Social Mobility

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer]

My Lords, I warmly thank my noble friend for enabling us to discuss this important issue. I think I subscribe more to the idea of equality than to that of social mobility for the reasons that the right reverend Prelate has just set out so well. It is gone into in depth in the book, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, and pursued by the work of the Equality Trust. Nevertheless, I recognise that character and resilience are very important, but perhaps noble Lords will dwell for a moment on how much character and resilience a child can have if they come to school without having had any breakfast and with perhaps just a Mars bar for lunch. Obviously, it does not mean that a child will not have any character, but the fact is that the child’s body will be in a much less good state for learning.

I have the privilege of chairing the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Food and Health. We have heard from a number of academics over the years about the impact that diet has on children’s ability to learn and on their life chances. Many noble Lords have spoken in this debate about the importance of education, and indeed my noble friend in her excellent introduction said that it is critical. If children are not able to learn because their diet is too poor, they are crucially disadvantaged for their entire life.

I can give some specific examples of this, one from Professor Andrew Scholey, the director of the Human Cognitive Neuroscience unit based at Northumbria University. The study he presented to our group compared the cognitive effects in children of two different breakfasts. One had a high glycaemic load—Coco Pops—and the other a low glycaemic load—All-Bran, but it could have been porridge. He found that the low GI breakfast is much more effective in protecting against a decline in performance. Other work on this has been done jointly by Nuffield College and the University of Essex showing effects on memory and attention span. Indeed, a survey by the Local Authority Catering Association found that snack foods that are high in sugar and fat produce problem behaviour. We can definitely say that a healthy diet improves children’s behaviour and academic performance. Of course, if you are badly behaved in school to enough of a degree, you end up being excluded, at the worst end of the spectrum, or possibly on Ritalin, because your diet means that you are on a permanent sugar high. There has also been much national and international research into the effect of vitamins, minerals and other compounds, such as amino-acids, on brain chemistry. Among the nutrients known to affect mood and behaviour are zinc, essential fatty acids, vitamins B5 and B6, calcium and magnesium.

I am sure that when the family of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, was going through that tremendous educational attainment, the diet may have been more basic but would have been more likely to contain the nutrients I have mentioned than the diet of today’s children. So the first problem is diet. The second problem is the lack of breakfast clubs. My final question to the Minister is: will he encourage Sir Michael Wilshaw at Ofsted to address this issue and not belittle the role of food in attainment?