Social Mobility

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. Like the other Members who have spoken, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) on securing this debate. My hon. Friend made an interesting speech, demonstrating his knowledge of and enthusiasm for the topic, and the right hon. Lady gave an interesting account of why it is so important to her.

It is great that there is cross-party consensus on the issue. We all agree that everybody in this country should be born with equal life chances, although, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire told us, in many instances the situation is going backwards. The cohort that he grew up with, who are in their 40s, have less social mobility than the cohort that I grew up with, who are in their 50s. It is beholden on the Government to equalise life chances so that everybody has the best possible chance of success.

I want to talk about a couple of issues: the Government’s troubled families initiative and my hopes for its success; and the value of education. Parliament’s troubled families support group consists of a number of Conservative MPs, including my hon. Friend and me, who have an interest in that area of policy and who support the Minister. I am pleased that my county council in Warwickshire has signed up early to the troubled families initiative and that, as a consequence, 800 families in my county—many of them in my constituency of Rugby—will get extra help.

The key ideas are to reduce truancy, get young people back into school and reduce youth and anti-social behaviour, as well as help adults back into work. The initiative has a payment-by-results mechanism, with up to £4,000 available for every family who are successfully turned around. That means that there is £3 million available to Warwickshire over the next three years. The council has already appointed a troubled families co-ordinator, and I am looking forward to meeting directors and officers of the council over the coming weeks to discuss how the process will work.

My hon. Friend articulated the importance of mobility when he spoke about social justice and economic growth. Such growth depends on the best deployment of resources. Many factors contribute to the problem, such as the care system, the welfare system, a lack of role models and regional inequalities, but, judging from Members remarks so far, the issue of education is to the fore.

That is a key part of the troubled families initiative: getting excluded children back into the classroom. Local authorities have to hit a target of achieving 85% attendance in schools for the children from the families involved, and fewer than three exclusions during a year. Those are tough targets for local councils to achieve, but such work is worth it given the importance of education in dealing with people’s life chances. The pupil premium has also been mentioned. I am proud that the Government have extended the remit of the pupil premium and are providing a total of £625 million this year and a further £1.25 billion next year in additional funding for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire said that it was inevitable that a Conservative Member would raise the matter of grammar schools. In this debate, so far, it will be me. I make no apologies for taking the opportunity to talk about the benefits of a selective education. I went to a grammar school in Rugby and there are three other MPs who also went to that school. In school, we rarely got to talk about the backgrounds of those we were at school with, but I was in a class with the sons of factory workers and mechanics, some of whom went on to set up their own businesses, to rise to senior positions in plcs, and to enter professions.

The issue of selective education is important because although there have been many improvements in schools since the 1960s, there are fewer opportunities for poorer children to access the very highest achieving schools available. Of course, it is up to each local area to decide on its constituent schools. I am proud that my constituency has an excellent system of selective education. However, in the area I represent, improvements could be made to the process of selection to ensure that we have a fairer result.

In the Warwickshire selection system, people should be able to opt out of the selection exam, rather than having the current opt-in system. I fully understand that some parents do not wish their child to have a selective education or for their child to take part in the exam. However, the children of many families who do not know about or understand registration deadlines or the forms to fill in miss out on an opportunity. In canvassing for local elections some time ago, I met a very bright 12-year-old whose parents told me that their child was denied the chance of a grammar school education simply because they did not manage to fill the forms in on time. That is a real tragedy and that issue is something I would like to see changed.

The current process whereby children take the selection exam in an exam centre rather than where they regularly go to school is also inappropriate. For youngsters aged 11, the pressure and anxiety to perform well can be exacerbated by unfamiliar surroundings. I would like the process of identifying those bright and capable children who are able to benefit from a selective education to take place in surroundings they are familiar with. I know that those are local decisions, but attention to both matters would help to improve social mobility.

[Mr Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend might expect, I agree with everything he has been saying. One further point I would like to add to the list is the importance of state primary schools giving practice tests to all their pupils. That would mean pupils in state schools had the same experience as prep school pupils or those who have had the benefit of tutoring: they will have encountered the test before and will not be fazed by being confronted with a selection test they have not seen before.

[Mark Pawsey]

I entirely endorse my hon. Friend’s words. I support selective education as a driver of social mobility on the basis that it is made equally accessible to all children. There is a danger that the system is being taken advantage of by those who are able to do so, and I would like the playing field to be made as level as possible.

I would also like to talk about the role of fathers in the home and the strength that children can derive from a family unit. In this day and age, I recognise that those circumstances are not available for everyone. There is a strong role for fathers, but young people can also benefit from help with homework, summer camps and extra tutoring. People step in to provide support when fathers are absent. There are some great national schemes such as the Prince’s Trust and local organisations such as the Mayday Trust in my constituency. I want them to be given every help and support.

On the issue of education, it is entirely right that we place emphasis on the early years. However, there should also be influence on the later years. I was interested to hear the remarks of the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles about second and third chances. The Government’s agenda on apprenticeships could contribute. The previous Government made a great deal about the percentage of school leavers going to university, but a university degree is not the sole route to success within a career; there can be more hands-on routes. Those who know a trade or a skill can use that as a route to the top of an organisation just as effectively as winning a degree. I want more recognition for those who go down that particular route.

As politicians, we knock on people’s doors and are often invited into their homes. We often see in the hallway and in the living room photographs of people—it may be their children or grandchildren—receiving their degree certificate. The question I often ask myself is: where is the equivalent celebration for those who have pursued a less academic route?

