Social Mobility Committee Report

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, this is an excellent report and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, on chairing the committee and all the members on producing such a good report. It is disappointing that this is the first report of the committee and the last report of the committee. Social mobility requires more constant surveillance by this House than just holding a debate every year or two. The committee stuck very closely to its purpose and concentrated on most young people, but especially those who do not follow the academic route and are therefore overlooked. They are the overlooked and the forgotten ones. In this populist age, I seem to remember Mr Donald Trump saying on the day after he was elected that he had been chosen by the forgotten ones. These young people are certainly part of the forgotten ones.

It would be charitable to describe the Government’s response as vapid and complacent. I cannot believe that the civil servants who wrote it had read any of the reports of Sir Michael Wilshaw, the Chief Inspector of Schools for the past five years. The response was also signed off by two Ministers who are no longer in post. I hope that the new ones will be more sympathetic to the report than those two. At one stage the Government boasted that at last we have reached the lowest level of NEETs, but they did not say what that level was. The level of NEETs in the third quarter of this year was 11.5%. That represents tens upon tens of thousands of young people who after 14 years of free state education are drawing jobseeker’s allowance. That is a disgrace and we should be ashamed of it as a nation and ashamed of it as a Government. The percentage is much higher than in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Why is that? It is because 70% of German students will have had some experience of technical and vocational education by the time they reach the age of 18. In our country only 30% of students experience any form of technical and practical education.

It is little wonder, therefore, that our schools are not performing well. In one of his last reports, Sir Michael Wilshaw identified that secondary schools in Manchester and Liverpool are actually going backwards. They are not improving year on year, they are getting worse. On top of that, the Birmingham education authority, one of the largest in the country, is not fit for purpose. He has recommended that education be taken out of the hands of Birmingham and put into the hands of the department. We are dealing with very serious matters here. On top of that, the changes to the exam system that have been introduced in the past two or three years are so confusing that the Government have said that they are not going to publish the league tables this year. I cannot understand, as one of the authors who introduced these things, how you can actually get to a situation where one is so confused that no priorities have emerged.

The figures announced last week by PISA of progress across Europe and in our schools are very disappointing for the Government. They show that since 2010, when a Conservative-dominated education policy was introduced, the performance of 15 year-olds has declined in reading, maths and science. That is an extraordinary failure and one we should be very much more aware of. The Government hope to fix this by introducing the EBacc, which means there will be more academic subjects studied in schools and technical subjects will be squeezed out below the age of 16. I find that an extraordinarily perverse policy. Uptake in design and technology, a GCSE introduced back in the 1980s, has fallen by 27% since 2010. The whole of the education system in our country is concentrating on academic subjects at the age of 16 to the damage of not only technical but creative subjects.

What can we do about it? University technical colleges, which I have been promoting for the last seven years, begin at the age of 14. I believe that 14 is the right age of transfer. We are landed with an age of transfer of 11 for purely historical reasons. The age of school leaving in late Victorian England was 11 and the only schools that went beyond it were grammar schools, so that became the age of transfer. We are the only country left in the world separating children, educationally and culturally, at the age of 11. It is quite the wrong age. I was very glad to hear the right reverend Prelate say just a few moments ago that he believed the age of transition should be 14. I welcome that, and the support of the Church of England. When I am in church on Christmas Eve I will give a special thanks to the Lord that He is now supporting us.

The age of 14 is so much better for the age of transition. By then, youngsters know what they want to do. At the age of 11 it is a parental choice to go to grammar school. At the age of 14 students and parents come together to decide whether they want to go to our sort of college. The level of NEETs is lowest in Austria in the whole of Europe. There, the national curriculum stops at the age of 14. From 14 on it has a series of specialist colleges—some academic colleges and some technical colleges, engineering colleges, food technology colleges, sports colleges, and hospitality and catering colleges. A whole range of different skills are being imbued. As a result, it has the lowest level of youth unemployment in Europe.

There are 47 UTCs now. We have exceptional destination data for education to employment. This July we had 1,292 students leaving at the age of 18— very nearly 1,300. Only five of those were NEETs. That is a quite remarkable achievement for any set of skills in the country. Some 44% of our students went to university, instead of the national average of 38%; 29% became apprentices, as opposed to the national average of 8.4%; 15% got a job; and 9% went on to other forms of education. We are capturing the disengaged, in some cases—the youngsters who at the ages of 12, 13 and 14 have really decided that their schools are not for them. When I go round and talk to students in the college I say, “How did you learn about us?”. They reply, “We searched the web, because, quite frankly, our schools are not doing what we want to do”. Students can make that decision at the age of 14 very effectively. I hope that conversion at 14 will become part of our education process.

The Government are very keen to introduce and extend new grammar schools. Personally, I would not support new grammar schools from the age of 11 to 18 because 11 is a toxic age and the 11-plus a toxic exam. However, I would be quite prepared to accept selection of some sort at the age of 14, with well-informed parental and student selection and possibly an assessment of aptitude. At the age of 14 youngsters can be reasonably directed to the range of studies they want to take.

Social mobility has to start in schools. What we in UTCs give to our youngsters, and why we have such a good record in employment, are the skills they will need in their jobs. In a UTC, for two days a week youngsters are making and designing things with their hands. In addition, they are working on projects brought in by local business and working in teams. An essential experience in life is to work in teams. They are also working on problem solving. All the time they are thinking about where they will go when their education ends and they leave the UTC. I therefore want to see very many more UTCs than we have at the moment. Indeed, I am glad to say the new Secretary of State for Education visited the UTC in Didcot. She gave a press conference when she came out to say that it was brilliant, with phenomenal teaching and phenomenal learning.

As far as the education system in our country is concerned, we will be able, over the course of the next few years, to increase technical, vocational, practical, hands-on learning. That will be the biggest source of social mobility in our country. There is absolutely no doubt about this. Grammar schools will not give us social mobility today. I passed two 11-pluses and went to two grammar schools. Grammar schools in the 1940s were genuine agents of social mobility. There is absolutely no doubt about that. For students at the ages of 11 to 18 they are very much enclaves of the middle class. Only 4% of students at grammar schools today come from the fifth-poorest group in our society. I am not against having grammar schools at the ages of 14 to 18. It is quite possible that there can be academic streams at that age.

I again congratulate the committee on producing the report. I hope some of the things it says will not disappear into the sand, because we have a responsibility in our society to ensure we increase the life chances and opportunities of all children in our society. That is what the task should be in any change in education.