Education: Social Mobility

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Nash on initiating this important debate and I thank him for explaining to the House the various initiatives the Government have taken in order to achieve improvements in the education system. Social mobility has to start in our schools or it can start nowhere. If it does not start at school, there will be virtually no social mobility. In one striking area it has worked very well: namely, in the expansion of universities. Parties around the House have supported this expansion. When I was the Education Secretary, the percentage going on to university was 15%. Just before I left that job I forecast that it would rise to 30% by 2000, and that was slightly exceeded. Today it is close to 50%, and there is no doubt that many children from disadvantaged families now experience the huge richness of university life.

So, three A-levels and a university degree are one pathway to success. I suspect, however, that it will be a rather less crowded pathway in the immediate future because graduate unemployment has now become a common feature. One study examined students who graduated in 2010 to see what they were doing two years later. At that point, four out of 10 had got jobs at graduate level, two had jobs at below graduate level, usually in bars and cafés, one was unemployed, and the others were trying to recycle themselves back into the education process. Added to that is the fact that students will now leave university with debts approaching £40,000, so many young people who in the past would have thought about going to university will be looking for other things to do. I rather welcome that in several ways, because a university system that turns out people who are unemployable is not a very effective system.

The days have gone when large numbers of unskilled jobs were available. Very few unskilled jobs are available in our economy today. We therefore have to find other pathways to success beyond three A-levels and a university degree. That is the reason why, with Ron Dearing, I established five years ago what are now called university technical colleges. Seventeen are already open and a further 33 have been approved. They aim to give young people skills. The pupils are aged between 14 and 18. The UTCs operate on a normal working day, so pupils have to turn up between 8.30 in the morning and five in the afternoon. However, we see very high levels of attendance for those hours, at 95%. Students learn for two days of the week by making things with their hands or designing things. We are giving them the skills that will make them employable.

I think that the employability potential of education is one of the most important tests. Every school, whatever it is doing at secondary level, should report on the employability of its students when they leave. I am very glad to say that the employability of students from UTCs is really quite remarkable. Our target is that when youngsters leave at 16 and 18, none of them gets jobseeker’s allowance or joins the ranks of the unemployed, and I am glad to say that in the two that have had leavers at 16 and 18—the first being the JCB Academy in Staffordshire, which has had 300 leavers since it started—everybody got a job, an apprenticeship, a place at college or a place at university. Twenty-three went to university and 84 became apprentices, while others went on to study A-levels or went into work. That is a remarkable achievement for any school.

The one in Walsall, which has an average comprehensive intake, is in a much more challenging situation. It took over the remnants of a school that was closing, with very disgruntled students. It has had 107 leavers, and I am glad to say that none of them joined the ranks of the unemployed and there were no NEETs. Fourteen went to university, 30 or so to apprenticeships and some into work or other colleges. That should be the target for all schools—no NEETs. I think it is the intention later this year to judge schools on the destinations of their pupils. If a school, of whatever nature, manages to ensure that none of its pupils become NEETs—they all get a job or go on to further education—it cannot possibly be described in an Ofsted report as inadequate. That would be a contradiction in terms, as it is a major achievement.

The other thing that we have now developed, alongside UTCs for the STEM subjects, are career colleges for the other range of skills such as hospitality, catering, tourism, the creative arts and logistics. Two of these colleges, based on UTCs, are going to start this year in Oldham and in Bromley and 60 other schools are interested in becoming ones. We have established the success of specialist colleges for 14 year-olds in promoting social mobility. Many of these youngsters at 13 and 14 would be disengaged and would switch off from education, but we are engaging them and giving them a real opportunity which they would not otherwise have. I really believe that unless we increase the numbers of these colleges very considerably, we will rather stifle social mobility. These are alternative pathways of success, with pupils going to university, in some cases, or getting into very good jobs.

Finally, I remind your Lordships of the success of some of the old technical schools that existed in 1945. The committee established in 1941 said that the pattern of education after the war should involve selective grammar schools, selective technical schools and secondary moderns. There were 300 technical schools, which all closed in five or six years. They were closed by snobbery—everybody wanted to go to the school on the hill like the grammar school, not the one down in the town with the dirty jobs and greasy rags. It was a massive mistake, which Germany did not make in adopting its education system, which is one of the reasons why Angela is ruling the roost.

The success of those technical schools was really remarkable, and I will just leave noble Lords with the names of four people who went to them and are today very distinguished. The vice-chancellor of the University of Leeds, one of the biggest universities in our country, Sir Alan Langlands, who ran the health service for six years, went to a technical school in Glasgow that also received Charles Rennie Mackintosh through its doors—a very distinguished figure. Mike Turner, the chairman of Babcock and GKN, who ran BAE Systems very effectively for many years, went to a technical high school. Sir Mike Tomlinson, the former Chief Inspector of Schools, started his life at Oakwood Technical High School. Coming to your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd—the dear, beloved Betty Boothroyd, former Speaker of the House of Commons—went to a technical school. Those technical schools were real agents of social mobility, as they can be again today.