Social Mobility Committee Report

Baroness Corston Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Corston]

That this House takes note of the Report from the Social Mobility Committee (Session 2015-16, HL Paper 120).

[Baroness Corston (Lab)]

My Lords, it is with pleasure that I rise to open the debate on the Select Committee report on social mobility. At the outset I want to emphasise that we were not looking at social mobility in the round but in the context of the transition from school to work.

I want to place on record my thanks to members of the Committee who were assiduous in their interest, attendance and support throughout this process. I also want to pay tribute to our staff. We are extraordinarily fortunate in this place in the dedication and commitment of our staff. When we look at a report of this dimension and realise that we had one clerk, Luke Hussey, and one policy analyst, Emily Greenwood, it is remarkable that this work was turned out in such a tight timescale. On a personal note, members of the committee will be pleased to know that Emily gave birth to a baby daughter last week, her first child. We were also very fortunate in our specialist adviser, Professor Ann-Marie Bathmaker. She was a great support to staff and was ready with advice to members of the committee.

The background to the report in the consideration of the transition from school to work was the evidence that social mobility, which we thought had been a norm since World War II, has stalled at best and is going into reverse at worst. Intermediate jobs in the labour market, such as in offices and factories, are disappearing at an alarming rate, mainly as a result of the growth in information technology and robotics. This has led to a hollowing out of the labour market so that it resembles an hourglass. Some commentators have indeed referred to people who would have done these jobs as the “missing middle”.

I emphasise that our report was about young people who would have gone into these jobs straight from school. They feel that what is becoming the traditional route from school to university is not for them. They are also trying to find their way through a chaotic exam and qualification system and are not counted among those who are not in education, employment or training. But they make up a staggering 53% of the cohort. We are talking about the majority of our young people, and they are the overlooked majority.

We tried very hard to take a novel approach to our work. As well as the usual video clip from the committee chair, we conducted focus groups with young people in London and Derby and conducted an online survey of young people, to which there were 650 responses. Their testimony is interspersed throughout the report, and much of it makes sober reading. We published a short film online at Lambeth College summarising the report’s conclusions, and we visited Derby. We went to Rolls-Royce to see its apprenticeship programme, to Derby College to talk to students, and to the International Centre for Guidance Studies at Derby University. We published a short film online at Lambeth College, which summarised the report’s conclusions, we went to Lilian Baylis Technology School, also in Lambeth, and we tried to ensure that the report was written in accessible language. We were, as ever, assisted by witnesses who gave generously of their time, and we published in compliance with the timetable laid down by the House.

The government response was due on 8 June but was not submitted until 7 July, which I found a bit extraordinary. I was very disappointed in the response because it seemed to be a list of what the Government were doing rather than engagement with the points that we were making about these young people and their life chances. Our inescapable and unanimous conclusion was that the majority of our 15 to 24 year-olds do not go on to university and are “overlooked and left behind” by Whitehall. We acknowledged that most people understand the transition from GCSE to A-level to university, but that the rest were, by and large, left to fend for themselves in a system that we described as,

“complex and incoherent, with confusing incentives for young people and employers”.

We found that most young people leaving school knew that they were not work ready and had to navigate a chaotic landscape, and that many of them did not have life skills. I have to admit that I am passionate about life skills. As someone who was in the other place for 13 years, a lot of it covering the inner city of Bristol, I saw for myself what it did for the confidence and capability of young people to have life skills education, which was available under the last Labour Government but was abolished by the right honourable Michael Gove. Everywhere we went, we were told that employers wanted young people who were work ready. When we spoke to students, they said that they did not have the wherewithal to be presentable at work, co-operate with others, make a persuasive phone call and do the things that we all think are absolutely normal. Indeed, I remember being in the other place years ago and hearing a speech by someone in your Lordships’ House who acknowledged that he had a first from Oxbridge and that when he went out to work he realised that he could not write a persuasive letter. Those are the kinds of skills that I am talking about, and they know that they do not have them.

Life skills are not the same as work experience, but even that too often requires informal contacts via the family, businesses or social contacts, which are not available to all young people. Some employers are trying to break down these barriers. We heard from Deloitte and Marks & Spencer—but they are by no means the mainstream.

