Spatial division of opportunity: local economic context, elite trajectories, and the widening participation industry

ABSTRACT The importance of geography in debates around education and labour market inequality is an enduring public policy concern. This paper argues that local economic contexts have a role in shaping the kind of university and career trajectories working-class young people are exposed to. Drawing on multi-sited data on working-class young people in different local contexts across England, it underlines the importance of regional economic development, the geography of elite universities and the spatial patterning of widening participation networks and activity. In the capital, a sophisticated widening participation infrastructure exists – including multiple partnerships between schools and the third and private sectors – which far exceeds the networks and support found elsewhere. Combined with London’s high economic capital and elite career pathways, this infrastructure greatly facilitates systems of support designed to drive aspirations to elite universities and careers. Whilst advocating for a fairer distribution of educational opportunities nationwide, we argue that, without acknowledging the origins of spatial imbalances within the UK, any attempt at simply ‘spreading out the same’ opportunities risks offering a superficial response. If long-term change is to be truly advanced, a more systematic dismantling of how economic functions and social relations are configured spatially must first be achieved.


Introduction
This paper highlights the significance of spatial context in shaping the educational and career trajectories of working-class young people in England, making a valuable contribution to knowledge through its focus on the underexplored role of place for elite university progression specifically.It builds upon a burgeoning body of literature which has considered geographies of education in the UK, from the spatial patterning of private tuition (Holloway & Kirby, 2020) and extracurricular activities (Donnelly et al., 2019) to research looking at the clustering of graduates from creative degrees in London and the South East (Faggian et al., 2013) and a larger body of work which has examined students' im/mobility for higher education (e.g.Christie, 2007;Donnelly & Evans, 2016;Donnelly & Gamsu, 2018a, 2018b;Holdsworth, 2009).This latter scholarship has primarily looked at the role of place within HE participation more broadly, however, in recent years there has been increasing consideration of its role within elite university participation more specifically (e.g.Davies et al., 2021;Montacute & Cullinane, 2018).
In the past decade, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have increasingly come under fire (e.g.Lammy, 2017) for the fact that their university places are dominated by students from London and Southeast England.For example, 48.3% of all students admitted to Oxford between 2018-2020 were from London and the Southeast, in contrast to only 2.1% of students from the Northeast and 4.5% from the East Midlands 1 .These striking regional disparities in admission are chiefly due to similarly large disparities in applications, highlighting the wider structural inequalities at play.Indeed, this manifest imbalance maps onto longstanding regional economic divisions, with London and the Southeast long having dominated regions like the North East.This economic dominance is further reflected in these regions' higher proportions of independent schools (Bradford & Burdett, 1989) -undoubtedly an important contributing factor to the overrepresentation of students from London and the Southeast at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.Indeed, whilst there are increasing numbers of state-educated students at both these institutions (Baker, 2022), privately-educated students continue to be significantly overrepresented, as indeed they are at many of the UK's Russell Group institutionsa self-selected group of 24 high entry tariff, research-intensive institutions (Montacute & Cullinane, 2018).Moreover, of the state-educated pupils that do progress to elite universities, London and the Southeast are again overrepresented.For example, Gamsu (2017) has shown that a number of 'elite state schools' in London's suburbs -primarily grammar schools with majority middle-class intakes -have established similar 'symbiotic relationships' with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to those of elite independent schools.
Furthermore, with the UK's elite universities unequally spatially distributed, and the country's arguably most elite 'Golden Triangle' institutions (Wakeling & Savage, 2015) typically comprising University College London, London School of Economics, King's College London and Imperial College, in addition to Oxford and Cambridge -located in and around London also, it is a 'logical strategy' for local students with the means to study at these institutions (Donnelly & Gamsu, 2018b).This then further contributes to a patterning of middle class and elite reproduction in London and the Southeast.
Whilst the typically greater affluence of London and the Southeast may play the primary role within the UK's geographical disparities in entry to elite universities, there is building evidence that students from London may also make up disproportionate numbers of the students from disadvantaged backgrounds that make it to elite universities (Davies et al., 2021;Department for Education DfE, 2022).One key explanatory factor here is pre-university attainment.High attainment is one of the most important factors for progression to elite universities, and pre-university attainment varies significantly across the country (Adams & Nye, 2013).In recent years, London has consistently had the highest attainment and progress rates nationwide, a phenomenon dubbed the 'London Effect', and which is most strongly marked amongst its disadvantaged pupils (Ross et al., 2020).Moreover, this 'London Effect' is far from negligible.For example, in contrast to London peers, pupils in the North of England make on average a third of a grade less progress overall at age sixteen and nearly half a grade less in mathematics (Northern Powerhouse Partnership, 2018).
