Brighton’s Deep Divide: What Two New Reports Tell Us About the Future We’re Failing to Build

This week, two major reports confirmed what we’ve been saying for years: Brighton & Hove is one of the worst places in England for poor children to grow up.

The Sutton Trust’s Opportunity Index ranks Brighton Kemptown & Peacehaven 527th out of 543 constituencies in the country for Free School Meal (FSM) pupils' education and employment outcomes. Just 4% of these young people go on to earn a degree by age 22. By 28, fewer than half are in stable employment.

Then came the Impetus Youth Jobs Gap report which put Brighton & Hove 6th worst in England for FSM-eligible young people who are NEET—not in education, employment or training. They’re 103% more likely to fall through the cracks here than the national average.

These aren’t just statistics. They’re a damning verdict on how far we’ve drifted from fairness—and how deep the divide has become between the story Brighton tells about itself and the daily reality faced by families in places like Whitehawk, Moulsecoomb and Hollingbury.

Why this matters to all of us

We live in a city known for its values—creativity, openness, equality—but these values don’t mean much when access to opportunity is still shaped by your postcode, your housing, or whether your parents have time and money to navigate the system on your behalf.

It’s easy to dismiss Brighton as an outlier, a quirky seaside exception. But this isn’t just a Brighton story—it’s a national one. The same patterns show up in many so-called “left-behind” towns and cities. Coastal areas. Urban fringes. Places where public services have been hollowed out and working-class communities quietly sidelined.

The only difference is that here in Brighton, the contrast is sharper: inequality sits shoulder to shoulder with affluence. And still, people say it’s not that bad.

A glimpse of what’s possible

Despite the bleakness of these numbers, there is movement. After years of resistance, Brighton & Hove City Council recently voted to reform secondary school admissions—changing catchment boundaries, prioritising children on Free School Meals in oversubscribed schools, and introducing open admissions to start breaking down segregation. This happened because of pressure from communities—parents, educators, and young people who refused to accept a rigged system.

But we can’t stop there. It’s not enough to tweak the machinery of a system that consistently shuts people out. What we need is a city-wide, long-term commitment to ending this cycle of wasted potential. That means putting the futures of working-class children at the centre of decision-making across every policy area—not just education, but housing, transport, health and work.

Kyra’s story

Kyra Bailey, a 20-year-old from Whitehawk, just became the first in her family to get into university. She’s going to study educational psychology. She’s proud. She’s hopeful. But she’s also anxious—about debt, about juggling work and study, about whether she’ll be able to keep up without the kind of safety net so many of her peers will take for granted.

“We were told university was out of reach,” Kyra says. “Even with loans I’m going to struggle. I’ll have to work, and I’m scared about how I’ll balance it all.”

Her story shouldn’t be the exception. It should be the norm.

What now?

We’re calling on Brighton & Hove City Council to make the life chances of East Brighton’s children its number one priority—not just in schools, but across every decision it makes.

And nationally, we need policymakers and journalists to start looking harder at what’s happening in cities like ours—not just the stats, but the voices behind them. Because this isn’t about individual effort or ambition. It’s about systems, structures, and a society that’s too comfortable writing off whole communities.

Brighton is not a failure of aspiration. It’s a failure of design.

And it’s time to redesign.