Education and Social Mobility

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

No, I do not. The legacy of 13 years of Labour was disastrous for our youngest people, not just because of grade inflation, which gave millions of young people the sense that they had achieved grades although they were not at the level they needed to be, but—dare I say it—because under the previous Labour Government, youth unemployment went up by nearly 50%. If opportunity is about anything, it surely starts with the dignity of being able to have a job and a career.

Last week I was at Handsworth Grammar School, where around 25% of pupils are eligible for the deprivation element of the pupil premium. Those young people talked to me about how much they value the education they are getting. One student, who is planning to go to Oxford—[Interruption.] I am not sure precisely what that young man would say about the chattering from Opposition Members, but I think he would be extremely dismayed to hear the school that is giving him a transformational opportunity being talked down. His family had arrived in this country just two generations before. His grandparents arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Within two generations of that, he is hoping to be able to go to Oxford. He talked to me about what the chance to go to a grammar school has meant for him, his family and his future prospects. It is levelling up, and that is what we want to do.

I hope that we all agree that the social mobility agenda is about more young people having opportunities and aiming higher, like that gentleman, not fewer. Asking in our consultation how we can make grammars more open to disadvantaged children is exactly what we should be doing.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is speaking powerfully about the opportunities that grammar schools provide to children from very ordinary backgrounds. Does she agree that it is a real tragedy that we have not invested more in grammar schools? The existing ones in my constituency are under massive pressure from the children of parents living around my constituency, which restricts the number of places available for children in Rugby.

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is right. It is simply untenable to say to parents who want more choice, and to children who otherwise would have a place in such schools, that they cannot have it. That is simply wrong. We should at least allow local communities to decide. It is not tenable to take the approach of simply saying to parents, “No, you can’t have them; we know better,” or of saying to a child, “You got the grades to be able to go, but you are not allowed to because we have decided.”