Social Mobility: Careers Education

Maureen Burke Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Maureen Burke (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Andrew Ranger) for securing the debate. The topic of the debate is very close to my heart. I went straight from school, aged 15, to working in a factory. There was never any suggestion that I could do something different; it was just, “Go out and get a job.” There was no encouragement to look further afield, and there were no resources to find and develop an interest in an alternative career path or vocation. As a 15-year-old girl, I would have benefited so much from careers education in my school.

At the age of 40, I went back to school, so to speak, taking a six-month course in IT at John Wheatley College in Glasgow. Not only did that transform my CV and career opportunities, but it transformed my confidence. I discovered that it was not too late to try something new. In that sense, it was the most important piece of career education I ever received. I ended up waiting 25 years until I could consider another career option, to start a different life with a brighter future. That underlines the importance of careers education at an early age to change lives for the better. It also shows that high-quality careers education can be instrumental in transforming opportunities at every stage of life.

Responsibility for careers education in schools and colleges in Glasgow North East falls to the Scottish Government, so I will keep my remarks brief, but one area where we can see clear failure in careers education in Scotland is the housing sector. Data from the Chartered Institute of Building shows that three quarters of Scottish children have a positive view of a career in construction, but we are not seeing that translate into more of our young people beginning careers in bricklaying, carpentry, plumbing or any of the associated trades in the building industry.

That points to a clear issue at the careers education stage, where the enthusiasm and interests of our young people in this and many other sectors are not being adequately harnessed. They are well-paying jobs offering children a route out of poverty, which should be signposted through good careers advice. The failure is part of a much wider and very concerning decline in the quality of schooling in Scotland. Our schools are the driver of social mobility, and yet last year, nearly 24,000 young people—42% of pupils—left school without a single higher or equivalent. That shameful failure in our schools is holding back Scotland and our young people, especially in my constituency.