Social Mobility

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. It is also a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), who illustrated perfectly that some of the best examples of social mobility come from our immigrant community. The fact that they can show so much ambition and advancement, and take advantage of the opportunities available to them, is inspirational for all of us. We should celebrate them.

I was struck by the speech by the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), who is no longer in her place. Her back story illustrated that no matter how much ambition, ability and aspiration someone has—the desire to advance oneself—there are still barriers to be hit on that journey. Even with her force of personality, she found some of those intimidating. For all the policy initiatives that we can adopt, the biggest challenge is probably tackling those environmental and societal factors that act as the biggest inhibitors to social mobility.

My journey to this place was rather similar to the right hon. Lady’s. My parents also left school at 14, they had me when they were very young and the first few years of my life were impoverished. We lived in a two-up, two-down with no hot running water and an outside loo, and here I am addressing the mother of Parliaments. Perhaps the biggest message that I got from my parents growing up was, “We want your life to be better than ours.” That message stuck with me and drove that ambition from an early age, which gave me the incentive and the belief that my life could be better than theirs. I might well be better informed on this issue than on many of the other things that I talk about in the House.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). His speech, opening the debate, was a forensic tour de force of the challenges that we face. He brings the philosophical and thoughtful approach, while I go for the raw practicalities, but between all the contributions to the debate we will illuminate the subject and find a way to tackle some of the problems.

The starting point for me is to define what we mean by social mobility, and we have had some discussion of that. I believe it to be a society in which meritocracy is the key. The privilege afforded by where we are born has always been present in British society, and we would be naive to think that it will ever be altered. None the less, we should all endeavour to create those conditions in which people can achieve the best possible outcomes for themselves. Certainly we politicians should ensure that Government have in place no active inhibitor to people taking advantage of their opportunities.

The more immediate concern is that social mobility has declined in recent years. I want to dwell on some of the reasons for that, because often it is the unintended consequences of policies that, on the one hand, enhance mobility for some but, on the other hand, make it more difficult for others. The performance of our education system and the extent to which it encourages aspiration are crucial.

My hon. Friend referred to attendance at university as a key influence on social mobility, but I want to add a note of caution. Of course it is important for all those who are academically gifted to have the opportunity to study at university, but we also need to ensure that people understand that there are any number of routes to achieve given outcomes. In many cases, encouraging people to go to university will be a hindrance as much as a help. The simple reason is that now we have so many more graduates chasing an ever-tighter number of popular job vacancies.

We have had some discussion of internships, which I think have been fuelled by the rise in the number of graduates. The reality is that, with a bigger supply of graduates, the skill set that people can demonstrate and the connections that they have are what influence whether they can take advantage of the opportunities. As the right hon. Lady explained, she got her law degree but had to make 300 job applications because she was not part of the right network and had no one to open those doors. A real risk is that we are giving many young people a false perspective, because if they invest all that time and yet the job outcomes are not happening, maintaining their focus and ambition to continue is difficult.

One of the keys is to expand people’s horizons and to ensure that we have a different series of routes to achieve good education and the opportunity to get on. In that regard, the greater emphasis on high-quality technical and vocational schools that are seen as equivalent to an academic education is crucial. I pay tribute to the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), for the enthusiasm and passion that he is bringing to rejuvenating and strengthening apprenticeships. We need to see apprenticeships not only as something for school leavers but—as they can be and increasingly are—as the pathway to a long, intensive period of training and work, which can even take people into senior management roles. Practically all the major wealth creators in Thurrock have not been to university—most of them started out as apprentices, and that is characteristic of what happens in industrial areas.

While many of the decision makers in government focus on indicators and on the number of people going to university or on whether someone is above or below the average, I am quite relaxed about that. It is more important that we ensure that everyone has the opportunity to follow the path that they wish to, and get good-quality education and skills in doing so.

We also need to expand the opportunities in the school sector and, in that regard, I wholeheartedly welcome the expansion of university technical colleges and studio schools, which will encourage the development of the wider communication skills that people need to attract work. As the school age is raised to 18, we have a lot more opportunity to introduce that into the curriculum. We need to get into schools, to ensure that they are offering every available opportunity to the pupils to make the best of themselves, to meet their needs and to allow them to excel.

I want to bring a bit more personal experience into the story. As I mentioned, the key is what happens in practice—setting the policy is fine, but the delivery on the ground is what matters. This year, my little boy went up to secondary school. He is doing well—the teachers tell me that he is excelling at history and IT and he got the boy of the year award this week, so he is very proud—but in his first term he had a lengthy period of illness, which meant that he was absent. The school wrote to me and suggested that he should be taken out of his normal lessons and put on a programme that encouraged him to understand the need to attend school. Clearly, that was not appropriate on this occasion. The school had simply looked at attendance and thought, “Right, we’ll send a letter.” Later, when I went to parents’ evening and was told that my son was doing so well, I said, “Okay, so what are your policies towards children who are performing well and are gifted?” The school does not have any. It has a programme to ensure that pupils who do not attend do attend, but it does not have programmes in place to ensure that children who are doing well really excel. Schools need to look at the needs of their pupils in their entirety. They need to look at them on a pupil-focused basis and not treat them as numbers on a piece of paper.

For all our talk of policies and structures, I believe that people and role models will have the most decisive influence on whether children really get on. In my case, my eyes were opened one day at school at the end of a history lesson, when I had a robust discussion with my history teacher about the real role and nature of communism. He took me to one side and said, “Jackie, it’s all very well you and I having these arguments during lessons, but I think you really ought to participate in democracy, and use that as your outlet.” With that one conversation my life changed, and it was because that teacher had taken me to one side. I suddenly thought, life is not just about going through school, going to college, and becoming a secretary. I could do something different.

We can all play a role in this. We can go into schools, and inspire children by explaining that opportunities are available to them, and that they do not have to follow the path their parents took. With that in mind, I want to pay tribute to some of the initiatives in my constituency. Some of the rugby fans among us may have heard of Ralph Henderson MBE. He runs a programme in which he takes sporting stars into schools to make motivational speeches, which is a really good tool to encourage children to think that they can aim for the stars, and that if they have the focus, dedication and ambition, they can get there. In a couple of weeks, I will be sharing a platform with Derek Redmond and Ralph. Somehow I think the children will get more inspiration from them than from me, but I will do my best. We should support such programmes.

Mentoring is key, because young people need a secure environment and a relationship with people in which they can talk honestly and without any threat about the opportunities open to them. The reality is that if they are on an upward trajectory they will often not get that from their parents. They will only hear about the things their parents know. We must provide every opportunity to open the horizons and to give young people more chance to think.

The role of mentors is important to support young people, and to ensure that if they show ambition they are challenged. When I was thinking about going to university, my family, friends and neighbours asked me why I wanted to defer getting a job for three years when I could be earning money. It takes quite a robust young person to say that they want to do something. Access to a mentoring network is important.

Similarly, schools should not be dissuading people from having ambition. At my comprehensive school, no one was encouraged to apply to Oxford or Cambridge. In fact, they were actively told that it would be a waste of time. I applied to Durham university, and was told that I was setting my sights a little high. In my case, that was more of an incentive to push on, but not everyone is as bloody-minded as me. We must make sure that the poor ambition of school leaders does not hold young people back.

I could go on for ever, because this is a real passion of mine. This has been an excellent debate, and it is one of those occasions when we illustrate that on both sides of the House we really care. I just wish that more people could see debates such as this, instead of the yah-boo that goes on in the main Chamber. They would have much healthier respect for politicians if they did.