South Yorkshire education bosses come together to improve kids' chances in life
Education bosses want kids in South Yorkshire to get better results and have more opportunities when they leave school
Kids in South Yorkshire are getting worse results - and fewer opportunities - than those in other parts of the country.
That's according to education bosses today - who are coming together to try and improve the life chances of children in our county
Head teachers, councillors and commissioners are all getting involved in a new project to improve results and give children better opportunities when they leave school.
It's all being run by Sheffield Hallam University.
Greg Burke's heading it up - he says kids in South Yorkshire often have poorer prospects than they those in other parts of the country:
"It's not that they don't have aspirations. They have aspirations but they don't necessarily have the skills or the ability to access and achieve those aspirations, so part of what we want to do is increase their ability through helping them to build their social capital and their networks to help them access those opportunities.
"Often the issue for our young people is they lack self belief - they want to achieve stuff but there's a sense that they believe that's not for them - it's not possible for someone from their background, from their community. There's a sense in which, yes that can happen somewhere else but it's not going to happen here - and I think we've got to turn that around.
It comes after Doncaster and Barnsley were both named among the worst areas in the country for social mobility last week in a government report.
Greg says it's important that's addressed too:
"We have high levels of deprivation as a whole region compared to other parts of the country. It's really important everybody is able to access all opportunities within their reach and where they're born, where they grew up. doesn't restrict that."