A couple of weeks ago, I was delighted to attend the Rugby apprentice of year award on national vocational qualification day. I acknowledge the great success of Lee Bradley in my constituency as the first recipient of that award. We need to have the same regard for those who take that route in their career as for those who take a more academic route.

I am delighted that that issue is being taken more seriously by business. Earlier today, I had the great pleasure to meet the midlands business woman of the year, Julie White, who runs a business called D-Drill. She puts a massive emphasis on apprentices. In fact, she is doing an apprenticeship herself, so that she knows exactly the work that the guys in her business are doing. She tells me that somebody in a very senior management role in her business was, some years ago, an apprentice.

In conclusion, I thank hon. Members who have contributed for their work. Great work is being done in the all-party group on social mobility, and I look forward to it continuing its work and effecting change in this very important area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Rosindell, to serve under your chairmanship. I apologise to hon. Members for not being here earlier, but I was speaking in the main Chamber in another debate. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), and I was fascinated to hear what she had to say. Her experience was similar to my wife’s experience. She came from a working-class family, and passed the 11-plus. Her parents did not understand what the 11-plus or GCSEs were, but she eventually went to teacher training college and became a teacher. However, she would never have been able to go through college had she not had two things: free tuition and a full grant. She would not have had any income from anywhere, but she received free tuition and a full grant. That was one reason why I spoke in this Room in 1998 to oppose the introduction of fees and charges for students, and the abolition of grants. That remains my position even now. I believe that we should restore free tuition and full grants for students.

I want to talk about the deeper divisions in our society, which I think still exist. The churn in social mobility is within the top 20%, 40% or even 60%. Our society is deeply divided between the elite academic layer and the great mass of people who have no aspiration and very little achievement. If one looks at the OECD statistics for educational achievement, we have the best at the top and the worst at the bottom. Something is profoundly wrong with what we do with our young people in that bottom 10%.

On a recent visit to Denmark with the European Scrutiny Committee, I spoke to politicians and officials about pupils speaking English. We were told that 95% of people in Denmark speak English. One cannot imagine 95% of people in Britain speaking any foreign language, apart from those who have come here from abroad with two languages. There is something different about Britain. I think that there are historic reasons for it, which have, I think, been touched on by George Orwell and other writers. We have preserved in aspic the divisions in our society, which go back to Shakespeare’s time. If we look at “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” and the attitude of the king and others when they are watching the play within a play performed by Bottom, the weaver, we can see that it is a case of, “Let us be nice to the simple folk.” That social division was vast then, but it is still recognisable today. We have not changed as other societies have changed.

I used to work as a research officer for the National and Local Government Officers association and was often trundled out to talk to visiting foreign groups. I was describing British society to some social workers from Hamburg. They were very uncomfortable and said, “By your definition, all Germans are middle class.” That was because their attitude to education and aspiration are so different from ours. They do not have such deep divisions.

I am chair of the all-party group on social science and policy. We recently had a breakfast seminar on social mobility, in which Professor Paul Gregg from Bristol university said that the divisions within our society are still there and that social mobility at the lower level has reduced rather than increased in recent years. I am strongly in favour of making education the best it can be and of ensuring that everyone learns, but there are still attitudinal divisions within our society. The hon. Member for Thurrock told us how her friends said, “Why are you bothering to go to university? Why not stay with us?” My wife had the same pressures. “You don’t want to go to school. You want to come and get a job and get some money in your pocket,” they said, but she said, “No, I want to be a teacher.” She had to fight against the attitude of her social class and family. That attitude was common in those days, and is still there today.

Bryan Gould, who was an MP many years ago, went back to New Zealand because, as he said, he was so depressed about the social divisions in Britain. There was this attitude, he said, that somehow education was “not for the likes of us”. There was deference. Instead of being angry about being in a lower social class, many just accepted their lot. He felt that that was deeply conservative and very depressing.

Clearly, we must have the best possible education. We also need to intervene to try and change our culture, and get it across to young people that the possibilities in life are much greater than the horizons that they are looking at, and that if they do study well at school and have the right education, they can expand their horizons; they can learn a foreign language and know about things.

I have so many anecdotes to tell because I have read about this subject for a long time. In the 1980s, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research did a lot of research on this matter and it had an exchange of teachers between Moscow, in the then Soviet Union, and London. The Russian teachers spoke English and were quite happy to come and teach here. The English teachers could not speak Russian, but they went to teach in Moscow. They came back and said that the standard of education in Moscow was astonishing. They said that the children were doing things at 16 that we do at university. The Russian teachers were asked what they thought about the English pupils. They said, “The children were very nice and we enjoyed teaching them, but they didn’t appear to know anything.” We have had serious problems in our education and in our culture, but people did not seem to worry about it. We have started to do things differently.

The advocacy of the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) for the 11-plus and selection is mistaken. They were a social divider, which hived off one in five of the population. In my family, passing the 11-plus and going to university were compulsory. My parents were academics, and therefore it was expected. The thought of failure was unacceptable. That was opposite to my wife’s experience. We can talk about such things.

The 11-plus divided families and friends, and gave people completely different attitudes to life and what they could expect from it. My theory, and it is only a theory, is that that division has rippled forward through generations. Those who went to university from working-class backgrounds became middle class and their children did the same; those who did not do so carried on with working-class culture. That cultural division has remained with us, which is one reason why I so oppose the 11-plus.

[Mark Pawsey]

On the hon. Gentleman’s last point, why has social mobility reduced since the abolition of the 11-plus?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

As I said, I think that the divisions have rippled forward. I think that we have also failed in education. We are addressing the problem now.