In particular, East London -long recognized as a place of significant financial deprivation and need (Butler & Hamnett, 2011) -has developed a reputation for having state schools that are celebrated for apparently 'succeeding against the odds' owing to their disadvantaged intakes and high levels of attainment and elite university progression (Davies et al., 2021).Indeed, East London's educational 'success' has led to it becoming seen as a sort of 'social mobility utopia', heralded by politicians across the political spectrum.Notably, the school we refer to as 'Elm Academy' within this article, where some of our East London data is drawn, was recently cited by former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, as a pertinent example of 'levelling up' the UK -the current government's flagship policy agenda aimed at addressing the UK's regional divisions.
Elm Academy has for several years now had progression rates to Oxbridge rivalling those of the UK's top private schools, with almost 90 students receiving offers for the academic year 2022/23.Moreover, the significance of this for the geographical disparities seen in the elite university progression of students from disadvantaged backgrounds specifically should not be understated.Indeed, around 15% of Oxford's annual undergraduate intake are from economically disadvantaged backgrounds 2 and approximately 20% at the University of Cambridge 3 equating to approximately 1,200 students.Given that the majority of the students at Elm Academy would be classed as such, this school alone could thus make up to 7.5% of this total, and they are just one of several similar schools in East London with high progression rates for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
On one level, the transformation of disadvantaged pupils' attainment in East London and the area's higher-than-expected elite university progression rates (Davies et al., 2021) are admirable.However, political statements like that of Boris Johnson conveniently ignore the structural factors in London which have helped enable these.A major contribution of this paper is to make the case that local economic context, and specifically the UK's spatially unbalanced economy, can have a significant bearing on widening participation to elite universities and careers.
Indeed, in assuming that elite university progression rates like those of Elm Academy can be easily achieved elsewhere, politicians like Boris Johnson have missed the point that the school's location in the dominant Southeast has undoubtedly facilitated its success (in the narrow terms described).This point underlines much of the criticism that has been made towards public policy aimed at addressing the UK's substantial regional divisions, such as the Northern Powerhouse (Lee, 2017;Martin & Gardiner, 2017) and of which the 'levelling up' agenda is the most recent iteration.Like earlier policy initiatives, this agenda has been strongly critiqued for lacking coherence, clarity, and adequate funding to address the scale of the problem (Connelly et al., 2021;Mackinnon, 2020).Moreover, from a spatial perspective, the 'levelling up' term itself can be seen as problematic, with its underlying assumption that all regions can become 'equal' failing to acknowledge the power relations that produced uneven economic development in the first place.The government's insistence that their policy to 'level up' the UK will not damage prosperous regions like London or the Southeast represents to many a flawed logic -for the less prosperous regions to prosper, there must be some movement in power relations, a disruption to the dominant and dominated relationship.Taking this spatial perspective, and drawing on the case of education, our paper makes an important contribution to thinking on this most recent reincarnation of policy to address regional divisions.

Spatial structures and uneven development
Drawing on the theoretical ideas of geographer Doreen Massey, we will challenge the assumption that the extensive opportunities found in London can be easily spread more evenly across the UK.We argue that such assertions conveniently ignore why such spatially uneven access to opportunities exists in the first place.Massey (1995Massey ( , 2013) ) demonstrated this with reference to the UK's spatial divisions of labour, specifically the spatial structuring of relations of production.Meusburger (2000) has further made the point that a vertical division of labour implies a spatial concentration of highly skilled jobs at the upper level of organizations in a few areas, together with a spatial decentralization of lower skilled jobs at the bottom.Economic functions in the division of labour stand in relation to one another and imply positions of dominance and subordination.Decisions about where to locate different economic functions, in a vertically ordered division of labour, therefore constitute a spatial ordering of places through the kind of functions which cluster and are carried out in particular localities.In a typical contemporary example, this could be the headquarters of a bank located in London with its call centres located in deindustrialized towns outside the Southeast of England.
Massey's theorizing on the spatial divisions of labour explained why post-industrial countries like the UK experienced major regional economic divisions.The separation of control and production functions meant that places like South Wales and the North East of England functioned as sites of extraction.Whether this was the extraction of coal from South Wales or the extraction of labour to produce cotton and iron in the North West and North East factories and shipyards, these were regions that were placed in a position of dependence.With much of this industry now gone, the gap between the UK's richer and poorer regions has only grown, with the UK one of the most regionally divided countries amongst large wealthy nations (McCann, 2020).Some of the regions that suffered the most from deindustrialization have been successful in diversifying to emerging sectors as the UK has shifted to a service dominated economy.For example, cities like Manchester have helped the North West to maintain higher Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita rates than the Midlands, South West, North East, Yorkshire, and Wales 4 .However, many areas have never fully recovered from the effects of deindustrialization and there has been a lasting intergenerational legacy of economic decline.
