Social Mobility
Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Lucy Powell(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Lucy Powell
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The widening participation agenda has been successful in places and is important, but other barriers to getting those jobs remain for kids who perhaps do not have the same social networks or support at home, even if they have the same qualifications as some of their peers.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech in this important debate. I think we can build a cross-party consensus, based on the report, about access to social and emotional learning. I might call it character education—I think one of her predecessors as shadow Secretary of State for Education and I debated that issue. Persistence, resilience and grit skills, as well as self-confidence and self-belief, are very important. They are often not given the same weight and therefore those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds do not get that access; access to extra-curricular activities is picked up in a similar way. Would the hon. Lady agree that that is something from the debate that could benefit from cross-party working?
Lucy Powell
I strongly agree with the right hon. Lady. I thank her for the joint working we have done on some of the issues in the past, and I hope that that will continue. When she was Secretary of State for Education, she was a strong champion for character education and extra-curricular education. I hope that that is something we can all work on going forward.