Lord Farmer
Main Page: Lord Farmer (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Farmer
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they have taken, if any, in response to the finding in the UCAS End of Cycle Report 2019, published on 30 January, that white ethnic group students from state schools had the lowest entry rate to higher education.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the Government are committed to transforming the lives of young people so that they can go as far as their hard work and talent will carry them, regardless of their background or where they live. The Government acknowledge the findings of the UCAS 2019 End of Cycle Report. Our reforms since 2010 have set out an ambitious agenda and made substantial investments in opportunities for all young people.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for his Answer. Recent Centre for Social Justice analysis of education results by ethnicity found that white British children on free school meals had performed worst at GCSE by a significant margin for many years. How will the Government improve GCSE results so that poor white boys and girls stand a better chance of getting into higher education? How do they plan to improve parental engagement in education, as teachers can only ever be part of the solution?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right that, when it comes to higher education, the seeds of equal opportunity are sown much earlier. It has been the Government’s mission over the past decade, under successive Prime Ministers and Education Secretaries, to break the correlation between parental wealth and pupil achievement by raising standards for all pupils. That is what our reforms are doing, with the knowledge-rich national curriculum and more children in good or outstanding schools. Part of the reforms has also been about giving more power to school leaders and to parents, who, as my noble friend says, have a crucial role to play, such as in the opening of more than 500 new free schools.