It is through Massey's lens that we interpret the resulting spatially uneven set of opportunities and conditions that exist for young people in the UK.Indeed, our data show that students' geographic locations directly impact their access to opportunities such as internships in the corporate head office functions of employers and their levels of interaction with elite universities.Moreover, as Massey (2013) argued, locating dominant control functions and subordinant labour functions in particular locations will also likely reflect the social composition of those places.However, it is not just the social composition, but also a legacy of expectation, stereotyped judgements and perceptions that are internalized and transmitted between multiple generations.It is for this reason that an approach of simply 'spreading out' opportunities fails to recognize what is a deep-seated problem; it does not acknowledge the origins of the spatial imbalances within the UK, in terms of historical spatial divisions of labour and their lasting legacy.We argue that a more systematic dismantling of how economic functions and social relations are configured spatially is required if any long-term change is to be advanced.

Data and methods
This paper draws on interview data from two related research projects looking at geographies of education, young people's perceptions of place and spatial mobilities within the UK context.The first, referred to as the 'elite' study, examined the impact of place on progression to elite universities and explored the factors which may help account for the higher/lower-than-expected progression rates of some localities.The initial quantitative phase of this research investigated and mapped progression rates to elite universitiesdefined as the 24 Russell Group institutions plus three further universities with similar characteristics (University of Bath, University of St Andrews, and University of Strathclyde) -by local area across England (see Davies et al., 2021).The following qualitative phase of the 'elite' study -the data from which will be drawn upon within this article -involved indepth case study research in two localities, one with higher-than-expected progression (in East London) and the other (in Nottingham) with lower-than-expected progression.The second study, referred to as the 'place' study, examined how young people look upon the geography of the UK and how place plays a part in where they would like to attend university.It was a multi-sited qualitative study across 17 diverse localities in all parts of the UK, including the four UK nations, and each region of England.Data from four of the research sites (East London, Tyneside, Liverpool, and Suffolk) will be drawn upon.
In the 'elite' study, participant recruitment across the two case study sites was facilitated through a widening participation organization, referred to as 'Aspire', that operates from centres based in disadvantaged communities across the UK.Fieldwork was conducted in early 2020 and comprised in-depth semi-structured interviews focussed on building understanding of students' post-18 pathways and the factors shaping their decision-making processes, participant observation and analysis of school promotional materials.Interviewee selection was purposive -working-class students with the academic potential to go to an elite university (predicted at least grades ABB at A-level) and staff members with good knowledge of typical post-18 pathways for local students -and was carried out by Aspire staff.The six student interviewees (three per case study site) were aged 17-18, from Minority Ethnic backgrounds (by chance) and in years 12 and 13, the final two years of schooling within the UK.The six staff interviewees (three per case study site) consisted of two long-standing Aspire staff members and one staff member from a local partner sixth form with a responsibility for university/careers support per location.
The 'place' study used a multi-sited case study design, with participants selected from schools based across 17 different localities.These localities and schools were chosen on the basis of the proportion of young people who were geographically mobile for university in previous years, as well as an attempt to capture a diversity of the demographic and locational characteristics within the UK's geography.The selected localities included urban, coastal, and rural areas across each region of England and within Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.They included deindustrialized areas of Northern England, major cities such as Birmingham and Manchester, as well as multiple sites in the capital.Participants were recruited from schools within the localities, with over 200 young people and 20 school staff across the 17 localities involved.The school staff interviewed were those with responsibility for year 12/13 age cohorts (Heads of Year 12 and 13) as well as staff who support young people in their career choices (e.g.Careers Advisors).In this paper, the data we draw on from the 'place' study only includes interviews with staff across four of the case study localities, which are representative of high and low rates of geographic mobility.
The reason we primarily draw on the discourses of school and Aspire staff in this paper is because we are specifically interested in the extent to which staff felt able to draw on support and resources to support their young people.We show how teachers and widening participation staff in different localities had very different experiences in the range of opportunities they were able to open up.The five localities drawn upon within the article represented especially divergent experiences for young people, in terms of the opportunities available and the kind of horizons geography opens up (and closes down).The localities are all economically disadvantaged local areas, three situated within former industrial cities/areas, two in the north of England (in Tyneside and Liverpool) and one in the Midlands (in Nottingham), one within East London, an area which has undergone significant regeneration in recent years, and the final locality, a remote coastal town in Suffolk in the East of England.Whilst impossible to be representative of the diverse geography of the UK, we argue in this paper that these localities represent prime examples of significant divergences in the array of opportunities they provide for disadvantaged young people.
Across both the 'elite' and 'place' studies, written informed consent was obtained from participants and the studies were conducted in line with the British Educational Research Association's ethical protocols.For both studies, all interviews were transcribed, and thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) conducted to identify common themes.Pseudonyms are used throughout the paper to protect the anonymity of all interviewees and organizations.
The findings of both the 'elite' and 'place' studies suggested that areas outside London differ markedly from the capital in terms of the opportunities available to students.Discussion of the findings will be divided across three sections, with the initial section focussed on school partnerships and widening participation practices and resources, and the following two sections on, firstly, the differences in university engagement in and outside the capital and, secondly, the importance of local economic contexts in shaping the type of employers students have the opportunity to interact with, as well as the types of careers that young people aspire to.

