Social Mobility

Dan Poulter Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir David Evennett]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Of course, the whole thing about the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill is that it offers skills, training and opportunities. If people did not succeed at school, they can come back and get skills, training or qualifications later. That is a really positive thing that the Government are doing.

I have worked as a college lecturer, teaching women returners to the workplace after career breaks, the unemployed and those who needed additional qualifications to advance in their careers, or to change career. Unfortunately, too much of the education in colleges and universities has been for young people only, but I taught people who are older—those who would benefit from what the Government are doing with the lifelong loan entitlement. It will improve access to education and training, and accelerate the Government’s levelling-up agenda.

Providing people with opportunities to acquire skills will help them to obtain work, or to advance their careers. That is particularly important in the technological age we live in, where the need to learn new skills never stops. All of us are always learning. Lifelong learning has become a reality, as I am sure you will agree, Mr Robertson. Education played a vital part in my life, and I am grateful to teachers, employers and my family for support and encouragement. We should accentuate the positives and say thanks to the teachers and lecturers at colleges and universities, as well as businesses and industries that invest in their staff and help them to advance in their careers.

I recognise that education alone will not be enough to transform social mobility; nor are the Government’s actions alone. As we continue our recovery from covid, the Government are spending record sums on apprenticeships, which play a key role in boosting social mobility, improving people’s skills, and increasing earnings and opportunities.

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

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing the debate. He rightly highlighted the challenges faced in raising educational attainment for white working-class boys and Caribbean boys. Under the coalition Government, many of the initiatives that he outlined were started, and they are beginning to bear fruit. There was also a Cabinet Sub-Committee, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, focusing on social mobility and how we could target groups who had fallen behind. Would my right hon. Friend recommend that to the Minister as something that could be taken forward? If we want to get real impetus behind improving social mobility, there needs to be much more focus centrally, and a Cabinet Sub-Committee is a good way of doing that.

[Sir David Evennett]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which I know the Minister will have noted. This focus is so important. We had it, but we have slightly stalled, which is why I sought this debate.

We need to see even more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds accessing higher and degree level apprenticeships, and to ensure that all young people have an understanding of the many and varied options available to them. Careers advice in schools, colleges and universities is vital to let individuals know what is out there and what their potential could lead them to. Additional funding is being provided to employers and training providers who take on apprentices aged 16 to 18, and apprentices aged 19 to 24 who have an education, health and care plan or have been in care. This targeted support incentivises employers to provide high-quality apprenticeships across all sections in disadvantaged areas. However, according to the latest figures, the share of apprenticeships in the most deprived areas has fallen from 26% in 2015 to 20% in 2020. That is why it is vital that everyone—in our constituencies, across Government and so forth—publicises the excellent opportunities that are available.

I have long advocated for more collaboration between businesses and education. Businesses should look to partner schools or colleges in their local area to provide more careers advice, work experience and support to pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. This would improve social mobility and help to ensure that pupils obtain the skills necessary to succeed in the world of work. All children must be nurtured, valued, enthused and inspired by their schools, and although all children should study the basic curriculum, there should be the opportunity to have a curriculum with more relevance to their future life chances; there needs to be more focus on career opportunities, and it is important that students are shown the full range of opportunities that they may be able to pursue. Successive Governments have tried to improve the careers advice on offer, but unfortunately it still varies widely across the country, which is why the involvement of businesses is vital, as is the provision of advice and role models. Role models are so good to give people an idea of what they could become via training, skills and education.

A particular campaign that I have been very supportive of and promoted is the Social Mobility Pledge, which was founded by my friend, former parliamentary colleague and former Education Secretary, the right hon. Justine Greening, alongside entrepreneur David Harrison, who are both passionate about improving opportunities for all. Some 700 organisations have made the social mobility pledge, with 5 million employees and 2 million students covered by it globally. It encourages organisations to be a force for good by putting social mobility at the heart of their purpose. The pledge recognises that it is more important than ever for organisations to take steps to boost opportunity and social mobility, as we face the challenges of a growing opportunity gap post covid.

We all want Britain to be a country where all can get on in life, regardless of our background. Talent is spread across our country, and businesses, with the prosperity and careers they create for people, are key to improving social mobility locally and nationally. There are three parts to the pledge. The first is getting businesses to partner directly with schools or colleges

“to provide coaching through quality careers advice, enrichment experience and mentoring to people from disadvantaged backgrounds or circumstances.”

The second is access:

“providing structured work, experience and apprenticeship opportunities to people from disadvantaged backgrounds”.

The third is the adoption of more

“open employee recruitment practices which promote a level playing field for people from disadvantaged backgrounds or circumstances”,

with things like “name blind” and contextual recruitment. Businesses that are prepared to take those simple steps show their commitment to levelling the playing field of opportunity for everyone.

