Social Mobility Index
Debate between Andrew Percy and Neil Gray(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate with you in the Chair, Mr Percy. I congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing it, and on her positive contribution in admirably defending and promoting her constituency in light of the report. She said in her speech that she expects us all to do our duty to those children suffering poorer life chances. Absolutely; I hope that she will communicate that directly to this Minister, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
It is interesting that the hon. Member for Norwich North mentioned childcare provision. I absolutely agree. It should be a key area for improving children’s life chances, and we must do more on that front. I also support her comments on improving business links with schools in areas of deprivation to improve skills and access to the employment market. I congratulate her on her speech, and I pay tribute to the contributions made by the hon. Members for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), for Telford (Lucy Allan) and for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), and by the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), the chair of the all-party parliamentary group. They certainly made for a good debate.
The social mobility index, released in January, shows the massive differences between different parts of England and the chances that poorer children who live there have of doing well in life. Although the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission covers Scotland, the index is for England only. Key findings include the fact that London and its surrounding areas are pulling away from the rest of the country. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who live in those areas are far more likely to achieve better outcomes in school and have more opportunities to do well as adults than those in the rest of England. In addition, coastal areas and industrial towns are becoming social mobility cold spots. Many such areas perform badly on both educational measures and adulthood outcomes, giving young people from less advantaged backgrounds limited opportunities to get on.
As the study related purely to England, we cannot compare figures for Scotland. The best comparison that can be made with Scotland involves educational attainment, and what is going on in Scotland may provide examples to be followed elsewhere. The Scottish National party and the SNP Scottish Government recognise that education is the best avenue for social mobility. The SNP is absolutely committed to closing the gap in educational achievement between children from wealthy and low-income backgrounds. The Attainment Scotland fund supports more than 300 primary schools that collectively serve more than 54,000 primary-aged children living in the most deprived 20% of areas in Scotland. That represents 64% of the total number of primary-aged children living in Scottish index of multiple deprivation areas 1 and 2.
The first seven councils to benefit from the £100 million attainment fund include Glasgow, Dundee, Inverclyde, West Dunbartonshire, North Ayrshire, Clackmannanshire and North Lanarkshire, which covers my constituency. They have been allocated £11.7 million in 2015-16 to raise attainment in schools in areas of greatest deprivation. An additional 57 schools based in areas of concentrated local need across a further 14 local authorities will also benefit from £2.5 million from the attainment fund.
There is more to do, but the attainment gap is narrowing in Scotland. There have been annual increases in the proportion of school leavers reaching at least SCQF level 5—from 73.2% in 2007-08 to 84.4% in 2013-14—and the gap between the most deprived 20% and the least deprived 20% of pupils achieving that level has decreased from 36 percentage points in 2007-08 to 22 points in 2013-14.
As time is limited, I will try to come to a conclusion. A key figure for me is that UCAS figures for this year show that since 2006 there has been a 50% increase in university applications from 18-year-olds in the most disadvantaged areas of Scotland. That is clear evidence that access to free higher and further education is working in Scotland, and that getting on has to be about the ability to learn and not the ability to pay.
