Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of the report by The Sutton Trust entitled The Opportunity Index, published in May 2025.

The Sutton Trust’s valuable report highlights that too many children face barriers to success because of who they are or where they come from. This is why, through the Opportunity Mission, we will break the link between young people’s backgrounds and their future success, by tackling child poverty, ensuring all children have safe and loving homes, get the best start in life, achieve and thrive in school and develop skills to succeed in life.

We agree with the report that these challenges are multi-faceted and require a complex package of measures. That is why we have started to make progress by expanding free school meals to all children on Universal Credit, have delivered the largest ever uplift to early years pupil premium, are driving school improvement through our regional improvement for standards and excellence teams, and launched foundation apprenticeships as part of a Youth Guarantee so that all 18 to 21 year-olds in England have access to education, training or help to find a job or an apprenticeship.