As for apprenticeships, we noted that 50% of apprenticeship starts in 2015-16 were for those over the age of 25, and we came across some dubious practices. In one of our focus groups, I spoke to a very enterprising and engaging young woman. I mentioned apprenticeships—and in my innocence I thought that they were like the ones that my dad did, which lasted four years. When I left school, in Yeovil in Somerset, boys wanted to get an apprenticeship at Westland Aircraft that lasted four years, so I thought apprenticeships were like that. The girl told me that she had done three apprenticeships. I thought, “How the devil could she have done three?”. She said that one apprenticeship was in arranging flowers into bunches for a supermarket and lasted six weeks and another was in wrapping vegetables for a supermarket, which also lasted six weeks. She then worked in an office, where everyone apart from the managing director was an apprentice on the minimum wage. So I began to wonder whether these were apprenticeships or a means of massaging the unemployment figures. These young people need the kind of proper apprenticeship to which my father had access because, apart from anything else, our economy needs that.

We found significant inequality in investment in the education of young people, with a difference of approximately £6,000 a year per student in the public funding of young people attending college as opposed to university. Consequently, FE is a poor relation. My former right honourable friend Alan Milburn, the chair of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, referred to it as an unfair education system. We found evidence that the abolition of the independent careers service has had a detrimental effect. Schools are simply not equipped or funded to fulfil this service.

Recent Governments have focused on higher education and apprenticeships as the way to help young people to be successful in later life. Both can work well but they are absolutely not suitable for everyone. This focus is to the detriment of many talented and able young people. We accordingly made eight major recommendations. We said:

“There is a need for more coherence in the UK Government’s policy governing the transition of young people into the workplace. The policy should set out a framework for school to work transitions from age 14 to age 19 and over. It should explicitly address the middle route to work, and the decision-making that takes place from 14 onwards, and set the standard for sharing best practice across the UK”.

We further said:

“The transition stage should be considered to be from age 14 to age 19. Learning during this stage should include a core curriculum with tailor-made academic and/or vocational courses. It should aim to get as many people who can, up to a Level 3 qualification. There are three important strands to the framework”.

The first is:

“Clearer routes to good-quality work for those in the middle, brought about by local collaboration, to enable … vocational routes to work which are robust and high quality, do not close down future opportunities, and lead to worthwhile destinations”.

The Minister may be able to say something about the contribution to the report of my noble friend Lord Sainsbury of Turville in that respect. We said that they also need,

“meaningful experiences of work, organised between the student, the school and a local employer, including work placements and work-based training”.

This should not necessarily be left to family contact. We also said that work experience should,

“have a clear aim and objective to prepare young people for work and life”.

We said that there should be:

“A new gold standard in independent careers advice and guidance, supported by a robust evidence base and drawing on existing expertise, which moves responsibility away from schools and colleges (which would require legislative change) in order to ensure that students are given independent advice about the different routes and qualifications available”.

There should be,

“independent, face-to-face, careers advice, which provides good quality, informed advice on more than just academic routes”,

so that young people can make decisions “based on sound knowledge”. We said that there should be,

“a single access point for all information on vocational options, including the labour market returns on qualifications”,

and:

“Improved careers education in schools, to empower young people to make good choices for themselves”.

This would include,

“information on labour market returns … information about the financial prospects of different options, to inform and motivate”,

them, and,

“data on local labour markets to inform the teaching of Life Skills … and careers education”.

Our third recommendation was that the,

“transition framework should be owned by, and be the responsibility of, a Cabinet-level minister, who will assume ultimate responsibility for the transition from school to work”.

When we took evidence from Ministers I noticed that this responsibility now falls between two departments. That makes me realise why in 1997 the then Labour Government set up a Department for Education and Employment, where the Secretary of State was my noble friend Lord Blunkett and I was his Parliamentary Private Secretary. To have education and employment under one roof worked rather well.

We also recommended that:

“Transitions from school to work should be supported by publicly available data, compiled by the relevant Government departments. This data should be made available to researchers so that they have access to earnings data, study patterns, and different demographic patterns, brought about by legislative change if necessary”,

and that,

“the responsible Cabinet Minister should report on progress annually to Parliament”.

We also noted that:

“Increasingly local labour markets and skills needs are being seen as a devolved responsibility, whether it is to conurbations such as London, Manchester or Leeds, or to rural areas such as Somerset or Lincolnshire.

However, because administrative structures are so much in flux, there is often no focal point for action. The most valuable role the Government can take is to act as a facilitator, coordinating the efforts of its existing structures, and brokering collaboration between existing local bodies”.

