Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to improve social mobility in (a) Jarrow constituency, (b) South Tyneside and (c) the North East.

In December 2017, the department published ‘Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential’, an action plan for driving social mobility through education. This plan sets out how we will tackle entrenched barriers to opportunity at every life stage. Increasing equality of opportunity across the country and tackling regional disparity sits at the heart of this approach.

Our plans build on this government’s reforms since 2010, which are transforming opportunities for all children and young people right through their educational journey. This includes 1.9 million more children in good and outstanding schools than in 2010, record numbers of young people in education or training and more disadvantaged pupils going to university. Furthermore, the attainment gap between 16-year-olds who are disadvantaged and those who are not has closed by 10 per cent since 2011.

In addition, we are investing £70 million through the government’s Northern Powerhouse Schools Strategy to tackle areas of underperformance and weak capacity. As part of this, we are investing in a £5 million scheme in the north trialling projects to tackle the ‘word gap’ that exists between disadvantaged children and their peers at age five. We are also investing £12 million in the north as part of our commitment to establish a national network of English Hubs with a specific focus on improving early language and literacy, and expanding the reach of the Maths Hubs network in the North to spread excellence in maths teaching.