 7, the programme brings together academically able, under-resourced children who have attained highly at primary school from schools across Cornwall, Devon and Somerset into strong, mutually supportive cohorts.
Each cohort receives sustained support from through to their first year of university, including academic enrichment, and university and employer visits. At the same time, the programme acknowledges that is students’ experience every day at school which will have the greatest impact on their attainment and aspirations. As a result, the programme works closely with partner schools to enable both participants and pupils throughout school to thrive: by training Teacher Champions to mentor and support programme participants, and by providing a place for a Senior Leader on the Colyton Foundation’s Leading High Attainment programme.
A pathfinder cohort of Year 7 pupils will begin in September 2025, with a new cohort added each year. Over the next decade, Your Future Story will support 1,000 young people to stay on track to reach their full academic potential and access the UK’s most competitive higher education opportunities.
A Regional Call to Action
The Colyton Foundation believes that talent is evenly distributed — but opportunity is not. Rooted in the principle of equity, our mission is to ensure that no young person in the South West has their future defined by geography or disadvantage.
We are creating a community of schools, teachers, universities and partners who are ready to do things differently — because the challenges of the South West demand a bespoke, ambitious response.
Whether you are a school leader looking to transform provision, a teacher passionate about supporting high attainers, or a partner organisation wanting to contribute — we would welcome collaboration with anyone ready to help drive change.
