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Social Mobility and the Professions

That is a slightly more contentious point. Is it time for my hon. Friend to leave? We know that when universities broaden their base for recruitment, it does not lower levels of achievement. Figures from the Higher Education Funding Council show that students from state schools, once they get into university, perform at the same level as—or at a higher level than—students from private schools who might have got higher grades at A-level. The hon. Member for Havant referred to the fantastic scheme at King's college. In my view, it is an exemplar that all universities and employers would do well to heed. Why? Because it contains this simple lesson: it is not ability but opportunity that is unevenly distributed. The job of universities in particular is to ensure that opportunities are as widely distributed as possible, but some would find it hard to make that claim right now. Fifthly, entry to a professional job increasingly requires a university degree, as the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings mentioned. In the old days, as he said, journalists could work their way up from a local paper to Fleet street. Nowadays, Fleet street no longer exists and journalism is a graduate entry profession. Nursing and social care are now joining a long list of professions increasingly becoming graduate entry. There may be, and there often are, very good reasons for that, but there is also the danger that qualification inflation will simply make these professions more socially exclusive than they need to be. What I find interesting about so much professional work in recent years—the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) rightly defended the professions—can be seen in the teaching profession, which has recently sought to disaggregate and devolve some of its functions to non-graduates, so we now have classroom assistants helping teachers in the classroom. We have health care assistants helping nurses on the wards and we have police community support officers helping police officers on the streets. I think that there is an important lesson to be learned from that, which is how the professions can begin to create new ladders of opportunity by devolving functions down rather than always seeming to take functions and qualification levels up. I can tell the House that my panel is looking at how to extend such opportunities. Many of the panel's recommendations will, of course, be for the professions to action, and I have seen a lot of willingness on their part to do so. The most progressive parts of the professions are already opening their doors to a wider cohort of talent. I hope that when we produce the report in the autumn, it will very much go with the grain of those efforts. Equally, where there remains evidence of a closed-shop mentality, I hope that we will be fearless in exposing and tackling it. I do not believe that it is only in the country's interest for the professions to fish in a wider pool of talent, as it is in the professions' own interests, too. If the professions are properly to serve the interests of a Britain that is characterised by its rich diversity more than ever before, they, too, need more fully to embrace the notion of diversity. Despite some commendable efforts, that is not, by and large, where I believe they are today. Achieving that is not just a job for the professions. Of course, they can do a lot more to put their house in order, but what they cannot do is instil in kids an aspiration to pursue a professional career. That has to come from individual citizens, their families and their communities. Neither can the professions create the framework within which individuals will have many more opportunities to realise their aspirations to progress. That is properly the job of the Government. There is a broader canvas here, which both the hon. Member for Havant and my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Cabinet Office touched on in their remarks. In my view—I stress that this is my view and not necessarily that of the panel—it is a canvas on which we need to begin to paint a rather different picture. I said earlier that I am very proud of what this Government have done to open up more opportunities to more people. Like many others, I would have liked progress to have been faster, but it is no mean achievement when the Sutton Trust can report that after decades of social mobility declining in our country, it has now at the very least bottomed out. That is progress. It is also progress when primary schools in the poorest areas have improved almost twice as fast as those in the most affluent, and when in the secondary school sector, city academies—despite having twice the number of kids on free school meals—are improving their performance at four times the national average. It is also progress when, notwithstanding our debate about early years education, this country has finally begun to learn the lessons from the Scandinavian countries where universal child care has for many years brought enhanced mobility and narrowed inequality. This, for me, is a fundamental point: the desire to increase social mobility cannot be a substitute for the desire for a more equal society. It is no coincidence that countries as different as Sweden, Australia and the Netherlands are among the most socially fluid in the world. They are also among the most fair in the world. That is why the Government's efforts—despite the obvious challenges—to abolish child poverty are so important, and that is why I hope all parties in the House will make similar firm commitments, backed by firm resources, to achieve that objective. Breaking the relationship between class origin and class destination is a battle for the long term, which requires an holistic approach. Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel prize for economics, once rightly said families can suffer not only economic but cultural, educational and housing disadvantage. We need to make a fundamental break from the approach that has so often dominated policy in the past. We need to move from the traditional welfare state approach, which seeks to correct the outcome of market-driven inequalities such as family poverty or low wages retrospectively, towards an approach that proactively reduces inequality and advances mobility by tackling the roots of those problems rather than their symptoms. That is not a job for any one part of the Government; it is a job for the whole Government. Let me give an example. We know that in a modern, knowledge-based economy, education will become ever more the motor of mobility, but despite the good progress of recent years, the attainment gap remains far too wide. A child who is not receiving free school meals is still much more likely to get five good GCSEs than one who is. Less than half the number of black Afro-Caribbean boys get five good GCSEs, although the national average is closer to two thirds. Like many others, I applaud the Government's efforts to break that cycle of educational disadvantage. City academies, trust schools, a focus on personalised learning and the new soft skill development described in the Rose review are making a difference, and I think that they will continue to do so in future. However, I believe that we need to do more still to ensure that good schools are just as accessible to poorer parents as they are to the better-off. The truth is that the more wealth people have, the more choice they are given. If they are wealthy enough, they can opt their children out of poorer schools and take them to private schools. I have no objection to that. Alternatively, they can supplement state education with private tuition, or use the most potent of all market mechanisms and buy a house adjacent to a good school. By and large, selection by academic ability has disappeared from our education system, but let us not pretend that selection by social position has disappeared. Unfortunately, we still have an education system in which affluence buys attainment, and that must restrict mobility. There are 25,000 schools in the country. In the overwhelming majority standards are rising, but in 2007, 638 secondary schools containing around 600,000 kids were failing to secure five good GCSEs for 30 per cent. of their pupils. Overwhelmingly, those schools have been consistently underperforming for many years, and guess what? They are located in the areas of greatest social disadvantage. I have long advocated that, in addition to the raft of measures that the Government have rightly introduced to improve standards and discipline and provide good teachers, and in addition to all the other structural changes that have been made, one further step should be taken. Kids and their parents in disadvantaged areas must be given precisely what kids and parents in more affluent areas get, which is more than preference: it is choice. My proposal to do so, in which I have long believed, is for those parents to be given an education credit—some call it a voucher; I am not bothered what it is called, but what it does—worth perhaps 150 per cent. of the cost of educating their child, so that they can take their child from the school that is failing to deliver good results to another state school that is delivering results. I know that there will be many objections and concerns about such a proposal, but I do not believe that it is right—or that it should be tolerated—to have a situation where too many disadvantaged kids are still let down by the schools system. Overwhelmingly, I repeat, school standards are rising, but sadly the areas where they rise least and where most progress needs to be made are in the poorest areas. The only way in which I believe that can be done is by empowering parents to have greater choice. That brings me to my final point. I do not believe that we will get social mobility moving in this country if we think that somehow or other it is purely economic distribution that is our problem. We will not get social mobility moving if we think that it is only wealth that is unevenly distributed. It is also power. When you are poor you have precious little power. The sense of hopelessness that clouds the poorest communities in our country grows out of disempowerment. If Britain is to get moving again socially, people need to be able not just to get a job, training or child care but to enjoy far greater control over, and have a bigger say in, how they lead their lives. Beating crime, creating jobs and rebuilding estates all help, but I have long believed that that cloud of despondency can only be dispelled through a modern participatory politics that allows both local communities and individual citizens more evenly and directly to share in power. One thing is certain. Modern Britain cannot work if it harbours a closed shop mentality. Our economy will not prosper unless we harness the talent of all of those who are able to and aspire to make a contribution. Our society will not work unless people feel that their endeavours and efforts are suitably rewarded. That is why I hope that the work of the panel that I am honoured to chair will help renew our determination in this place systematically to unblock every obstacle that stands in the way of individuals being able to realise their own aspirations to progress. That for me is what modern government is all about and that is why I very much welcome this debate.