Social Mobility Index

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Percy. I congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on initiating this debate on the important social mobility index that was published recently by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission.

I begin by celebrating the fact that the borough I represent in outer north-east London—the London Borough of Redbridge—was identified as being third in England for social mobility across a range of factors. That is testament to the hard work of the young people, their teachers, the broader educational establishment of local authorities, academies and multi-academy trusts, and families. I represent an increasingly diverse community, and it says something about the character of that community that we have produced such results. However, I am afraid the report that was published a week or so ago painted a picture of England as an increasingly divided nation where life chances are determined by postcode rather than potential. I wholeheartedly agree with the words of Alan Milburn, the chair of the commission, who said:

“It is not ability that is unevenly distributed in our society. It is opportunity.”

It is clear from some of the results in the report that many people are let down from the moment they are born because of the opportunities that are available or not available on their doorstep.

Beneath that grim reading, I want to focus on the remarkable Labour success story that is our great city of London. When I was growing up, London was a byword for failure, and schools were notorious for failing young people and letting down whole communities. I stand here as a product of the remarkable progress that was made—first through the London challenge and, secondly, through the excellence in cities scheme. By 2005, London schools were performing above the national average, and by the time Labour left office in 2010, London had a higher proportion of good and outstanding schools than anywhere else in England.

We have to return to the mantra, “What matters is what works”, which underpinned Labour’s successful approach to the debate about educational opportunities. Looking back on the London challenge, a number of things made the programme particularly successful, including the fact that it brought a sharp focus on the quality of leadership, and on teaching and learning. It really was about standards rather than structures. The programme enabled collaboration between different schools and used data sets to compare schools serving similar populations. Frankly, there was no place to hide for people who would do down the aspirations and abilities of pupils because they happened to serve a particularly deprived community. There was an expectation that any child born in this city should be able to achieve their full potential, and that is why we saw those remarkable results. I am afraid that we seem to have moved further away from that with our increasing focus on structures rather than standards.

The Government should consider a number of things off the back of the report. First, they should consider introducing a coastal challenge and a rural challenge, taking the successful ingredients that underpinned the London challenge and applying them to the social mobility blackspots highlighted by Alan Milburn’s commission.

Secondly, the Government ought to reinvigorate the important but increasingly discredited northern powerhouse agenda by developing an industrial strategy for the north of England that includes a real focus on education and skills. In particular, there should be a focus on ensuring that people have opportunities not only for education and training, but for employment on their doorstep that matches a whole range of talents and abilities. That is difficult in the current climate given the industrial challenges faced, particularly in steel communities.

The third thing we need to do is to look seriously at the amount of money spent on widening participation in higher education. So many of our academically elite universities continue to be far too socially elite, and so many universities that claim to be success stories in widening participation in fact have poor graduate destination data and track records of retention. We need to start asking, amid all the hand-wringing and the emphasis that is placed on schools, whether the £718 million that is likely to be spent towards the end of the decade might be better spent on schools and early years. If we do that, we may be in a far better place when it comes to future reports. Every child—whatever their background and wherever they were born—should have the same opportunity to succeed as far as their abilities and talents will take them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Percy. I congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) on securing this debate. I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on social mobility.

Improving social mobility is arguably one of the biggest and most complicated challenges of our times. This country is too unequal, too closed and too divided. It is a country where, far too often, where a person is born and who they are born to, define what their life chances will be. The income gap between the richest and poorest in society continues to widen, and the UK stands alongside the United States in having the lowest social mobility among advanced nations.

As they progress through life, young people from the most disadvantaged areas are nearly 10 times less likely than those from the most advantaged to take up a place at a top university. Our professions are disproportionately populated with people who studied at Oxbridge or in private education; the all-party group will shortly launch an inquiry into access to the professions. Tackling such issues is not just a moral imperative but an economic one.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said, the commission’s social mobility index is not a new concept, as it was pioneered by the Sutton Trust last year through its mobility map. However, it is instructive to look at both studies, as their findings were similar: that the issue is far more complex than the conventional wisdom of looking simply at rich areas versus poor areas, or urban versus rural.

Although the affluence of an area and the life chances of the young people who live there are undoubtedly linked, we now know that social mobility issues affect not only the poorest areas in our country but some of the wealthiest. In many cases, affluent areas are not doing as well by their disadvantaged children as places that are much more deprived. We also know that children living in similar areas, sometimes just a few miles apart, can have markedly different life chances.

Although the commission’s report considers local authorities, the Sutton Trust mobility map allows us to drill down into individual constituencies, where we can find significant differences within a local authority area. For example, in my council area of Cheshire West, City of Chester is shown to have a significantly higher level of social mobility than my constituency of Ellesmere Port and Neston, although they are both in the same local authority area and only a few miles apart. Such differences are simply not apparent in the commission’s index. In a local authority area with a population of more than 330,000, I suggest that pockets where social mobility is at its worst can be easily overlooked. Indeed, although a constituency basis is a much more useful indicator than a local authority one, I would go further: it ought to be done at a ward or super output area level.

Maybe we will get to that point in future, but we do not need that level of detail to conclude what is clear from both indexes: London and its commuter belt are pulling away from the rest of the country. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in those areas are far more likely than others in the rest of the country to achieve good outcomes in school. What is so valuable about the social mobility index and the mobility map is that at least we can now begin to map and question why such variations exist. Such is the variety of potential factors influencing outcomes that establishing the most effective way to improve social mobility can at times be a little like trying to nail blancmange to a wall, but there are some fundamentals with which we can start.

For example, we know that the effects of good teaching are especially significant for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. In one year with very effective teachers, a child can gain 1.5 years’ worth of learning, so we need to consider better policies to incentivise teachers to work in disadvantaged areas. We also need to give local authorities across the country the resources and powers to replicate what was done with the London challenge, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) discussed eloquently earlier. There is a huge amount of good practice out there. In London, we have seen that, through concerted effort by a range of partners, the gap between the most advantaged and the most disadvantaged pupils can be reduced.

I hope that this debate signals a genuine intention across all political parties to improve social mobility. I sense that it is there, but all good intentions need to be matched with a little self-awareness that some Government policies do not help social mobility but in fact hinder it. I have grave concerns about some of the recent changes to student finance and the proposals that will shortly be consulted on for changes to the nurse bursary system, which the shadow Minister will undoubtedly address in his comments.

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend is giving an excellent speech. I also have concerns about housing. When I was growing up, I always had the security of the council flat where I lived, whereas many families in similar situations whom I represent live on the other side of London and commute in.

[Andrew Percy (in the Chair)]

I say to the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) that I wanted to call the Front-Bench speakers at this point. Can he please respond to the intervention and then conclude?