Social Mobility

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, in the time available I shall attempt to make only one point. There is no doubt in my mind that upward social mobility in our society—funnily, nobody ever speaks about downward social mobility—can be unfair to individuals and a lack of it can impoverish society. In spite of the withering critique by Civitas in the report that was published for this debate, I still believe that there is an extraordinarily strong case for encouraging upward social mobility. Like other noble Lords who have spoken, the Sutton Trust focused on the link between poverty and lack of social mobility. I recognise that that is extremely important, but we should by no means be perceiving it as the only cause or problem. There are other causes. The Government have done a lot to intervene and to support parents when their relationships break down or when their family falls apart. In my view, however, I question whether they are doing nearly enough to prevent these things happening in the first place. There is a real opportunity for prevention by doing more in schools to prepare young people for the challenges, responsibilities and opportunities of adult life.

There is a particular window of opportunity during adolescence around key stage 3, when most young people are eager to know more about the adult world they see looming ahead of them. In the best schools they get well trained teachers helping them to discuss and work out their hopes and problems—to think about and discuss the opportunities, challenges and responsibilities they will meet in the adult life that lies ahead of them.

Sadly, in the vast majority of schools, little or nothing is being done today to give pupils the help they need, while all the time commercial pressure and the media are doing their best to mislead them. Why are we not helping young people more?

There is a nominal entitlement to PSHE at key stage 3, but the recent Ofsted reports make it perfectly clear that in most secondary schools today, if PSHE is on the agenda at all it is delivered by teachers who have no specialist training in this subject. This is a seriously missed opportunity.

Help at that stage could bring two things. It could help the young people themselves to live better and fuller lives throughout their life. And it could also lead to their future children to have more stable and supportive environments in their families as they grown up.

I beg the Government to do more to help and lead young people to think more about the adult lives which lie ahead of them and to learn how to cope with the inevitable problems they will have to face from time to time. I beg the Government to set aside a little money—at least just a little money—to fund some of the teacher-training universities, so that they can research and develop programmes for that kind of teacher training. I know one that would be interested.