School partnerships and widening participation practices
Our East London interview data evidence a highly sophisticated widening participation ecosystem within the capital, including extensive partnerships between schools and the third and private sectors.There are several reasons why the widening participation machinery of the capital is much more developed than elsewhere.Many widening participation organizations are headquartered and were initially founded here (Gamsu, 2016).For example, Aspire, the organization partnered with for the 'elite' study -now one of the UK's largest university-access charities -was established in London in the late 2000s.Moreover, reflecting the legacy of uneven development in the UK (Massey, 2013), London is home to the major financial districts of Canary Wharf and the City, whose blue-chip corporates -keen to rebuild public trust in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis -are increasingly engaged in Corporate Social Responsibility practices (Herzig & Moon, 2012).Such practices include a focus on widening participation initiatives within their local communities, and -given that elite university study is the 'expected' pathway into such careers (Brown et al., 2011) -a frequent privileging of elite university progression specifically.
For example, a Careers Officer at Tower Chapel School in East London spoke about a partnership the school has with an elite insurance firm headquartered in the City who give them 'a large amount of funding' for an outreach initiative aimed at encouraging students to leave the local area for university and attend an elite institution.Similar to stakeholder comments in case study research conducted by Wiseman et al. (2017) in an East London borough, she also made apparent how such support from and links with the area's elite businesses are commonplace for local schools: Yeah, so, [East London borough] has been known historically for having really good links between schools and businesses.There's an education business partnership, erm . . .and they set up these programmes for the schools.Most of the schools in this area do similar programmes (Careers Officer, Tower Chapel School, East London).
The proximity of East London schools to the capital's two financial districts is more than likely to be why schools like Tower Chapel appear to be especially engaged with these elite businesses.Reflective of the economic spatial division of labour (Massey, 2013), a firm's strategy and control functions, operated by their headquarters in London, will likely be targeting what is commonly regarded as a more disadvantaged part of London.The crucial point here is that this choice is made by the control function of a firm's headquarters, who have the power and resources to direct activity.The back-office customer service 'branch-plants' of the firm, located in deindustrialized parts of the UK (that have never fully recovered since the collapse of heavy industry), will not have this control function within easy reach, which is why schools outside of the capital are much less likely to benefit.
In part perhaps stemming from this increasing momentum amongst local third and private sector organizations and businesses, our interviews also suggested that local schools highly prioritize the use of staff resources for widening participation.Indeed, commenting that local sixth forms 'really understand the value that resource can have in terms of supporting a student', one East London Aspire staff member explained that many employ teams of staff with an exclusive widening participation remit, in contrast to 'more conventional' sixth forms where there may only be one staff member responsible for both outreach and careers activities.She also commented on the crucial role these teams play in cultivating schools' relationships with the area's elite businesses: It means those teams can go out and you know, strike up corporate partnerships and be able to, you know, get speakers in. . .I think it is just, you know, really cultivating that, erm, those connections . . .investing in that area and seeing that pay off.Erm, because it's what will make those students stand out (Cluster Manager, Aspire, East London).
As a result of these teams, local working-class students likely receive substantially more support for university progression than similar students elsewhere might typically receive.For example, the University Access Director at Elm Academy in East London explained that the extensive support provided by their four full-time staff member 'University Access' team (all Oxbridge graduates) includes running regular in-house super-curricular activities (activities designed to broaden students' subject knowledge beyond the school curriculum), organizing an annual residential trip to two elite universities for the full year 12 cohort (~300 students), providing in-depth personalized university application support, admissions test and interview preparation (including specialized Oxbridge sessions) and sending students a weekly 'roundup' email advertising selected programmes at elite universities and high-status internship opportunities, plus any of the additional support and references needed to apply for these.
Outside of the capital there did not seem to be the same momentum to focus school resources on widening participation activities.Data from Great Mundestoft Sixth Form College in Suffolk suggested that student progression to university there was largely supported by the work of one staff member, who was also a full-time teacher.Likewise, one Nottingham Aspire staff member spoke about a partner college, Hawthorn, with a student body of 2000, who have several 'welfare officers and wellbeing officers and student support officers', but only one careers/outreach officer, again suggesting that the latter may be less of a priority for local schools than the former.Moreover, in contrast to the East London based schools involved in the study, there was little evidence of the involvement of elite firms within the widening participation opportunities available to students, or indeed much engagement from the private sector at all.
Again, contrary to East London, where schools such as Elm Academy, appear to do quite a lot of 'hand-holding' when it comes to university visits, our data from schools in disadvantaged areas outside the capital, suggested that -although perhaps in part due to typically more limited resources -there was also an expectation of students to show independence and organize their own university visits, as well as taking responsibility for signalling their interest in progressing to an elite university to school staff: So, we've got somebody who's . . .very knowledgeable on university, Russell Groups, Oxford and Cambridge, trying to support students to get into those kinds of universities.So, we've got the support there, but it relies on the students I think having a bit of a lightbulb moment, 'oh that really looks appealing' and then stepping away and going and seeing members of staff and really pushing it (Deputy Head, Rowanberry School, Nottingham).
