I popped up to The Junction to see what the Cambridge Playlaws Project was about. One of their teenage paid staff [Let’s call them Student T] gave me chapter-and-verse on how city and county institutions – and central government have utterly failed our teenagers and young people over man years.
TL/DR: All major public service providers need to review how they go about finding out the collective needs of teenagers and young people on a routine basis – and then assess how any findings from such actions can influence their policies. Because something in Cambridge has gone wrong. Badly wrong.
One of the things that triggers me is seeing local public policy failures that resemble what I experienced growing up in Cambridge during the last Millennium. It’s all the more frustrating when issues many of us have raised are ones that not only are still with us, but have gotten worse.
The over-concentration of sixth-form college places in one ward in Cambridge – with inadequate transport and poor service provision unable to cope with numbers.
To summarise what I was told (I’m not naming names), the above paragraph applies.
“[Queen Edith’s ward has] over half of the sixth-form students from the whole of Cambridgeshire, studying at six schools and colleges”
Queen Edith’s Magazine, Autumn 2020
This isn’t a ‘They agree with me – aren’t I wonderful?’ political post. Rather I got an insight into what those failings look like from the perspective of teenagers, how it affects their ability to study, and how it affects their wellbeing. The problem is that those sorts of things don’t seem to be the things that move ministers to make big improvements to their policies. But if they were told:
***Our children are getting lower grades because of this political screw up!***
…then they are more inclined to listen. But then we have a system that incentivises teachers to teach children to the test because the exam results are the only things that matter to the system that ministers have created. It’s a system I’m a product of. When I got my GCSE results back in the mid 1990s some bloke from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire decided they were good enough for him to stick a microphone in front of me to run an interview. Did I know the first thing about law, politics, sex & relationships, personal health (including which medications are used for which mild illnesses), my legal rights, and how to go about making the best of the opportunities available? Did I know how to deal with failure constructively? Did I f–k?!?! (Which is why I still blame John Major’s government – and Gillian Shepherd in particular, to this day!!!)
Note the above is not the same as asking to be ‘spoon-fed’ by any means.
“Cambridge as a city is tailored only for one sort of learning – academic learning. It has not got the facilities for teenagers who have different learning styles beyond that”
Student T to me, 18 June 2023
Student T had just finished their A-levels and is going onto university this autumn. Why do our public policy institutions, local and national have such a narrow worldview of what constitutes success? Whether for the individual, the institutions, for the town/city, or even for the government of the day?
Student T reminded me of the artificial split between the arts and the sciences, academic vs the vocational, the ‘old’ universities vs the ‘new’ universities.
One of the reasons I go on about lifelong learning is because it offers one of the few opportunities for us to try and make good some of the missed opportunities from our school days. For all the grief that South Cambridgeshire District Council are getting over their 4-day week pilot, I can’t help but think that having that additional day free creates an incentive for a greater provision for lifelong learning by the state. Furthermore, that provision does not need to be restricted to vocational/work related courses, but can cover a host of subjects and topics of which I believe there is a strong public interest in providing for. Such as an introduction to law and democracy. Or an introduction to public health. Or on retrofitting your home for a changing climate.
- “Who do these lazy woke local government bean counters think they are?!?”
- **It’s part of a pilot scheme being run by the University of Cambridge, looking at what improvements to productivity and health might arise from alternative working patterns**
- “As I was saying, this is an important piece of public policy research being led by our world class university which is an engine of prosperity and excellence that could result in significant productivity improvements and big savings for the rate payer”
Quite.
The failure to provide sufficient study facilities for our teenagers in further education has a knock on impact on county library services
Over the past decade, I’ve noticed the Cambridge Central Library becoming increasingly popular with teenagers. Why? Student T told me that it was because there are not nearly enough group working facilities for teenagers in their colleges. Not only that, their own college libraries close far too early for commuting students. They told me that once they turn 18, those in year 13 use local pubs as places for study as well as socialising because that is how acute the shortage of space is.
“Isn’t further education students using county libraries a good thing?”
In and of itself, yes – and reflects well on the librarians. At the same time, if it’s the result of chronic failures to provide the essential student services by further education institutions, then there is an issue that needs addressing. There’s also a missed opportunity getting teenagers involved in suggesting improvements to the library service and learning more about influencing local democracy and local public policy.
Meeting the diverse needs of student cohorts commuting across long distances.
During my A-levels I never felt the need to go to a library – in part because of a ‘teach to the test’ culture meant that we relied far too heavily on a handful of approved textbooks, combined with the inertia of not wanting to be seen as a swot – a hangover from secondary school. But the one thing I never really appreciated living just down the road from college was the barriers my fellow classmates faced with their long commutes in.
