Social Mobility

Dan Poulter Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders]

I thank the hon. Member. We have talked many times about the need to raise levels of aspiration. One of the sad things we have seen in recent times is how quality careers advice has slowly drained out of the education system. It is not just about 14 and 15-year-olds; it is about getting five and six-year-olds to think about what they can achieve. The evidence shows that the countries that tend to be more socially mobile are those where the gap between the bottom and the top is smaller, demonstrating that social mobility and inequality are closely linked. In 2019, it is a scandal that where you were born and who you are born to are still the biggest influences on your prospects. If we are ever going to move forward as a nation, everyone should have the same opportunity to achieve their potential. I think everyone in the room agrees with that.

When he resigned as the chair of the Social Mobility Commission, Alan Milburn said he was doing so because the Government were

“unable to devote the necessary energy and focus to the social mobility agenda.”

When he gave evidence to the Education Committee, he said:

“After the change of Prime Minister, following the European referendum, that whole conversation frankly went into the void. There was no conversation. There was no response.”

Those are damning word that were barely met with a shrug.

The new chair—not so new, now—Dame Martina Milburn is bringing real focus and drive to the commission which only yesterday produced a fine set of recommendations for the workplace, including internships being openly advertised— something that the all-party group on social mobility has called for for a long time. It recognises, as we do, that informal networks, which do much to stifle social mobility, creep into recruitment, even at the internship stage, for which money is a vital in order to make the first step through the door. While we are on that subject, why do we still allow internships to be unpaid? That is an invitation for exploitation.

We rightly focus on education, but addressing inequalities beyond the education system, including factors such as access to work, tax, welfare, housing, transport and health, is vital. We need to look at the world of work, particularly. For how much longer will the most likely experience for young people be casual work, low pay and insecurity in the workplace?

The Government need to stop treating social mobility as a niche issue that is the role of just one Minister. They need to make it a mission across all Government departments, with a focused and consistent approach that transcends the day-to-day world of politics and reshuffles. That is an issue to which I hope the commission can add value.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I agree with everything the hon. Gentleman has said, particularly about the importance of each Government Department taking this issue seriously. He may recall that under the coalition Government there was a Cabinet sub-committee specifically on social mobility, which entrusted and tasked a Minister from each Department to take forward initiatives in their Department. Does he agree that that is something we can recommend for the Minister to take away and feed back, particularly in advance of events that are likely to occur tomorrow?

[Justin Madders]

I hope the Minister stays in post and is able to take back today’s messages. Government focus has not been where it should be, but in the early part of the last decade we saw a real drive, with the introduction of the Commission on Social Mobility, which has unfortunately now stagnated. We need much greater accountability and transparency across Government in this area. It seems incredible that there is no automatic impact assessment about the effect that new legislation will have on social mobility.

Our central aim and mission should be to create a society where everyone has the same opportunities in life, regardless of their background. We know we have a long way to go. As long as three quarters of senior judges, half the top 100 news journalists and two thirds of British Oscar winners are privately educated, we will not have a fair society. The kids from the council estates will still get the message that those jobs are not for people like them.

The economic imperative speaks for itself, but the moral urgency of the task is clear. The commissioners are making the case, as am I, and many other Members. The question now is are the Government listening? What happens if the commission’s many worthy recommendations are not acted on? How much longer will we expect things to stagnate? Will anyone in Government take personal responsibility to improve social mobility? It is not an easy nut to crack and it will take many years to see real improvements, but someone senior in Government, with authority and resources, is needed to build a cross-departmental approach that is clearly lacking at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock); I particularly agreed with her remarks about university and encouraging participation. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) for allowing us to debate this today.

Given the time, I will talk about one specific thing: the importance of going to a good university in driving social mobility, and what more we can do to encourage that. I should declare an interest at the outset; I am a Sutton Trust girl and am now an ambassador for the trust. It has been mentioned a number of times, which has been a pleasure to hear.

We know that university places correlate with success; that has been shown again and again, in study after study. The Browne review showed that people are more likely to be employed, with higher wages and greater job satisfaction, if they go to university, but it is the top universities that confer particular benefit. We know that many of our top employers only recruit from a certain select number of universities. On average, they target the top 19 of our 115 universities, so it is not only university attendance that we need to focus on, but which universities our deprived kids are going to.

That has been slightly overlooked in the debate we have been having over time about university attendance, which has been more about the quantity of people going through university, rather than the quality of the education that they get and what impact that has on their educational outcomes. We have found that not enough children from disadvantaged backgrounds are going to those good universities. There have been huge upticks in the numbers over time, which is of course to be welcomed; the Government have done a huge amount to encourage that, and the Office for Students now has a plan in place for each university to encourage it further. However, the most advantaged 20% are still seven times more likely to attend the most selective universities than the most disadvantaged 40%—a statistic that we urgently need to address.

Over time, we have put a lot of emphasis on universities. That is obviously right, and there is a place for that, but, as someone who came from a comprehensive school and was lucky enough to get into Oxford with the help of the Sutton Trust, I know how difficult it is to make that transition from a comprehensive education that was good, but not amazing, to university, and the extra help that was needed once I got there. We can do more at school level to help with that transition and to raise aspiration for our kids as they are going through school.

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of raising aspiration, but it is not just about raising aspiration a year or 18 months before the transition to university. It is about raising aspiration towards the end of primary school and at the very beginning of secondary school. There is good evidence that if that takes place, and is done effectively, we hugely increase social mobility and the aspiration of young people and their ability to attend good universities.

[Laura Trott]

My hon. Friend is right. We cannot just do this at sixth form: we need to focus on it throughout a child’s school career.

Successive Governments have tried to fix careers advice, and none has been effective in doing so. Careers advice varies hugely throughout the country and, despite the best efforts of successive Governments, evidence shows that it is not really getting much better. In our levelling-up agenda as a Government, we really need to focus specifically on that.

We also need to look at subject choice. The subject choices that children from more deprived backgrounds make tend to be less academic and I do not think they always realise how much that will drive future choices. There were people at my school who did A-levels, but did not study all the sciences, and then realised that that restricted their ability to study medicine at university. They did not know that beforehand. It is crucial that we look at how schools guide subject choices and consider what different career paths require at an earlier stage.

We come to the fundamental question of the quality of education. The education reforms that the coalition put through and that have been pushed by this Government have been critical in driving up standards in schools. We need to focus on the fact that children need to be able to read and write when they leave school; everything else that we talk about—music education, for example—is all well and good, but we must have those fundamental basics. The reforms that have been made to GCSEs and A-levels are critical and I believe will, over time, make a difference in social mobility terms.

We cannot lose sight of that. We cannot allow our Ofsted regulators to inspect everything under the sun, rather than examine quality of education. It has become a Christmas tree over time, which has diluted the focus on the quality of education in schools. We cannot allow that to happen. If we are to really succeed in changing social mobility, we need laser-like focus on quality in schools, which I know we will have. The increased funding will help with that.

In summary, we must get more disadvantaged kids into good universities. We need to highlight opportunities and instil aspiration in them throughout their time in schools.