Publications and Reports

Evidence shows that a poor education is one of the strongest contributors to falling into poverty in later life.  Scotland used to pride itself on the quality of its education.  Unbelievably now 32% of school children are persistently absent from school in Scotland.  In England, the figure is 21%.

Young people across Birmingham and the West Midlands, need a new deal for education, employment and skills in order to fully unlock their potential and turbo charge the region’s prosperity. Birmingham is the youngest major city in Europe - nearly four in 10 (38 per cent) of the city are under 25. This offers a unique opportunity for propelling the city forward, if young people in the area are equipped, skilled and released into their full potential.

In 2023 we travelled the length and breadth of the country as part of our Big Listen series, speaking with hundreds of small, local, charities. Two key themes came up time and time again in these conversations; that excellent grassroots organisations feel their impact is overlooked both nationally and locally, and that they feel they can not compete for funding on a level playing field with larger, national, charities.

In Scotland, we often find ourselves caught in the "worst of all worlds" situation. This means we have higher levels of need than other parts of the UK, but our systems to address these needs are less effective. At the Centre for Social Justice, we see this dilemma particularly affecting economically inactive individuals in Scotland who are eager to re-enter the workforce.

When we set up the CSJ office in Scotland in September 2023, the first thing we wanted to do was to know what was happening at the grassroots for charities in Scotland and to this end we did two things. Firstly, we polled 1000 people in Scotland and secondly, we invited 80 of the brightest and best chief executives from the small grassroots charities in Scotland to come together to tell us what they saw. Both pieces of research gave a consistent and worrying message saying we are drowning not waving!