Education Sector: Equality of Opportunity

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that white working-class boys are among the lowest-attaining groups in our schools. That links to the point about regional inequality made previously. It is why the opportunity mission is absolutely clear that we need to break the link between background and success. That means more highly qualified teachers in front of our students. It means making sure that children, whatever their background, get to school, are well-fed and are able to learn, which is the reason for our rolling out breakfast clubs in primary schools. It also means that this Government are absolutely focused on raising standards in all our schools for all our children.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Minister talked about regional inequality. Of course, the region, or country, with a severely underperforming educational system is Labour-run Wales, which has seen standards decline and where the OECD has described the education system as having “lost its soul”. That is in contrast to England, where we have seen international rankings improve in reading, maths and sciences. What will this Government do differently from Wales to make sure that we do not see the same decline here?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am surprised, given the efforts that the noble Baroness made when she was a Minister in the Department for Education, that she is quite as complacent about performance in England as she appeared to be in that question. We are still in a situation, in 2024, where at key stage 2 the gap between the highest-performing and the lowest-performing regions remains the same, at 10 percentage points, and where at GCSE, the distinction between the best-performing and worst-performing regions has grown by 0.7 percentage points. So not only are all standards not high enough but we have ongoing, persistent inequality in our system between regions and between people, dependent on their background. With respect to England, this Government will not rest on their laurels in the way in which the noble Baroness seemed to suggest the previous Government would have done. That is why, as I have outlined, whether it comes to teachers in classrooms, getting children into our schools or making sure that we have a curriculum fit for them, we will take action, which the last Government failed to do.