Social Mobility: Sutton Trust Opportunity Index

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a very important point. It is for employers to ensure that they provide access to the types of opportunities that will enable young people to experience different forms of work—but it is of course also the responsibility of those agencies tasked with enforcement to make sure that, where the law is not being properly applied, there are consequences for it. Of course, it is also our responsibility, which this Government take seriously, to make sure that all children have, for example, better careers education and the opportunity to have two weeks’ high-quality work experience and that we work with employers to ensure that placements are available to those young people doing T-levels while ensuring that apprenticeships are open to all. So there are a range of ways in which we need to make sure that young people get equal access to the experience of work that will set them up for a successful future.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, the Sutton Trust opportunity index rightly looked at the importance of early intervention and the early years, and the Minister will be aware that there are about 50,000 children annually on free school meals who go into year 3 without sufficient reading skills to be able to engage successfully in the curriculum. Will the Minister agree to look at the Apex programme funded by the Fischer Family Trust, which has worked providing reading mentors to children in years 1 and 2 where there are significant concerns about their ability to read? At the end of year 2, 81% of them reach the expected standard in reading, compared with 60% for a comparable cohort, and 95% pass their phonics test, compared with 85% nationally.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The scheme that the noble Baroness talks about sounds interesting and important, and I shall certainly undertake for the department to look at it in detail. She makes an important point, as she did in the previous Question, about the need to ensure that children are supported to make a successful start at school at the point at which they arrive. That means the sort of support that the Government are providing through family help and Start for Life to support not only the children but the parents to provide learning environments at home. That is supported, of course, by this Government’s priority to ensure that more children arrive at school ready to gain the benefits of that education.