Educational Opportunities: Working Classes

Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, like all other noble Lords I congratulate my noble friend Lady Morris on securing this important debate and on her quite brilliant speech. It has clearly inspired all the other contributors to the debate, which will no doubt make the job of the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, harder when she comes to sum up.

This debate is not only important but timely. It is timely because we speak less than three months after an election in which the Prime Minister talked about the need to level up, reduce inequality and invest in towns and communities that many of us believe have been left behind. It is timely for another reason, too. Next week we have a Budget and, in light of their new electoral priorities in working-class, leave-voting areas, the Government may have finally found the motivation to show the colour of their money in tackling issues of left-behindness and inequality.

It is inequality that drives this debate. In this House, we often say it is a privilege to speak; we who speak here are the privileged, a fact we should never forget. I say that as a white, working-class schoolboy who, statistically, really should not be here. I really should not. Just for fun, I decided to look at the social composition of the Lords and it is very revealing. I took a look at the Sutton Trust and Social Mobility Commission report, Elitist Britain, published last year. The Lords has the third-highest proportion of public school-educated members among all professional groups, just behind senior judges and Permanent Secretaries, at 57%. That figure—57%—has grown by 8 percentage points in the last 10 years. Of the rest, 22% went to grammar school, 17% to comprehensives and 4% to international schools. I confess that I went to none of those. I am a failure at the 11-plus and a product of a secondary modern school, along with, I think, two other Peers—perhaps three, after listening to my noble friend Lord Hendy. There are so few of us that we do not even register as a percentage point. To put it bluntly, there are as many Old Etonians in the Lords, roughly 100, as there were pupils in my school year. So I really should not be here.

What should we be looking at to tackle the inequality of which your Lordships’ House is in many ways but a reflection? It is a fact that inequality holds people back at all stages of their life, but the early years are crucial in a child’s development and play a decisive role in their chances of success through school and adulthood. High-quality childcare makes a huge difference, especially for poorer families, but there is a stark difference in the status of the availability of outstanding provision between the most and least deprived areas. This has been compounded by the Government’s closure of 1,000-plus Sure Start centres since 2010, and a free childcare policy that excludes the disadvantaged families most in need of support from entitlement to the 30 hours of free childcare enjoyed by affluent families. So, as part of levelling up, will the Minister tell her department of the need to review and reverse those austerity-driven cuts?

When children begin primary school aged five, the gap between pupils receiving free school meals and their more affluent peers is already the equivalent of 4.3 months of learning. By the end of secondary school, the most disadvantaged students are, on average, two years of learning behind their better-off classmates and 27% less likely to achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A to C, including English and maths. It is therefore unsurprising that the gap in higher education participation and attainment between the most and least advantaged students remains stubbornly high, at around 17%, for white working-class students in particular. Only 9% of those will go on to university, compared to around half in the general population.

Following the Government’s disastrous decision to triple tuition fees and remove maintenance grants, it is even more important that we focus on ensuring access to our universities for the most disadvantaged. The Government insist that higher tuition fees are not a deterrent to university, but research by the Sutton Trust suggests that these and the £50,000-plus student debt may be starting to have an impact on the aspirations of children before they even take their GCSEs. Its survey found that the proportion of schoolchildren likely to go to university has fallen to its lowest level in eight years, and that the proportion of people from low-affluence households who believe they are likely to go to university has fallen to an all-time low of 61%. This is deeply concerning. The removal of maintenance grants in favour of loans is another reason why working-class young people avoid higher education. I hope that the forthcoming Budget will restore means-based grants to help support students from less wealthy backgrounds and ensure that all universities are more diverse in social and ethnic composition.

I make this point because there is evidence that the cumbersome system of predicted grades and conditional offers is especially unfair on students from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are the most likely to have their grades underpredicted. Poor predictions can blight young people’s life chances, often becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Moreover, young people with huge potential but low predictions stand little chance of proper consideration from the top universities, especially when competing against more affluent students from schools that overpredict grades. UCAS has defended the current system, emphasising that predicted grades are one part of a student’s application and that personal statements, references and interviews are equally important in assessing an individual’s aptitude and ability. However, there is evidence that personal statements, in which students write about their interests and achievements to persuade tutors that they are worthy of an offer, are also used to game the system, with parents, teachers and even professional companies being found to have embellished middle-class teenagers’ statements. That cannot be right. Reform of the system is long overdue. In that context, I eagerly anticipate the results of the Office for Students’ university admissions review. Can the Minister ensure that the Government make those points to the reviewers? They need to be urgently considered.

A number of noble Lords referred to drop-out rates. Progress on widening the pool of applications and enrolments will continue to be undermined if we do not tackle the significant number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds who subsequently drop out of university. Disadvantaged students are likely to need higher levels of financial and pastoral support during their studies, and universities must ensure they are equipped to provide this as part of their work to continue to widen participation.

Success comes in all shapes and sizes. Although not every child will go to university, it is imperative that all have the opportunity to develop the skills needed to prosper. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, through his UTC programme, has been a brilliant advocate for the development of that sort of education. He is one of few Conservative educationalists whose interests I really engage with and support. As a number of other Peers have said, it is through high-quality apprenticeships and trainee schemes that we can unlock the door to the long and successful careers that many people would otherwise be prevented from pursuing. It is clear that more work is needed to promote this as a viable route. To do so, we must overcome the assumption that apprenticeships and vocational qualifications are just the preserve of working-class students and ensure that these routes enjoy parity of esteem with higher education. We must also ensure that the apprenticeship levy is being used appropriately, given evidence that employers are merely rebadging existing training schemes as higher apprenticeships for courses equivalent to a master’s degree.

At present, half of all children in receipt of free school meals are educated in just a fifth of all schools, and more than half of universities in England have a white working-class student intake of less than 5%, despite the fact that 75% of universities, including the Russell Group institutions, claim to use “contextual information” to admit students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

This is an expansive agenda, and if the Government are serious about levelling up and tackling regional inequalities, it is vital that we encourage ambition and widen access to educational opportunities for students from low-participation, working-class groups, so that that no part of our country and no social group or ethnic minority feels as though they have been excluded and left behind. If we are to heal the social divisions that Brexit has laid bare, we should look to a fairer educational system to bring us to that point. This is one of the real-life challenges for the Government if they wish to burnish their one-nation credentials.