Race Disparity Audit

Richard Burden Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am not sure there was a question in that, but I take what the hon. Gentleman said in the spirit in which I know he meant it. His remarks will have been heard.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

Will the First Secretary address in a bit more detail the serious issue, highlighted by the audit, of educational underachievement among white working-class children? In particular, will he address the fact that only 32% of white children on free school meals reach their expected level of attainment at key stage 2 and that white working-class children from poorer backgrounds are the least likely to go to university? Are we not dealing with a cycle of deprivation that spans the generations? The challenge is not, as he said it is, to “explain or change”—it is to explain and change. May I put it to him that tackling those cycles of deprivation is not helped—rather, it is the reverse—by cuts to Sure Start and early years provision?

[Damian Green]

In that case, I think many of us would agree on the “explanation”. At the root of a lot of the educational reforms introduced in recent years is improving the attainment in schools containing the sorts of pupils the hon. Gentleman referred to, so that they get a fair chance in life. That is what the whole of this is about and we will continue that approach. I have already said that we have far more children going to good or excellent schools than was the case five years ago and we have more children from disadvantaged background going to university than ever before, but there is always more to be done in this area. This audit gives us some of the tools to enable us to do it in a more precise way. That will be the long-term benefit of this audit.