Bucking the destinations trend in Derby 

Derby Moor Spencer Academy is bucking the trend by helping the most disadvantaged pupils secure sustained post-16 destinations through employer partnerships and careers education.

The data on post-16 destinations is stark, particularly for the persistently disadvantaged pupils. Across the country, these young people are significantly less likely to go onto study, training or apprenticeships after leaving school.

Principal Scott Doyle explains how the school is proving that poor outcomes are not inevitable, even in challenging contexts.

Derby's destinations challenge

Derby is the second lowest performing local authority in the country for destinations outcomes for disadvantaged and persistently disadvantaged pupils, and is the lowest performing for non-disadvantaged pupils.

Derby Moor Spencer Academy is located in Littleover, a suburb on the outskirts of Derby City. It is a coeducational school and sixth form, and the proportion of its pupils who are persistently disadvantaged is in line with the Derby-wide average of 12.6%.

Despite this challenging context, Derby Moor achieves stronger destinations than average — and, crucially, its disadvantaged pupils do just as well as their peers, far outstripping the local average.

Inequality of opportunities and access

Disadvantage affects young people in Derby not just in terms of material poverty, but in the lack of life and career opportunities available to them.

Many of our students face barriers that their more affluent peers do not: lower household incomes, fewer professional networks, less access to work experience through family contacts, and fewer opportunities to build confidence and cultural capital outside school.

Although there are large employers in the area, they were not hiring local people. Young people from less advantaged backgrounds were not benefiting from their presence.

Defying the odds with a career-led approach

Derby Moor Spencer Academy has worked to close this gap by directly addressing the barriers their pupils face.  

We reached out to employers to find out why and learned that employers were not hiring local people due to a skills gap. We asked what skills they were looking for and co-designed training, projects and curriculum content around those skills.

The school has built strong partnerships with employers across the city:  

"We work with local businesses to ensure that our pupils are developing the skills that employers are asking for. We have strong links with employers across Derby, including Microsoft, DHL, Rolls Royce, Alstom, and Cooper Parry.

Many of these relationships began with our business breakfasts which we hold on INSET days, facilitating networking between staff and businesses.

These have helped ensure that local businesses understand both the strengths and the challenges within our community."

Embedding employability and equity

Students participate in employability projects, which have been co-designed and are assessed by local employers.

These experiences help address gaps in opportunity:

Our employability projects help level the playing field by giving students meaningful experiences, practical examples, and employer feedback that they can confidently discuss in interviews.

Employability is woven into the behaviour system. We make it clear to pupils that expectations such as being on time, having the right equipment, and having the right uniform are all important because it will be necessary for the world of work. For many disadvantaged pupils, school may be the primary place where these workplace habits and expectations are consistently modelled and reinforced.

Building confidence, oracy and cultural capital

The school prioritises interview skills and communication:

We place a strong emphasis on interview preparation because we know that confidence, vocabulary and professional communication are often shaped by background and exposure.

We have regular interview experience, with annual mock interviews from Year 9 onwards. We also interview for roles within the school so it becomes normal. Year 7s interview to be transition mentors, KS4 students interview to be form reps, and sixth formers interview to be school leaders. We make sure they do interviews both face-to-face and virtually, so they are prepared for both scenarios.

The focus on oracy is deliberate:

We noticed many of our pupils, particularly those from more disadvantaged backgrounds, struggled with oracy, and so we have also built oracy into the curriculum from Year 7 onwards, which helps to build vocabulary, confidence and self-belief.

Creating aspiration through sixth form culture

Our approach in sixth form is also important.

We offer a mixture of vocational and academic subjects, which encourages more students to stay at the school. Sixth formers wear business wear and instead of 'free periods' have 'independent study periods', which they spend within the school, visible to pupils in lower school. This creates aspirational role models for younger students, many of whom may not otherwise see people from backgrounds similar to their own progressing into higher education or professional careers.

We also teach how to effectively study independently, recognising that disadvantaged pupils may not always have access to quiet study spaces, academic support, or guidance at home.

A key enabler of success is dedicated leadership

We are incredibly fortunate that we have a talented careers leader, who was previously a senior leader in the school. His entire role, albeit part-time, is the leadership of careers and employability.

This means he is able to pick up the phone when contacts call, and has enough time to do all the necessary networking, planning and management that is required to have a careers offer like ours.

What more is needed

While the school has achieved strong outcomes, challenges remain at a system level:

In terms of what could be done to support, of course there is always funding. There are a lot of requirements placed on schools in terms of careers, and recently there have been more, but there isn't the additional support to go along with it.

Ring-fenced funding for careers would help, because not all schools in our position are as lucky as we are to have someone who is willing and able to dedicate so much time to their careers programme.

It is important to create opportunities to recognise schools like ours and the work that they do, in the contexts that they're in. It's a case of recognising the progress that is made, the amount of hard work that takes and the difference it has on the life chances of the young people we serve.

Looking ahead to close the destinations gap

We still have a long way to go, but we are proud of the progress we have made in ensuring that disadvantage does not define our pupils' aspirations or limit their futures.

Schools like Derby Moor Spencer Academy demonstrate that, even in areas with some of the weakest destination outcomes in the country, it is possible to significantly improve life chances for the most disadvantaged pupils.

By learning from schools that are defying the odds, we can take meaningful steps towards closing the destinations gap and ensuring all young people have access to the opportunities they deserve.