Equality of Opportunity for Young People

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this important debate. I am grateful for the opportunity to outline the Government’s work on delivering opportunities for all and improving the quality of life for young people. We have heard many excellent contributions in this debate across a range of ideas. I am also grateful to noble Lords who provided early notice of questions. I have received 25, many just before I came into the Chamber, so I will not be able to cover all of them, but I will of course write.

Noble Lords will not be surprised to know that I believe fervently that the surest way to expand opportunity is through education. Everyone has the right to a good education regardless of their circumstances. To start with the concern expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, improving this country’s education system starts in the early years. Since 2010, all three and four year-olds have been able to access 15 hours of early education a week. In 2013 we introduced 15 hours a week of free early education for disadvantaged two year-olds. We have a record proportion of children starting year 1 with a good level of development. We are spending £3.5 billion on free early years education entitlements this year.

We have introduced the phonics screening check. In 2018 163,000 more six year-olds were on track to become fluent readers compared to 2012, and 88% of those pupils who had met the phonics standard in year 1 went on to attain the expected standard in reading at the end of key stage 2 in 2018. England achieved its highest-ever reading score in the 2016 PIRLS rankings, moving from joint 10th to joint eighth.

This Government have focused on raising school standards because we know a decent education is the best way to boost social mobility. I think we all agree on that. We have helped to ensure that there are 1.9 million more children in good and outstanding schools compared with 2010. The proportion of children in good or outstanding schools rose 66% in 2010 to 85% by the end of December 2018, and that is in part down to our reforms. The latest Ofsted figures show that more than 70% of sponsored academies are good or outstanding despite replacing mostly underperforming local authority schools. In free schools, 84% of those with inspection reports published by the end of March are rated good or outstanding. We have narrowed the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and others by around 13% at key stage 2 and 9.5% at key stage 4 since 2011 as measured by the disadvantage gap index.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, asked about school funding. We accept that there are challenges in the system. We invested an additional £1.3 billion across the period 2018 to 2020 over and above the existing plans in the spending review. The IFS has shown that real-terms per-pupil funding for five to 16 year-olds in 2020 will be more than 50% higher than in 2000. Since 2017, we have given every local authority more money for every pupil in every school while allocating the biggest increases to the schools that have been most underfunded.

The new GCSEs and A-levels are the culmination of curriculum and qualifications reform since 2011 involving consultation with subject experts, higher education institutions and teachers. The new GCSEs are more rigorous and their demand matches that of other high-performing economies. At A-level, changes aim to improve students’ readiness for the demands of higher education. We have removed some 3,000 what I describe as useless qualifications, which has made room for quality of education, an important point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. We have put effort behind the EBacc. There has been a 76% increase in the proportion of pupils taking the core academic standard subjects including languages. This will set them up for success in later life.

I reassure the noble Baronesses, Lady Bull and Lady Prashar, that we are widening access to higher education. It is a priority for the Government. In 2018, 18 year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds were proportionally 52% more likely to go to university than they were in 2009.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked about making the teaching profession more attractive. He is absolutely right. The one thing that matters most in our profession is the quality of the teachers. We are very conscious of the demands on them and the fact that they now have to deal with a range of social issues which they possibly did not have to deal with 10 or 15 years ago. We tried to address this recently in our recruitment and retention strategy, and we published the Workload Reduction Toolkit in March last year.

It seems that the noble Earl engages with teachers quite often, so I ask him to take a simple message back to them—a message that I try to get across. One of the most pernicious additions to workload is teachers having to individually plan each school lesson. It is an enormous burden on them and, frankly, quite unnecessary. Schools should provide skeleton work plans for them to draw on and then they can simply add the local context to the group of children they are teaching. The evidence I have is that lesson preparation can take four, five or six hours a week, but teachers do not have to spend their time in that way.

The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, talked about higher education. I agree with him in part, in that I think we have tilted the HE route too far for some students. That is why we are putting much more emphasis on apprenticeships. We are aiming to create 3 million quality apprenticeships, with 1.7 million starts from May 2015. They are longer, with more off-the-job training and a proper assessment at the end. We are introducing T-levels, which will offer a rigorous technical alternative to academic education. We are also establishing national colleges and institutes of technology to meet higher-level technical skill needs that will further support technical education.