The buses are clearly failing our teenagers. I’m beyond saying Stagecoach should be ashamed because the nature of their ownership means the only thing that matters is their bottom line. This is a ministerial failure. They are the ones with the power to do something radical about the situation and they are the ones doing next to nothing. (The paperwork and time it will take to get bus franchising in place is soul-destroyingly long and involves far too much ministerial involvement).
The proposals for the busways are too late for Student T’s cohorts. As I’ve mentioned before, we should have started the construction of *something* by now, but the collective incompetence of all involved in transport planning in Cambridgeshire means the only people who have gotten rich are the transport consultants. The fact that we haven’t for me reflects the structural failure of our institutions – which is why I called for. the abolition of a swathe of them and the creation of a new unitary council at the recent local elections in Cambridge.
The privatisation of public spaces – land owners seeing young people as cash cows or potential criminals
“If you look at the Cambridge Leisure Park now, you can see we do not have the infrastructure to serve that concentration of, and that many teenagers. And that is not the fault of the teenagers, that is the collective long term failure of local and central government”
Antony Carpen (me) to Queen Edith’s Hustings, 28 April 2023.
Student T told me of the constant harassment of teenagers by security guards on the site who, if the former are not buying things or paying for services, then they are technically loitering and can be ejected from the site. Yet one of the reasons why the site can sustain three convenience shops (along with one on the other side of Hills Road) is because of those artificially high student numbers. Without them, LandSec and Savills (owners and site managers) would have their work cut out finding new tenants. The impression I got from Student T was that both firms are not interested in the wellbeing of our teenagers *unless* they are spending money. In any case, such is the volume of students using the site that the site itself does not have the capacity to manage those numbers.
Note that London takes a very different view, and has written into its planning guidance a set of requirements that would restrict the ability of property owners to move on those that were not buying goods or services in places designed for the public to meet, use, and share.
Above – the Public London Charter from Sept 2021 – p8.
That said, it still does not deal with the overcrowding and the fact that the majority of sixth form students in Cambridgeshire study at institutions in one ward inside the city of Cambridge.
“What would you do instead?”
Move Hills Road Sixth Form College out of South Cambridge entirely and relocate it to a place that has its own railway station and/or light rail stop as part of the Hills Road North proposals. This is an example of events moving ahead of earlier blogposts such as this one where Mayor Dr Nik Johnson made clear his policy of dealing with further education cold spots back in late 2021.
Since its expansion in the 1990s, the site has never been big enough for, and has never made sufficient provision for the student numbers it chose to have. Reducing the number of students to a level that the site could provide for would become a political football with accusations of denying learning opportunities at what on paper is one of the highest performing sixth form colleges in the country. Far better in my view to up sticks and relocate – mindful that most students are only at the institution for just under two years. It’s not the sort of length of time that involves developing any sort of ‘loyalty’ towards the institution in the way we expect of universities.
The problem with this case study is its problems cannot be resolved in isolation.
Everything is tied up in how local government in England is structured and funded. One of the things Cambridge Playlaws asked participants to think about was what new laws they would bring in to promote playing. I mentioned that you’d need more than one clause to put into any law – rather they’d need a full on Act of Parliament.
“The Street Playgrounds Act 1938 enabled local authorities to close certain ‘suitable streets at certain suitable times’, in order to be used as playgrounds for children.”
See https://londonplaystreets.org.uk/about/history/
The problems back then sound terribly familiar today. Lord Denham who introduced the legislation into the House of Lords in 1938 spoke about the problems children and parents faced.
“In all the big towns and cities of the country, especially in the North of England, there are hundreds, nay, thousands of children of poor parents who, because there are no playing fields near their homes, are forced to go out and play in the streets. It is the fact that it is not from any choice on their part, unless it be Hobson’s choice, that they have to do this. The simple reason is that there are no playing fields or playgrounds near the homes where they live.”
Lord Denham to House of Lords, 31 March 1938 Col 544
Hence my suggestion was to bring back the Street Playgrounds Act 1938 but in an improved form – noting that alongside it needed to be a radical overhaul of local government as the House of Commons Public Administration Committee recommended last October.
To conclude?
Local public service providers need to get a picture of the collective needs of our teenagers – and not just the ones that live in/around Cambridge but also the ones that commute long distances to get to school or college. Because the children’s and teenagers’ experiences of the long commutes might not be the same as those of their parents – and this is something that decision-makers will need to bear in mind when considering the future of both further education and public transport provision in and around our city & county.
Food for thought?
If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:
- Follow me on Twitter
- Like my Facebook page
- Consider a small subscription to help fund my continued research and reporting on local democracy in and around Cambridge.
The Cambridge Town Owl 