I was delighted that the Chancellor’s Budget last week recognised the need for further investment in removing barriers to work—in particular, by investing £485 million in support for unemployed people and those on universal credit working part-time. Assigning a work coach to those people will support them in obtaining full-time work. Supporting people into work is important, but we should also strive to support people into higher-paying jobs, as that is critical for social mobility. The Government’s job support initiative provides more than 120,000 low-income workers with tailored support and guidance so they can earn more and progress their careers. The Government’s various skills initiatives provide excellent opportunities to gain key skills such as numeracy and digital, but it is more important than ever—essential, in fact—that everyone is encouraged to take up those opportunities.

Our defining challenge in Britain is to level up opportunity and make sure everyone gets the chance to go as far as their talents or ambitions take them. Ultimately, it is about delivering generational change. That means looking right across people’s lives from childhood to adulthood. We cannot afford to leave any section of our population behind; otherwise, there will be discontent and disillusionment, which is terrible for individuals and frankly very bad for our nation. Aspiration, opportunity and achievement are the goals that we should be aiming for. In so many fields, we have entrepreneurs with business success, scientists, lawyers, clinicians—high achievers, all of whom need to be role models. The Government have a mission, but employers need to raise their own game and rise to the challenge. Britain remains a great country, but with a more skilled, enthused and aspirational workforce that is socially mobile, I believe we can be an even better one.

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[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) on securing the debate. I have heard him talk many times about how important social mobility is to him, and we have had conversations about it. He is right that we have slightly lost focus on the issue in recent years.

Social mobility has been very important to my own personal and professional life. I ran three charities for disadvantaged young people, the last of which was called the Social Mobility Foundation. I was on the original Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, when Alan Milburn was the chair. I chair the social mobility all-party parliamentary group. The two words “social mobility” have been very important in both my personal and professional life.

If there is one key point in what I will say, it is that it is everybody’s responsibility to make social mobility happen. On the commission, we used to say that we can get into a situation where employers blame universities, which blame schools, which blame families—and everybody blames the Government—and that, actually, if at each stage of people’s life cycles things were done slightly differently, obstacles that are in the way of social mobility would be removed.

Starting with the early years is very important, but it should not be an obsession. It does not necessarily provide what Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Children’s Zone calls the escape velocity that will take someone through the rest of their life—even though we might hope it does. Some academics would say that about 80% of our outcomes are about what happens in the home rather than in school. We focus on school in this place. That is why things like family hubs are so important; every parent wants to be able to do the right thing, but they do not necessarily get the right advice and guidance about what to do. Being school-ready at age five is so important to how children then access school as they move through their lives. That is one big area that is not within the Government’s control, but it is important that we encourage the right things.

Then there is school. The Prime Minister said that education is the closest thing to a silver bullet that we have for social mobility.

[Dr Poulter]

Before my hon. Friend moves on to school-age children, there are things the Government can do to support disadvantaged and vulnerable children at an early age to improve not only educational attainment, but many aspects of their lives. We can look at longitudinal studies of schemes like the Family Nurse Partnership, which targets vulnerable and poorer families, provides targeted support for new mums and dads, and helps children be school-ready. Will he briefly comment on that, because that is something the Government could put money towards?

[David Johnston]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have to talk more about this because too often in politics people on the left fear they will demonise parents and on the right they fear they will appear to be the nanny state if they talk about it, but politicians and commentators who say those things are doing exactly the right things for their children. He is absolutely right about the Family Nurse Partnership and a whole range of other things, including family hubs.

The schools system is the easiest lever for politicians to pull, and we have seen huge increases in attainment through academies, free schools and various other initiatives. We have seen London state schools go from being the worst to the best, but we still have parts of the country where the standard of education is not good enough. We have a gender gap in education where girls do better than boys, and an ethnicity gap where certain ethnic groups do better than others, but the biggest gap in education is between children who have free school meals and those who do not. Although we have been making progress—albeit slow—covid has made that situation a lot worse, and has destroyed a lot of the progress we have made. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford says, the national tutoring programme is important, but we have to do more to focus on that.

Let me quickly canter through some other areas. This is about further education colleges and ensuring that the courses they provide will help people in the employment market, which is what we were trying to get to with the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022. When it comes to universities, the success they often trumpet about the percentage of state school students they have masks the fact that a huge proportion of them went to selective state schools—grammar schools—and that the proportion of comprehensive school entry pupils is still low. There is more for them to do, particularly at the most elite universities.

Finally, on professions, Members will have heard me say previously that someone is 24 times more likely to become a doctor if their parent is a doctor; only 6% of doctors are from a working-class background. Again, that is not in the Government’s control. Employers have to do something about that. Some people will say that social mobility is not about people leaving their home area, going to a Russell Group university and getting a middle-class job, but show me someone who says that, and nine times out of 10 they will have done exactly that in their own life. That does not invalidate the point—we need to have both, and to move jobs and investment to those areas—but do not tell me that we should not be trying to get more people into those universities and professions, because they are controlling the country. If we are to get to a position where talent and opportunity is everywhere, everybody has to play their part.