In some cases, this also appeared to reflect a desire to leave students free to make their own choices about if and where to go to university, in contrast to the often-strong privileging of Russell Group universities evident in some East London schools' framing of university options.For example, whilst given the funding model of the organizationinvolving financial support from a range of university partners -Aspire staff must take care in how they frame different university groupings, the discourse of staff at the organization's Nottingham centre also seemed to reflect an individual belief that elite universities should not be more highly valorized than others: I know definitely as an individual I'm very careful because I don't want to devalue any other universities that [students] might be looking to go to, to say, these ones are better than where you're thinking of going (Centre Leader, Aspire, Nottingham).
Aside from the University of Nottingham, which was mentioned several times, the discourse of Nottingham school and Aspire staff also suggested a general paucity of engagement from elite universities in local schools.Interview data from Liverpool, Suffolk, and Tyneside suggested similarly infrequent interactions with elite universities also, and typically greater engagement from local post-1992 institutions.This stood in sharp contrast to our interview data from East London, where the discourse of staff and students was filled with references to elite universities.The next section will discuss the differences in university engagement within and outside the capital in more detail.

Engagement from elite universities
The East London student interviews from the 'elite' study contained multiple references to activities and residential programmes at elite universities, with each student having participated in activities at a minimum of five different Russell Group universities, including at least one experience at Oxford or Cambridge.Moreover, amongst these, each had taken part in at least three residential trips, activities that can be particularly impactful for prospective students (Robinson & Salvestrini, 2020), especially those from lower socioeconomic and certain ethnic backgrounds who may be less likely to apply to elite universities due to a fear of being 'out of place' (Ball et al., 2002) This apparent wealth of opportunities to engage with elite universities is logical, given East London's proximity to several such institutions and that, as a stakeholder comments in research conducted by Wiseman et al. (2017), concerning widening participation targeting, the area 'ticks all [the] boxes'.Indeed, East London's high numbers of economically disadvantaged young people and its ethnically diverse population are likely to make it particularly attractive to elite universities seeking to meet widening participation recruitment targets.Whilst there has been little empirical research to-date looking at the geographic distribution of elite university outreach, an investigation by Varsity, the University of Cambridge's independent newspaper, into this institution's outreach provision, found highly disproportionate targeting of London (Lally & Hancock, 2018).This suggests that -if other nearby elite universities also operate similarly -disadvantaged students here could have significantly greater access than similar peers elsewherea finding with important implications for policy which we shall return to in the conclusion.
Conversely, our interview data from disadvantaged areas within Nottingham, Suffolk, Tyneside, and Liverpool suggested that local schools' engagement with elite universitiesif any -is often limited to their local elite institution and that students rarely benefit from residential trips to universities further afield.Rather, schools here appear to have more frequent interactions with nearby post-1992 institutions who are typically more proactive in engaging with them and in facilitating visits, such as by supporting travel costs.For example, the Head of Sixth Form at Bootlesfield School in Liverpool commented that despite being only a short distance from the school, the University of Liverpool will not support them with travel costs there, yet local post-1992 institution, UCLan, located approximately an hour away in Preston, are happy to pay for coach travel.
From the perspective of post-1992 institutions, it is perhaps strategically important to strongly engage with students within their local geographic contexts.Indeed, research on student mobility (Donnelly & Gamsu, 2018a) has shown that post-1992 universities recruit much of their intake locally, whilst Russell Group universities recruit nationwide.For example, Newman University in Birmingham and Liverpool John Moores University were shown to recruit over two thirds of their intake from within a 57-mile radius, whilst that figure was less than 2% for the Universities of Bristol, Durham, and York.In many ways, post-1992 universities are reliant on their local students, which perhaps explains what we see here in terms of their eagerness to engage with local schools.
The Head of Year 12 at St Aaron's school in Tyneside similarly lamented the fact that they have not been able to take their students to visit certain elite universities because they have not been offered the support to do so, and being in a financially deprived area, students' families are unable to help with costs.Moreover, he reflected on the fact that even if the school were somehow able to fund the transport, for the trip to be of most value to students -not just a 'whistle stop tour' -they would also need to stay overnight, something which again such institutions do not typically offer financial support with.
Indeed, it appeared that, in our case study areas outside of London, few disadvantaged students were benefitting from residential trips to elite universities.In addition to the difficulty for schools of funding such trips themselves, another reason, as the Head of year 12 at St Aaron's further highlighted, is that even where opportunities exist for students to attend such programmes independently, they are typically aimed only at the very highest achievers.This means that students that could still have the potential to go to these institutions often end up missing out.
