Social Mobility: Public Schools Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Elton
Main Page: Lord Elton (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)Department Debates - View all Lord Elton's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(10 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberThat is a very good question and I know that many people in government—principally the Deputy Prime Minister—are focusing on how to make that more accessible through the internship programme, through ensuring broader and fairer access and through the business compact programme, where more employers are encouraged to sign up and have fairer and more inclusive recruitment policies. It has to be said that it is not just the Government having this problem. It runs right across society and is in the media, in corporations, in medicine and in the judiciary, all of which need to act to make sure that their access policies are as fair as possible to all.
My Lords, if, as has been conclusively demonstrated, the private education system is better than the public one and provides a portal into all sorts of social and economic advantages, surely we should be trying to get more and more private education, and more and more people drawn into it from those classes which are at present excluded. The way to do that is not to cut off the funding but to increase it.
My noble friend has great knowledge and insight in this area—and so do I. In my experience the greatest difference between our leading independent schools and the inner-city comprehensives, one of which I attended, is the level of expectations not only among the teachers or parents but, chiefly, among the pupils themselves as to what they can actually achieve. That is what we need to improve.