We said that:

“The Government should keep under constant review the degree of success of transitions into work for those in the middle. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission should play a strong part in monitoring these transitions”.

The final recommendation was that,

“the Government should commission a cost benefit analysis of increasing funding for careers education in school and independent careers guidance external to the school in the context of social mobility. A report providing this analysis should be made to Parliament before the end of its 2016-17 session”.

The Government did not provide a response to conclusions on reducing unfairness between academic and vocational routes to work, ensuring that apprenticeships remain high-quality, inequality between academic and vocational routes to work, improving careers guidance and advice for young people, making transitions work for those in the middle, increasing market transparency with destinations data for colleges and schools, and increasing employment involvement. That is a sum total of 31 detailed conclusions which have not been directly addressed by the government response. This is disappointing, to say the least, and I hope that Members will join me in asking for a response to the points not covered. I apologise—I am recovering from this cold and cough virus, which has been going around. It is certainly playing havoc with my voice.

What is the response of the current Secretary of State to the committee’s report? There has been a change of personnel, and it would be useful to know to what degree there has been any change within the department with regard to the response to our report.

Does the Minister accept the need for a framework for school-to-work transitions from ages 14 to 19? That was suggested by the Tomlinson report many years ago, and I bitterly regret that we did not implement it when we were in government.

We also noted that the Government had said that they intended to publish their strategy. Has it been published, and if so did it take into account the committee’s recommendations?

The Government also noted that they intended to bring forward legislation to require schools to co-operate with other education and training providers so that they can engage directly with pupils. Have the Government done this yet, and if not when will they do so?

Furthermore, what discussions has the Earn or Learn implementation task force had regarding implementing the committee’s recommendations? If it has not discussed it yet, will it undertake to do so? On one positive point, I welcome the Government’s acceptance of the committee’s recommendation on data sharing for research purposes present in the Digital Economy Bill. I am sure the committee would agree with me that we challenged the Government’s view that they do not have a role in brokering local arrangements. What are they doing to encourage to work together all those involved in a young person’s transition from school to work, to ensure that the system is improved for young people in England?

We commend the work of the Social Mobility Commission and ask the Government what discussions they have had with it in monitoring our report. I also point out that the Government are not helpless in this matter. When Alan Milburn appeared before us, he said that intermediate jobs were disappearing, but intermediate jobs can be created—and they can be created in the public sector. He gave us two examples from the Labour Government. The first was the establishment of the police community support officer. At the time, many people in the police service were not too sure about it but I think that it is now generally accepted that this is an intermediate public sector job. Teaching assistants are another example. Now, nobody would suggest that schools can do without teaching assistants. These are also intermediate public sector jobs. With imagination, the Government could introduce such jobs rather than cut them. At the moment, some of those jobs might be quite handy—in the Prison Service, for example.

Finally, I remind noble Lords of the report’s title: Overlooked and Left Behind: Improving the Transition from School to Work for the Majority of Young People. I repeat: “overlooked and left behind”. We said that in March. It now trips off the tongues of commentators nearly every day because, in the wake of Brexit and Trump, people are talking about all those who feel left behind. It was prescient of us to use that phrase. When the Prime Minister stood on the steps of 10 Downing Street, these were the very people she was talking about, so on behalf of the committee I would like to know what kind of priority they now have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Corston]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this afternoon’s debate. I feel that in many ways it has shown the House at its best, with people bringing such diverse experiences to the subject of the future life chances of our young people. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Fraser of Corriegarth, for his wonderful maiden speech. It was of perfect length and combined humour, local knowledge and personal experience germane to today’s debate. I hope we will hear from him frequently in the future.

As the widow of the person who set up the Child Poverty Action Group, I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. Obviously, child poverty underlies much of what we were writing about. Some of the young people to whom we spoke in London and Derby clearly came from disadvantaged backgrounds, and it was heartening to see the way in which they struggled to make headway in—to put it tactfully—this rather diverse system. I thank the young people who helped us.

I also thank my noble friend Lady Donaghy for reminding me that Lady Sharp of Guildford was one of our members. She retired from the House before we reported but I want to record that she was an assiduous attender of the committee and was highly committed to these young people, to whom she has devoted her life. We thank her for that.

Again, I thank the young people who assisted us. We must ensure that we no longer blight the life chances of young people—not just for their sake but for the sake of our economy and our future. The Minister made one or two welcome statements. All I can say is that I hope that the House will, in modern parlance, hold his feet to the fire.

Motion agreed.