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Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross Benches and then, if we have time, we can hear from the Labour Benches.

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord on that. Increasingly we are seeing schools develop what is sometimes called a “raising ambitions” programme to raise their pupils’ horizons and ambitions. All too often in the past schools have not been ambitious enough for their pupils. I recently attended a very inspiring event run by Ormiston Academies Trust, which is developing a raising aspirations programme, and we are seeing many more of these kinds of programmes being developed.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords—

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, perhaps I may raise the issue of the new universities and the large numbers of young people from working-class backgrounds who choose to do law and invest in their futures by going on to qualify as solicitors but do not get training contracts. There is an absolute dearth of these contracts for students from modern universities—the former polytechnics and all these new universities that the Government are so keen to create. Ordinary working-class families encourage their children to go into areas where they assume there will be jobs, but there are no training contracts because they all go to the privileged.