Efforts to attract graduates likely to intensify
WALK AROUND central Bradford when the schools are out and you will be struck by the number of children you see.
Brothers and sisters howl with laughter as they splash each other in City Park’s Mirror Pool or manage to suspend a ball in the air on top of one of its fountain jets.
Toddlers join mothers, fathers and grandparents on the miniature train which chugs around the Broadway shopping centre, while older children explore the mirror maze and other exhibits in the nearby National Science and Media Museum.
In Bradford, more than a quarter of the population is aged under 16, a higher proportion than any other city in the UK, meaning council chiefs proudly proclaim it to be the ‘country’s youngest city’. The sheer number of children is a boon for entrepreneurs keen to tap into the parental pound – a giant inflatable obstacle course being the latest attraction to open in the city centre – and has been a gift to researchers such as the award-winning Born In Bradford birth cohort study, tracking 13,500 children born at the local hospital.
However, it also brings challenges to those tasked with creating more school places and budgeting for children’s social care. Official statistics show Bradford’s growing and unusually youthful population is due to a combination of a higherthan-average birth rate and a large number of international migrants, a factor which tends to be associated with younger citizens – the three towns and cities in Yorkshire with the highest proportion of children are Bradford, Dewsbury and Keighley, all known for their large South Asian populations.
While Bradford may have a large number of young people, in another respect, it is not Britain’s youngest city – the average age is 36, which does not even beat nearby Leeds with its average age of 35.5. Instead, the city’s demographics show a large number of children and teenagers, a growing number of pensioners and fewer and fewer people in the middle.
Bradford Council leader Susan Hinchcliffe says older people make a valuable contribution to the district and provide the “backbone of the volunteering community”, but city hall chiefs are keen to boost the workingage population, given that it drives economic growth. And there are encouraging signs, according to Coun Hinchcliffe.
She points to independent research indicating a growing number of young urban residents (YURs), the term given to well-qualified 25 to 34-yearolds thought of as the wealthbuilders of the future, moving into areas just outside the city such as Saltaire.
She said: “We work on developing our cultural offer in the district to encourage this age group to stay and establish their family lives here.” HEALTH SCIENTISTS in Bradford have been making use of the city’s large young population by putting them under the microscope in one of the world’s largest research studies.
The Born in Bradford project is based at the Bradford Royal Infirmary and is tracking the lives of 13,500 children born in the hospital between 2007 and 2010, from gestation in the womb to adulthood. Through this, it is exploring the factors behind
One of the greatest challenges facing the city over the longterm, according to Coun Hinchcliffe, is harnessing the potential that the city’s young population offers and then convincing them to remain in childhood and adult disease in a city with above-average rates of poor health.
Programme director Rosie McEachan, whose sons Ralph, 10, and Sidney, seven, are among the cohort, said Bradford was an ideal setting for the study, not just because of its large young population but also because its authorities are “really open to research and evidence”.
Dr McEachan said the findings could also help to ensure Yorkshire’s ageing population enjoyed good health in decades to come, as a child’s first 1,001 days the local area, so they can boost its economy throughout their working lives.
She says: “Our young, diverse and growing population provides Bradford with a unique asset and potential that can had “a massive impact” on health in later life.
The findings to have been published so far include research linking exposure to pollution during pregnancy with lowbirth-weight babies and the importance of not just the proximity but the quality of local green spaces on a child’s mental health.
Now the researchers are preparing to turn to the city’s young population once again, this time to help them decide what areas to study next.
Dr McEachan said: “We drive innovation and business growth. Our young people have incredible energy and talent.
“They are digital natives, in tune with a modern, globally connected lifestyle.
“The wealth and success of the district will depend on our ability to retain our skilled and enterprising young people. It’s why we have such a huge focus on education in Bradford.
“If all our 100,000 school-age young people are well educated then we thrive and prosper as a city.
“If we don’t achieve that goal then our young people will be ill-equipped to compete for good jobs in an increasingly tough world of work and that has knock-on consequences for their health later in life.” want to actually find out what is important to them. It is a completely different way of doing research, so we are really trailblazing here.”
Next month the academics will hold a community workshop aimed at those who work or volunteer with children, before starting to consult with the city’s primary and secondary school pupils, whether they are in the cohort or not.
They are even considering resurrecting Bradford’s defunct youth parliament, as another way to engage young people. COMPETITION BETWEEN Yorkshire’s cities to attract young talent could intensify in the coming years as the region’s population ages, according to a think-tank.
And the cities with the best career progression opportunities will continue to provide the biggest draw, the Centre for Cities’ head of policy and research Paul Swinney said.
Currently, cities are home to about half of Yorkshire’s 16 to 24-year-olds but only a third of its over-65s, a trend which is expected to continue. But with Yorkshire’s working-age population expected to fall in the next 20 years, competition to attract workers is likely to heat up.
Mr Swinney said: “In terms of where people live, certainly in the last 15 years we have seen an influx of young professionals living within the city centres. All the apartments going up in Leeds city centre are testament to that.”
He said in his view, the reason for the trend was the draw of universities, which brought students into cities and made them far more likely to stay once they had graduated.
“In September and October we will have the ‘great migration’ – hundreds of thousands of young people will be moving around the country,” he said.
Once they graduate, he said they “tend to stay in cities because that is where the jobs are”.
Mr Swinney said when looking for a city to base themselves in, graduates wanted places which offered them not just immediate jobs, but the opportunity to progress in their careers.
As people get older, they often move to the suburbs to find “bigger houses and good schools”, he said, and when they got older still, they moved out to peripheral areas as they tended to value green space more.
However, Mr Swinney asked why that trend, in itself, should pose a problem and said it may be of overall benefit to the economy.
He said: “The implication for small towns and villages is that actually retaining these young people will be difficult, but if that means these young people are able to get on and get a better standard of education by getting a degree, that is a very good outcome for those people and probably a good outcome from an economic point of view too.”
He said cities were already competing with each other “to get the best young talent and the workers businesses are looking for”.
“That may become a little bit more intense in future but it wouldn’t necessarily be something new,” he added.