Social Mobility

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, yes, the report highlights how important education is, but says that it is not the only factor, particularly in areas with great disparity in household income. I agree with the noble Lord on the ethos in schools. That is why, in addition to the opportunity areas, a specific school programme called Opportunity North East is being run by the department, focused on secondary schools in the north-east, where we see that primary school attainment is around the national average, but it drops off at secondary school, so we are intervening directly in schools as well.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, this is a very sobering report, which recommends a place-based approach that, yes, has education interventions but much more than that. We know that the pandemic has made things much worse for children in poor families and their communities. Can the Minister assure us that there will be further place-based interventions where the money is awarded with integrity, based on sound data and not, quite honestly, with the bad taste of political interference that still lingers over the last round of the Towns Fund?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I can assure the noble Baroness that local enterprise partnerships are, as the report outlines, one of the solutions here in opportunity areas. They are funded by a grant to the local authority, so it is up to the local authority to then put the stakeholders around the table, and the LEPs are very much involved in that. We are also trying to support disadvantaged children nationwide by developing a national tutoring programme.