Staff interviewees elsewhere also lamented the fact that students who are eligible for such residential programmes often do not want to apply.One issue, as the Deputy Head of Rowanberry School in Nottingham commented, is the timing of many programmes during the summer holidays when some students may have summer jobs or feel in need of a break from study.The Head of Sixth Form at Great Mundestoft Sixth Form college in Suffolk also felt that some students struggle to plan ahead to 'see the wider and bigger end goal' of attending such programmes.
In some places, there also seemed to be a sense of disinterest from elite universities in working with local schools.For example, despite being located only a relatively short distance away, Great Mundestoft Sixth Form College did not appear to benefit from any engagement activities with the University of Cambridge and -perhaps tellingly -has not had any students progress to either Oxbridge institution for the past 4 years.Indeed, the only university mentioned in terms of outreach engagement here was the sixth form's local plate glass institution, the University of East Anglia (UEA).Even then, it seemed that much of the sixth form's engagement with this university resulted from a proactive Head of Sixth Form, perhaps suggesting that other local institutions could have even more infrequent interactions with HE providers: It's, it's all down to (. ..) us.Or me.To get them in, to get the UEA in for example, like "let's go, let's go do this".Apart from that there's nothing . . .I've, I, erm, created this mentoring scheme with the UEA this year to get students from the UEA to mentor [school students] (Head of Sixth Form, Great Mundestoft Sixth Form College, Suffolk) Meanwhile, the Deputy Head of Rowanberry School in Nottingham made explicit how, as a result of local students' often limited engagement with elite universities, many students lack awareness of what university groupings like the Russell Group represent and the potential benefits that studying at a constituent institution could bring them.In particular, she felt the problem -at least in terms of awareness -is not so much Oxbridge, as 'everyone gets the kind of Oxford, Cambridge thing' but the broader Russell Group.She suggested that Russell Group institutions perhaps expect a greater level of awareness from students than is realistic to expect, especially for students whose horizons for action to that point may have been quite limited: It's expectation, "We're a Russell Group uni, we know what we do".Yes, but we're talking to 17-year-olds here who've never really left Nottingham.Laughs.It's a bit of a gulf (Deputy Head, Rowanberry School, Nottingham).
With regards to their students, she commented that the reality of this is that most of them are unaware that their local universities -University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University -have different aims and approaches to teaching and learning, so these differences do not factor into their decision-making.Moreover, she implied that without elite universities like those of the Russell Group more actively engaging with their students, this is unlikely to change as the school does not have the resources to 'spend money sending everybody everywhere, left, right and centre' on university visits.
As this section has demonstrated, our data shows how disadvantaged young people's geographic locations can significantly impact the types of university that they have most interactions with, with potentially important impacts for their later university choices.As the next section will show, our data also made apparent how place impacts students' interactions with employers, with further important implications for students' university and later career choices.

Local economic contexts
So far, we have discussed the impacts of the spatial division of school widening participation resources and partnerships and disadvantaged young people's uneven access to elite university outreach, on elite university progression.Reflective of the spatially unbalanced division of labour (Massey, 2013), local economic contexts also appeared important in shaping the types of employers that young people had visibility of and interactions with, as well as the types of careers they wished to have themselves.
In East London, there was an acute awareness of being situated in a local economic context that has the control functions of companies that occupy dominant positions within the fields of law, finance, and commerce.For example, at Tower Chapel School in East London, multiple references were made to a mentoring programme run by a wellknown elite finance firm that was local to the school.The school's Careers Officer also spoke about another such firm whose headquarters are near to the school and which forms a palpable representation of professional 'success' to students.Moreover, the significant extent of these businesses' interactions with students and the impact of this for their desired career pathways was also made apparent in a further comment that 'if anything, [students] get too much focus on that's what success is, doing business' as opposed to other career pathways like humanities.
Student interview data from the 'elite' study also revealed how young people's interactions with the capital's finance businesses can impact on their university choices, favouring elite university progression.For example, speaking about her attendance at a widening participation event held at one such business -arranged by an organization which supports young people to access professional opportunities -one student showed how it had enhanced her and fellow attendees' knowledge of the Russell Group: I think it was a launch, where they gave out this handbook and it was asking about universities and . . .like there was a game where we had to guess all the Russell Group universities off a list and half of us didn't realise (Student, Sycamore School, East London).
Via this organization, this student then went on to complete two work placements at financial firms in Canary Wharf and the City, where -in addition to her now fuller understanding of the Russell Group -these placements further raised her awareness of the expectation of following elite study pathways if she wanted to work within the sector: At [Investment Firm] . . . the majority of them did PhDs, and like, they were from Oxbridge.So . . . it was kind of like . . .ok maybe that's where I should go (Student, Sycamore School, East London) Moreover, the extent to which such opportunities to interact with elite employers are often more easily accessible to disadvantaged young people in London in comparison to similar peers elsewhere, was recently made apparent by the chief executive of this same organization when addressing the Westminster Education Forum in 2020.Indeed, commenting on the partnerships and professional opportunities that they and similar organizations provide, she lamented the fact that far too much of this support is focussed in the places in which employers are heavily concentrated, with some of the young people they support in London having more offers of support 'than they know what to do with', compared to the young people they work with in smaller urban centres.As Meusburger (2000) points out, this is likely the result of agglomeration effects in the scale of organizational structures that exist within the capital, and the symbolic power that the city comes to afford through the co-location of higher-level functions in a concentrated area.
