Education and Social Mobility

Wes Streeting Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I am grateful for that intervention. Not only is that spending protected for the course of this Parliament, but we are working through the education endowment fund to ensure that we understand how that investment can have the biggest impact for disadvantaged children. I went to see a grammar school last week that has a high proportion of children who are eligible for free school meals and the pupil premium. We looked at what it is doing to improve the attainment of those young people.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

To help build a consensus around our education policy, perhaps the Secretary of State could give us one piece of evidence that suggests that grammar schools would improve educational outcomes and social mobility for the most disadvantaged.

[Justine Greening]

We know that the education gap between children on free school meals who go to grammars and their better-off counterparts is closed during the course of their education. We know that disadvantaged children who go to grammars have a better chance of getting into university, including Russell Group universities, and that is because their attainment improves.

Education is at the heart of how we drive social mobility in our country, which is why the Government have had a programme of such radical reform over the past six years. The academies and free schools programme, which I noticed the shadow Secretary of State was not willing to support, has given schools the freedom to run themselves in the best interests of their children and local communities. The introduction of the EBacc has given more children access to a core curriculum to make sure that they keep their options open, not closed, as they make decisions about their future. Thanks to the hard work of teachers all over the country, 1.4 million more children are being taught in schools that are good or outstanding than in 2010. That means that 1.4 million more children are getting access to an education that will allow them to make the most of their talents.

Of course, this starts with early years education. Children must arrive at school ready and able to learn if they are to take full advantage of the education on offer, which is why we are introducing 30 hours of free childcare for the working parents of three and four-year-olds. It is also why we are looking at how we can improve the quality of the early years workforce even further. Teachers are crucial in improving attainment outcomes for our young people, which is why we are reforming initial teacher training.

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[Justine Greening]

That is quite right. The first six opportunity areas we picked are very different places— some coastal, some more rural and some more urban. That is because we recognise that those communities each face different challenges—sometimes slightly different; sometimes significantly so—in raising attainment. We know that we need to work not only inside schools with teachers and the headteachers leading those schools, but outside schools. We will have better careers advice and mentoring. We will work with the CBI, for example, and the Federation of Small Businesses on opportunities for work experience, traineeships and apprenticeships.

[Wes Streeting]

I am delighted that the Secretary of State has given way on that specific point because under the previous Labour Government the London Challenge achieved something very similar by doing exactly what she has described, alongside initiatives such as the education maintenance allowance, grants for the poorest students, a huge transformation of funding for teaching and school buildings, and freedoms for schools and teachers. Is she sure she has nothing to learn from that Government?

[Justine Greening]

I certainly do not think so in relation to the outcomes achieved for young people who left the education system having all too often taken exams that suffered from grade inflation and—critically, as we see from the report by Alison Wolf—having taken qualifications that employers simply did not value, but that those people had often been told to do because that was an easier route for the institution that they were in. There is lots to learn from that Labour Government, but clearly it is what not to do, rather than what to do.

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[Chris Philp]

It is clear in my area of Croydon that parents who want a particular kind of academic education have to travel out of the borough to either Bromley or Sutton because the kind of education that they want for their children is not available. That leads me on to my next point about parental choice. If parents want a particular kind of education for their children, it is not for this House to deny them that choice on ideological grounds. We should be enabling choice.

By the way, no Government Member is suggesting a return to the system under the Education Act 1944. No one is proposing the reintroduction of secondary moderns. We propose a diverse system with a whole range of schools with different specialisms. We already have many different kinds of academies and free schools, and grammar schools have a place in that diverse system along with other types of school. Parents can then exercise choice over which school works for them. It is clear that when free school meal children go to grammar schools, they do significantly better than if they do not.

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to my Treasury Committee colleague for giving way. Part of the explanation for his last point is that, given the very nature of academic selection, the higher-attaining pupils from the poorest backgrounds attend those schools. The evidence base as a whole shows that if a pupil from a deprived background goes to a grammar school, they are less likely to do as well as their better-off counterparts, and the impact on the system as a whole is not positive. That is why every leading educational expert says that this is a bad policy.

[Chris Philp]

I refer my Treasury Committee colleague to the Education Policy Institute report that was published in September—it is quite recent, so perhaps he has not had a chance to read it—that found that the seven-grade advantage adjusts for prior academic attainment. Therefore, with the same level of attainment, a child on free school meals does better in a grammar school than they would if they went to a non-grammar school.

I have heard two objections to grammar schools from Opposition Members. There are two reasonable objections that one might make, so it is only fair to acknowledge them and try to respond. The first objection is that only 3% of grammar school pupils are on free school meals, whereas the figure for the population as a whole is 13%. It is reasonable for Members on both sides of the House to draw attention to that deficiency and to question it, but my answer to that challenge is that, by being inventive and creative, it is possible to increase that percentage radically. There is a fantastic example from the Schools of King Edward VI in Birmingham, which has increased its free school meal intake from 3% or 4% up to more than 20%, which is above the national average. That has been achieved through a series of innovative measures, including active outreach to primary schools in deprived areas, free help with tests for children from deprived families—one problem is that middle-class parents pay for coaching for their children—and bursaries for parents who are worried about the costs of uniforms, musical instruments or extra travel. By doing those things, the group has transformed its free school meal intake.