Social Mobility and the Professions

Part of Bill Presented – in the House of Commons at 3:43 pm on 11 June 2009.

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Photo of Jennifer Willott Jennifer Willott Shadow Secretary of State, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 3:43, 11 June 2009

It is a daunting prospect to follow such a knowledgeable and interesting speech from Mr. Milburn and to have to confess that I am one of the third of Members of this House educated in an independent school. I am feeling waves of class guilt this afternoon. I welcome the Minister to her new role.

Clearly the debate is topical. All three main parties have had commissions of some kind or instituted research into social mobility. It is clearly an important issue to people all across the political spectrum. As the matter has been discussed across the spectrum, some interesting views have been expressed in blogs and in political commentary in newspapers and the media.

There have been mutterings from some quarters that wealthy parents obviously will have children who do better because the parents are likely to be more educated, more intelligent and more motivated and will expect their children to do better, and that that is the real explanation for the lack of social mobility in Britain. There may be something in that, but there are also clear signs that children in Britain from disadvantaged backgrounds who show great potential are being let down. A lot of statistics have been flying back and forth this afternoon, but one in particular sends shivers down my spine: tests on pre-school children at age three show that the initially least bright children from the richest fifth of households overtake the initially brightest children from the poorest fifth of households between the ages of five and 10. That shows not only that there are many influences at play other than genes, but that that happens remarkably fast. I find it horrifying that from the age of three in just two years we see a marked change in children's opportunities.

Education and upbringing are an influence. Those who get a superior education in a school that does not have discipline problems and where the other pupils are keen to learn will have an advantage that sticks with them into later life, and the impact of a private education is much greater than we would expect. For example, students who have a private education are 55 times more likely to be accepted into one of the five best universities in the UK. That is far higher than we would expect as a result of normal opportunity, genetics, parents' expectations and so forth.

The Government are keen to tackle this issue; they have been talking about it, and they have put in place many measures over the past few years. However, the same barriers are still in place, and some of them are even greater than before. Each year, 60,000 people who were in the top 20 per cent. of their school cohort do not reach higher education. That is a lot of people whose potential is being wasted as they enter adulthood. Although the Government have focused on education, there has not been enough progress towards making a step change.

There is considerable evidence that the introduction and expansion of universal education systems in the UK and broadly across western Europe have not led to increases in relative social mobility.