Indeed, the discourse of our interviewees situated in more marginalized economic contexts often reflected very different, typically less high-status, work opportunities available to students.For example, the Head of Sixth Form at Great Mundestoft Sixth Form College in Suffolk lamented the 'lack of economic opportunities' in Great Mundestoft: The only thing around here like we were speaking about yesterday is just the offshore stuff . . .Factory-wise you've got Birds Eye, that's just over there, apart from that you've got no massive employers.It's just lots of little shops and things like that.And even like the big main chains down the high street are all going (Head of Sixth Form, Great Mundestoft Sixth Form College, Suffolk).
The industry cited by the teacher here contrasts sharply with the kind of economic activity cited by staff in London.This underlines Massey's (2013) point about the spatial division of economic functions, with branch plants like the Birds eye factory in Great Mundestoft separated from the control functions of the headquarters located in London.These branch plants are not likely to provide the kind of opportunities made available by the firm's control function in the capital, as we saw earlier.But there is also a more deep-seated point here in relation to the subtle expectations and perceptions held within the local area as shaped by this historical patterning in the spatial division of economic functions.Indeed, the Head of Sixth Form at Great Mundestoft Sixth Form College also shared his perceptions about how the area's work opportunities shape students' future pathways and how, whilst their college has a relatively high proportion of students that do go on to university, some students do not see any future for themselves beyond a 'dead-end job': Head of Sixth Form: 'I would put it quite sort of quite blinkered really in terms of. . .a lot of people don't see any further than what their parents do. . .It's just "get a dead-end job, its fine".That's just seen as the norm and its sort of, its, mind you we are the, the, the amount that go to uni is very high from here, like I think its 70 to 80 percent of our students which is phenomenal. ..' Interviewer: Yeah.
Head of Sixth Form: . . .but it's just that 20%, which'll stay here and just be your typical Great Mundestoft person, as we call them, that has that dead-end job.Erm, has very little aspirations, are happy to live in a one-up, or whatever it is . . .apartment.And that's their life for them, they're okay with that'.(Head of Sixth Form, Great Mundestoft Sixth Form College, Suffolk) Our interview data from Tyneside and Nottingham similarly reflected the local economic opportunities available to students.Notably, interviewees in both places highlighted increasing interest amongst local students in 'degree apprenticeships', a UK government initiative launched in 2015 of higher education courses which combine work with parttime study, typically at post-1992 institutions 5 .
The Head of Year 12 at St Aaron's School in Tyneside commented that degree apprenticeships are well-suited to some of the area's local industries and are important in terms of addressing skill shortages in the local economy: So, it's a, it's in the pipeline for a lot of different industries but we have got two coming up, one for IT and one for engineering.And that's because there's a shortage of them skills in the Northeast . . .And 'cause companies are wanting to get involved, the apprenticeship levy for companies, that will make a big difference (Head of Year 12, St Aaron's School, Tyneside).
On one level, it is perhaps reasonable to assume teachers will reflect on local employment opportunities, especially given that many young people from less privileged backgrounds will inevitably stay local for university and likely their career.However, the net effect of this is for teachers to ultimately be restricted in the kind of economic opportunities which exist in the locality that they draw students' attention to, and which more likely than not will be opportunities occupying subordinate positions in economic fields of production.The IT and engineering apprenticeship opportunities highlighted by the Head of Year 12 at St Aaron's School in Tyneside are examples of these kinds of service-level opportunities.

Discussion and conclusions
Building on previous geographies of higher education research (e.g.Christie, 2007;Donnelly & Evans, 2016;Donnelly & Gamsu, 2018a, 2018b;Holdsworth, 2009), this paper has considered the significance of spatial context in framing the educational and career orientations of working-class young people in England, making an important contribution to knowledge through its focus on the underexplored role of place for elite university progression.
On the one hand, it has demonstrated a convergence of opportunities in East London that facilitate elite university progression for disadvantaged students and appear likely to play a role in the area's higher-than-expected progression rates identified in previous research (Davies et al., 2021).These include local schools' prioritization of financial resources and building of partnerships with external organizations for this aim, significant engagement with elite universities, including typically high-impact residential programmes, and extensive student interactions, including internship, mentoring, and networking opportunities, with locally situated businesses overt in privileging elite university study.