One thread that has run through the debate is social mobility. I am pleased to be able to say that the NEET figures are declining. At the end of 2017, they were 6.3%. This is a fall of 2.9 percentage points compared with the same figure at the end of 2010. It is the lowest comparable figure since a consistent series began in 1994.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, asked about lifelong learning and adult learners, which are all part of the same issue. We are living in a very fast-evolving economy, so we have created the national retraining scheme to equip individuals with the skills they need to redirect their careers. We know that uncertainty is being caused around automation, and the retraining scheme is focusing on those most at risk from automation. The scheme acknowledges and will build on existing services. We are working closely across government and with the National Careers Service on ways to improve this, looking at the industrial strategy challenges to see where we can learn lessons and unify this journey.

Many noble Lords raised the issue of participation in higher education. Higher education providers have committed to spend £860 million in 2019-20 on measures to improve access. That is more than double the amount spent in 2009. We are seeing increasing numbers of children from state schools getting Oxbridge entries, which, for me, is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job.

Many noble Lords addressed living standards and stagnation. It is important to remind the House that there are over 1 million fewer workless households than there were in 2010, with around 665,000 fewer children living in such households.

I turn to the concern raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, about providing support in career development for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. We established the Careers & Enterprise Company’s investment fund to help give additional support in preparing for work, including opportunities for mentoring and guidance.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Grender and Lady Tyler, raised the question of young people’s wages. We are tackling this by trying to improve their skills. We know that earnings outcomes for young people studying level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships are materially higher than they are for those without those qualifications. The youth unemployment rate has nearly halved since 2010, compared to last year.

I want to address the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, about young entrepreneurs, and I compliment him on his tireless work as a social entrepreneur. I have had the privilege to hear of the many great things that he is doing. I take on board all the points he made about bureaucracy; having run my own businesses since I was 18 years old, I know exactly what he is talking about. I am very happy to meet any stakeholders who want to discuss how we can deal with this. BEIS itself has launched an independent review into young entrepreneurship, led by the Prince’s Trust. I do not know whether this is particularly high praise but a young person in the UK is twice as likely to be involved in setting up a business or running a new business as young people in France or Germany.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, raised a number of issues about social mobility. I certainly recognise that there are areas across the country with entrenched social mobility barriers where young people may feel left behind. This is why we are investing £72 million through our Opportunity Areas programme, which focuses on a mix of 12 coastal, urban and rural areas across the country. Through Opportunity North East we are working with leaders from education, local government and business and investing up to £24 million to address the specific challenges in that region.

We know that people from poorer backgrounds can face greater challenges. The pupil premium has provided schools with more than £15 billion in extra funding since 2011—over £2.4 billion in the year 2018-19—to tackle the symptoms of socioeconomic disadvantage and improve academic outcomes. We have introduced the pupil premium plus for looked-after and previously looked-after children, at more than double the rate of the standard pupil premium at secondary level.

The noble Baroness asked about the social mobility report on closing the regional attainment gap. I mentioned earlier the narrowing at key stages 2 and 4, which I think is a matter for celebration but certainly not one for complacency as there is a long way to go. Social mobility is one of our top priorities. We are targeting extra support in the poorest areas of the country to raise school standards. Disadvantaged pupils are catching up with their peers. We are reforming technical education and, as I said earlier, disadvantaged 18 year-olds are entering university in much higher numbers.

On the State of the Nation report, we welcome the publication of the Social Mobility Commission’s annual report and the important work that it is doing. The commission shines a light on where the Government, business and employers can continue to raise the bar for everyone living in this country. We have asked the commission to launch a £2 million research and evidence fund to identify and spread best practice on how best to boost social mobility, beyond everything that we are doing at the moment.

It is important to address universal credit, which I know has been a controversial subject over the last few years. The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, asked about the five-week wait for universal credit payments. It is important to acknowledge that the system has improved; I am sure that it is still not perfect, but only today I was talking to an official at the DWP who was a case worker two or three years ago and has friends and colleagues who are still on the front line. She says unequivocally that case workers now feel much more empowered to help the clients they are dealing with than they did under the old regime.

No one has to wait for their money if they need it. We have made advances easier to obtain, and claimants can get up to 100% of their first month’s payment up front. From 2021, advances can be repaid over 16 months. We have already introduced a two-week run-on of housing benefit, and we will be introducing a two-week run-on for other legacy DWP benefits. All these improvements are intended to support claimants prior to their first monthly payment of universal credit.

