Education: Social Mobility

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I am one of three speakers in today’s debate with roots in Newcastle upon Tyne. All three of the speeches may have had different content, but the broad argument is the same: it is about enabling all young people to succeed. I therefore thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for the opportunity to discuss the role of schools in promoting social mobility.

I think that all speakers in the debate so far have acknowledged that, for social mobility to be a reality, a good education relevant to the career possibilities for each young person is an essential building block. Many have pointed out that a good education has to include experience not just of the world of work but of all the opportunities that could be available to that young person. As we know, career choices often need specific qualifications, not least in STEM subjects, but these career choices can be more limited if the right subjects are not taken at the correct time in a young person’s education.

Raising the participation age means that, next year, young people will have to stay in education or training until they are 18. After the age of 16, young people can study full time, do full-time work or volunteering together with part-time education or a training course, or they can undertake an apprenticeship. In addition, since last September, secondary schools and academies have had a duty to prepare young people for post-16 education and training and provide an individual plan for them. They have to engage with local employers and work-based training providers to offer young people the opportunity to consider options they may not have thought about. It is reasonable to ask how things are going with careers guidance given the raising of the participation age.

An Ofsted report published last September said that,

“the new statutory duty for schools to provide careers guidance is not working well enough”.

It reported that three-quarters of schools are not executing their statutory careers duties satisfactorily—that figure is very high. It identified the problem that links need to be much stronger between schools and businesses. That is a fairly obvious thing to identify because it is about the transition from the world of school to the world of work, but it has nevertheless caused me much concern, not least because there is a very real and fast-growing skills gap that is proving very frustrating for employers. For example, in the north-east of England, my home region, it is reported that there will be too few young people ready and trained to take over from skilled workers now in work but due to retire in the next five years, never the mind the growth in key sectors of the economy demanding more skilled young people. In a region with higher than average unemployment, this is an unacceptable situation to be in, and it is quite unnecessary.

I want to draw the House’s attention to a recent report by IPPR North published in January and entitled Driving a Generation: Improving the Interaction Between Schools and Businesses. The IPPR concludes:

“Today’s secondary school pupils are being let down by careers services that are not equal to the task of helping them navigate the increasingly difficult transition from school to work”.

In essence, it echoes the Ofsted report. The IPPR report makes three important proposals, to which I want to draw your Lordships’ attention: first, that the remit of the National Careers Service should be expanded to enable it to perform a capacity-building and brokerage role for schools; secondly, that careers advice should be more fully embedded in the curriculum for pupils beginning in year 7; and, thirdly, that all secondary schools’ careers services should be required to take the lead in developing stronger relationships with major employers and that all employers, especially those with skills shortages, need to be proactive in this process. This amounts in practice to something similar to what is taken for granted in Germany and from which we must learn.

The IPPR has emphasised that the trend towards skills hubs, currently being developed in some of our urban areas and which provide a central information resource, is increasingly important. Basically, they involve information hubs to show key contacts for each business online, what visits they would host and what advice they could offer schools in specific subject areas. As the IPPR says, making those resources easily accessible would enable careers services to spend less time finding local employers to engage with and more time giving face-to-face careers advice to older pupils and arranging the logistics of visits for younger ones.

I have come to the conclusion that we can turn the current problem into an opportunity, because this is not just about money. The cut in funding, amounting to £200 million made available annually to the Connexions service, has not helped but, on the other hand, we have the pupil premium which, as the Minister reminded us in his opening speech, amounts to £2.5 billion. That money is available but there is also the extra £300 million to which the Minister referred, the extra allocation. I am pleased to say that Northumberland Council has received £10.6 million of that, which I hope will be used to increase opportunities across the county to enable young people to be more mobile in gathering work experience.

However, it is not just a matter of money; it is a matter of culture, organisation and leadership. Increasing social mobility starts in primary schools, as a number of speakers have emphasised. Preparation for post-16 education and training should not be considered entirely a matter for key stages 3 and 4. From an early age, children should be encouraged to think about careers and the appropriate ways in which ambitions can be achieved. That means that children need to be taken out of their school and local environment at that stage, encouraged to see a variety of ways of earning a living and to develop their personal aspirations. As we have heard from a number of speakers, that is particularly important for children living in areas of deprivation, where their parents may not themselves have had the opportunity to develop their ambitions. Those children need to be taken to visit their local universities and colleges, to visit local businesses, to visit rural areas, if they live in urban areas and, perhaps, to develop links with schools in other countries or other parts of the United Kingdom that are very different from their own.

The critical issue is this: many young people are unaware of the opportunities available and what educational qualifications are needed to take up those opportunities. Conversely, not enough employers are taking up the chances to invest time in helping young people make the right choices.

In conclusion, I return to the IPPR report that I cited earlier. What is particularly interesting about its report—I hope that, following our debate, the Minister will look closely at it—is that it tested its conclusions. It arranged for four secondary schools to receive talks from local employers in the automotive industry and for pupils to visit local plants to learn more about the industry and the careers within it. It surveyed young people’s thinking about available careers and found that pupils had insufficient knowledge about which careers did and did not have science qualifications as prerequisites. As a case study, that is very important, because it demonstrates the gap that exists and points to a way to bridge it.

If one of the aims of raising the participation age is to enable young people better to understand the job opportunities that could be available to them and thereby to improve social mobility, the responsibility for achieving that needs to be shared between schools, careers advisory networks and business, but we must be very clear that the leadership role lies with a school’s careers service. I do not know when Ofsted will return to the issue, but I hope that the Minister will be able to say something further about that in his response. We cannot have another Ofsted report which says that three-quarters of schools are not fulfilling their statutory role.