Such experiences do not appear to be shared to the same extent by working-class young people in towns and cities outside the capital.Rather, our interview data from disadvantaged areas of Nottingham, Liverpool, Suffolk, and Tyneside suggested that schools here are typically focussed on a wider range of priorities, have greater engagement with local post-1992 institutions and benefit from fewer university residential visits, and that students' work-related opportunities and outlooks often mirror their less economically prosperous local contexts.
Underlying structural factors, including the overrepresentation of widening participation organizations within the capital (Gamsu, 2017) and the uneven spatial distribution of the UK's elite universities (Wakeling & Savage, 2015) are likely to facilitate the typically greater opportunities for working-class students in East London outlined above.Some steps towards counteracting these inherent locational advantages have been taken.Aspire, the widening participation organization partnered with for the 'elite' study -and one of the UK's largest university-access charities -are rapidly expanding their regional centres, and other similar organizations are increasing their provision outside of London too.Likewise, government/ university initiatives like the Uni Connect programme 6 − 29 partnerships of universities, colleges and other local partners focussed on providing widening participation activities in localities where participation is lower than might be expected -and the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) -which monitors widening participation outreach and recently launched a new dataset and mapping tool enabling practitioners to visualize levels of provision nationwide 7 -are improving outreach opportunities for those in more remote and underserved communities.
However, despite longstanding awareness and research (e.g.Crawford et al., 2016;Montacute & Cullinane, 2018) showing that it is at elite universities that those from disadvantaged backgrounds and areas are most underrepresented, the Uni Connect and HEAT initiatives are only concerned with university progression/outreach more generally.There is thus a need for an increased focus on elite progression specifically, for example, a sub-programme within Uni Connect bringing together regional partnerships of elite universities and relevant third sector providers to target localities with lowerthan-expected elite university progression rates.HEAT's new outreach provision dataset and mapping tool could also be extended so that practitioners focussed on elite university progression can identify areas that have been under/over targeted in this area specifically.
Importantly, whilst extension of HEAT's dataset and mapping tool to include elite university outreach specifically could help address unintentional spatial inequalities in provision, in the case of East London, research (e.g.Lally & Hancock, 2018;Wiseman et al., 2017) suggests that some universities deliberately target greater levels of resource here.This is a likely reflection of the fact that its high numbers of economically disadvantaged young people and ethnically diverse population can help them to more effectively hit their regulator-set recruitment targets (which have important impacts for funding) but is highly problematic in that it disincentivises them from targeting schools/localities in which there may be fewer such students.For example, as we have shown in the case of Great Mundestoft Sixth Form College, which did not appear to benefit from any engagement activities with the University of Cambridge despite being located only a relatively short distance away, nor indeed from engagement with any other elite universities.
Changes to the way that widening participation recruitment targets are set by the regulator could be made to disincentivise elite universities from focussing disproportionate levels of outreach resource in places like East London.Moreover, given building evidence that disadvantaged students within major urban centres -especially London -already have typically higher elite university progression rates than similar peers elsewhere (Davies et al., 2021;DfE, 2022), there is further important reason to suggest that the regulator should consider adding a geographic element to recruitment targets.
Our findings further underline the way the spatial division of labour (Massey, 1995(Massey, , 2013) ) in countries like the UK plays an important role in shaping the pre-university work opportunities and interactions with employers that young people have available in their local context, and their subsequent educational and career aspirations.Given that London is the site where control functions of major companies are located -companies that occupy dominant positions within their economic field -working-class young people here tend to have greater awareness of such career pathways than similar peers elsewhere.This is perhaps especially true of those from disadvantaged backgrounds living in East London, just a short distance from London's two financial service districts of the City and Canary Wharf, and who the Careers Officer at one East London case study school commented come to see these businesses as synonymous with professional 'success' and often aspire to have similar careers themselves.
Conversely, those in our case study localities of Nottingham and Tyneside highlighted increasing interest amongst their students in 'degree apprenticeships' -something notably absent from the discourse of East London interviewees.For example, the Deputy Head of Rowanberry School in Nottingham commented that there are increasing numbers of degree apprenticeships in the area at 'good, blue-chip type' local companies like Rolls Royce, Boots and Experian.Given the economic hardships that many local working-class families have faced following deindustrialization, their appeal for studentsoffering the opportunity to go straight into a stable job, at a long-established and reputable company -is understandable.However, the majority of these will be servicelevel opportunities, not offering the same status or remuneration as the capital's control functions and thus further perpetuating regional inequalities.
Our findings speak more broadly to how geography impacts and interrupts prospects for social mobility.Indeed, if policy is reliant upon an assumption that opportunities can be spread out more evenly across all parts of the UK, then it fails to acknowledge deep-seated explanations about why opportunities are unevenly spread in the first place, in terms of the spatial division of labour.Moreover, as we have shown, this spatial division of labour has knock-on effects in terms of how the local economic context shapes the kind of opportunities available to working class young people in different parts of the UK.To truly address this, a more fundamental restructuring of the way economic functions are spatially distributed is required.