The noble Baroness also raised the issue of homelessness. Again, I put on record that we have seen a drop of 20% in the number of under-25 year-olds sleeping rough between the years 2017 and 2018. The Government have committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping in the current spending review.

Our vision for those with special educational needs and disabilities is the same as it is for all children: that they achieve in their education, find employment, lead happy and fulfilled lives and experience choice and control. We have enhanced the support available for young people and their families, giving £391 million to local areas since 2014 to support the implementation of reforms. We will continue to fund parent carer forums. In December last year, we announced £250 million of additional high needs funding, bringing the total allocated to £6.1 billion in 2018-19, and £6.3 billion in the current financial year. We recognise that high needs budgets face significant pressure.

The noble Baroness was quite right to include the issue of the quality of life of our young people in this debate. The Government are focusing on mental health. My noble friend Lady Fall is concerned about mental health. To reassure her, from December 2020, we will make teaching about mental health a compulsory part of the curriculum across the whole state system. The Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health sets out proposals to improve mental health support for young people. We will incentivise and support schools and colleges to identify and train designated senior leads for mental health, funding new training to facilitate this. We are piloting new approaches to mental health assessment.

The Chief Medical Officer recently commissioned an independent review of the impact of screen time and social media on children and young people. They must take time away from screens. Participation in extra-curricular activities promotes well-being. For example, schools with cadet forces see improvements in attendance, behaviour and attainment. Through the cadet expansion programme, 268 schools have received approval to establish Combined Cadet Force units.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, asked about NHS mental health support. To reassure her, the Government have made protecting the mental health of children a priority. For people experiencing their first episode of psychosis, we have a target for early intervention to ensure that treatment begins within two weeks for more than 50% of people. Nationally, the NHS is exceeding the two-week target, with over 75% of patients starting treatment within two weeks in March this year. The NHS long-term plan has set the goal of supporting an extra 345,000 children and young people via NHS-funded health services by 2023-24.

Coming back to the broader issue of well-being, as noble Lords will be aware, we established the National Citizen Service in 2011. Nearly half a million young people have participated since then. Virtues such as kindness, generosity, fairness, tolerance and integrity can be developed through activities which stretch and challenge. My right honourable friend the Education Secretary has called the following areas the five foundations for building character: sport, creativity, performing, volunteering and membership, and the world of work. An advice group will develop materials to help teachers identify opportunities that will help pupils build character, and it will produce recommendations by September this year.

Several noble Lords raised the issue of housing, which is of course a high priority for this Government. On affordable housing, which the noble Lords, Lord Storey, Lord Bassam and Lord Shipley, mentioned, we are investing some £9 billion in the affordable homes programme, with 407,000 affordable homes delivered since 2010. To encourage home ownership for the young, we have smashed stamp duty by 95% for first-time buyers who pay it. We have also committed an extra £17 billion to the Help to Buy fund since 2017 to help up to 470,000 households into home ownership. The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, asked about the shared accommodation rate freeze. I will write to her on that, as I am running out of time. It is an important issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, raised a number of issues relating to justice and crime. I will write to him on the Supreme Court judgments on criminal records, regulating gambling, mobile gambling, criminal responsibility and a mandatory tax to fund treatment for addiction.

The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, asked about family mediation. The Government are committed to reducing conflict between parents, whether they are together or separated. That is why the DWP has introduced a new programme on reducing parental conflict, backed up by £39 million. It will encourage councils across England to integrate services and approaches which address parental conflict into their local services for families. This includes awards to both Mediation Now and Hall Smith Whittingham, which will help disadvantaged families at risk of involvement with the family justice system.

The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, asked about the need to do more to combat racism. I am pleased to be able to reassure him that, since 2010, ethnic minority unemployment has fallen by around 140,000. The rate is at a record low. We have also published an updated hate crime action plan and launched a national hate crime public awareness campaign.

I am being told to stop, but a couple more Peers have asked questions that I would like to put on the record. The noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, asked about racial disparity. The black ethnic group has seen the greatest proportional increase in progression rates by the age of 19, from 44% in 2009 to 58.5% in 2016.

We are committed to the life chances of all children, including those in custody. The Government began a youth justice reform programme in 2017, investing in staff, education and psychology services.

To sum up, the Government are committed to providing all young people with the tools needed to reach their potential. There are few more important priorities for any Government than this.