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Social Mobility and the Professions

Oh happy days! Yes, I do, and I also well remember my hon. Friend's championing of Peninsula's cause. She knows that Sir John Tooke, who does a fantastic job at Peninsula, is one of the panel members. It is not only one of the most progressive but one of the best medical schools in the country—I should have said "and", not "but" in that sentence. It is one of the best because it is one of the most progressive. John is an impressive person who brings great knowledge and insight to the panel's work. My hon. Friend is right. I think that the hon. Member for Havant made the same point in his contribution. There is a danger in debates on education. There are strong adherents to the importance of early years education, and there are those who say, "What really counts is pre-16", while others say, "In the modern world, where skills are changing ever faster, it's about what happens post-16." However, it is not a case of either/or. We must move from a mindset of educational opportunity having to be about a one-off chance—it is not; it must be a chance throughout life. If ever there were a need to realise the slogan, "lifelong learning", it is now, in the modern world. The world is changing so fast and knowledge is expanding so quickly that if we limit children to a one-off opportunity at 11, 16 or 18, we will do the current and future generations an enormous disservice. Of course, no single lever can prise open opportunities in the professions and no single organisation can achieve that. The subject is far too complex. It is as much about family networks as careers advice; as much about standards in schools as university admission procedures, and as much about work experience as career development opportunities. The panel is looking at all those aspects and many more, but it might be helpful to the House to know that we are focusing on a handful of issues in particular and to hear where we are in our consideration of them. First, how do we provide many more young people with practical exposure to the professions at an early enough stage in their education? There is no shortage of fantastic schemes, including school outreach and mentoring schemes, run by fabulous organisations such as the Brightside Trust, the Sutton Trust, the Citizenship Foundation and the Social Mobility Foundation. Exposure to what it means to be a doctor, a lawyer, a journalist or even—heaven help us—a politician and hearing first hand what it means to do the job is particularly important, as we have discussed, for kids who come from families who have no such exposure to professional careers. Such schemes often have a bigger impact on children's future career development than school work experience programmes do, which are crying out for a radical overhaul. Good though the initiatives that I have mentioned are, however, they are pretty fragmented and deeply unco-ordinated. To give one example, only 60 of the 260 combined cadet forces, from which so many future armed service officers are drawn, are based in state schools. The rest are based in independent schools. That, like so much else, is something that we have to change. So too is the way in which we provide advice and guidance, so that young people can make an informed choice about the career that is right for them. This is the second area on which the panel is rightly focusing attention. Like the hon. Member for Havant, I believe that a fundamental overhaul is needed. We have a more complex labour market than ever before. More than ever, navigating young people through the choices, opportunities and complexities that they now confront requires good careers advice. Yet one survey of students found that three in four were unhappy with the quality of the advice that they had received. A further survey, commissioned by the panel from the very good careers website icould and released today, found that 70 per cent. of under-14-year-olds say that they have had no careers advice and that 45 per cent. of over-14-year-olds say that they have had no advice or very limited advice. Girls rate the advice rather worse than boys do. During all our proceedings, all our hearings and all our evidence-gathering sessions, I have heard barely one good word about the careers work of the Connexions service. I have no doubt that other aspects of its work are absolutely exemplary. However, I can only conclude that its focus on the small minority of vulnerable young people with deep, entrenched and complex problems is unfortunately distracting it from providing good careers advice to the majority of young people. That is simply not good enough. I know that there has been some change, but in my view the service requires a quite radical rethink. I can tell the House that my panel will be making recommendations on precisely how we should do so. Thirdly, getting a professional job nowadays requires more than aptitude and ability and more, even, than a qualification. People also have to be able to demonstrate work experience. Four out of five employers say that they go on to employ interns. Internships have become, as it were, a new rung on the modern professional career ladder. All too often, however, internships are handed out on the basis of who someone knows, not what they know. Too often, what counts is family connections, rather than open advertisement. That, too, must change. As my hon. Friend the Minister said, most internships in careers such as law are overwhelmingly concentrated in London and the south-east. Because interns usually have to work for free, many young people from average family backgrounds are simply priced out of the intern market altogether. Again, that is an area on which the panel will be making recommendations for change. Fourthly, the way in which employers and universities go about selecting their entrants will of course determine the future social profile of the professions. Some make a big effort to recruit widely; others recruit very narrowly. In the end, it is for employers to decide how they go about recruiting their staff, but whereas nowadays we collect and publish data on the gender and racial make-up of organisations to ensure that those such as the civil service are what they say on the tin—and are equal opportunities employers—we neither collect nor publish comparable data on social background. In my view, we need to think very carefully about that.