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Social Mobility and the Professions

Absolutely, and I think that parents have a very important role to play in that. They may want a lot for their children yet still not believe it is possible for them to achieve it. In such cases, schools and teachers have a very important role to play in building expectations in the children of what can be achieved. The Minister and the right hon. Member for Darlington mentioned some of the figures on parents' and young people's expectations of going into the professions. There is a more basic difference in people's expectations of their children going to university. More than a third of parents in the A and B socio-economic groups expect that their children will go to university, whereas the figure is about one in 10 for parents in groups D and E. That marked difference goes back to the point that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) has just made. If expectation is not built in, even if somebody has the ambition to do something they will not necessarily have the ability to take the final step to do it. We need to overcome that by creating other role models or children at both primary and secondary school. Leaving it all to secondary school is too late. We need expectation, ambition and aspiration from a much earlier stage. Much work has been done to try to get inspirational teachers into schools in deprived areas, and that can make a big difference. My mother-in-law was a maths teacher in a very run-down area of Liverpool, although she was not from that background. Having a diverse range of teachers in schools in deprived areas makes a big difference to pupils who can see different ways for their lives to progress. We need to ensure that we replicate that across the country. A role could also be played by former students of such schools who have been successful—perhaps who have gone to university and got professional jobs. They could try to encourage more young people to follow them in their success. We have already heard about schemes that have been introduced in universities, schools and independent bodies, but there are some interesting schemes that are nothing to do with career progression. For example, Allen & Overy, the law firm, has a scheme in which its lawyers are encouraged to help in schools in east London, perhaps providing basic help with reading. That helps the children, because they get personal attention from someone who focuses on them and makes them feel important. It also breaks down barriers if they see that someone who works as a corporate lawyer in the City of London is a normal human being, doing a job that they could perhaps do themselves. It brings the job closer to the young person so that they see that it is something that they could do. It is important to replicate schemes like that to try to break down some of the barriers that are in place. Other hon. Members have mentioned the role of careers advisers. I agree that they have a crucial role to play, and at a much earlier stage. I was given my first careers advice when I was about 17 and a half—although the advisers did not recommend that I enter Parliament. By that stage, I had already made choices that would limit what I could do, and we need to look at the choices that young people have to make and give them more options. Universities could also do a lot more to try to encourage people from more unusual backgrounds to think about attending. My constituency covers Cardiff university, which has a scheme that involves a lot of outreach work in schools in the much more deprived parts of the city. Students work with young people as, effectively, classroom assistants, trying to encourage them to think about university and their options. In particular, female engineering students go into schools to try to encourage young women to think about career options such as engineering that they often will not have considered as a possibility. Given the geographical spread of universities across the country, there is a huge opportunity for them to do more outreach work in schools nearby to encourage young people. There are some very good examples of such schemes already, and it is one important way of breaking down some of the expectational barriers. Many young people, especially boys, do not pull their lives together and work out what they want to do until they have left school. If we expect everyone to rely on careers advice during their teens, too many people will fall through the gaps. Hon. Members have already mentioned the need for flexible routes into the professions. Some professions are good at doing that. For example, it is still relatively easy—although less common than it used to be—to go into accountancy through a non-graduate route. Nor is it necessary to be a graduate to pursue Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development qualifications. But more could be done to use people's work experience. As the right hon. Member for Darlington pointed out, there are many divisions in some areas, such as PCSOs working with the police and classroom assistants working with teachers, and it is a big step for those who go into the non-graduate jobs to progress to the other roles. We need to consider making it much easier for PCSOs to use their experience to pursue a career in the police, and for classroom assistants to move into teaching. We must recognise that if they have the ability, the experience that they get on the job can be just as useful—if not even more valuable—as university in enabling them to fulfil a career that would otherwise be considered a graduate-only job. A lot of work could be done to help create career paths that would enable people to move, such as having fewer graduate posts so that people who do not have the opportunity to go to university or who realise later on in life what they want to do can progress into the professions. Quite a bit has already been said about the need for work experience and internships, and about the barriers that they put up. Clearly, some people find that difficult to access through the necessary contacts or find it expensive. The cost is probably one of the biggest issues for a lot of people from disadvantaged areas. We are just as guilty in this place. A lot of researchers find their work by doing volunteer internships and working in an MP's office, and that puts such a career out of the reach of an awful lot of young people. We need to consider how we recruit staff and try to encourage other people to apply. Internships and work experience are an easy way to get free labour for many of the professions, but they should not be seen as that—because they can be, barriers are being put up that do significant damage to the professions in the long run. The cost of internships and so on is not the only cost that puts people off. A lot of the professional training takes longer than other routes into work. Medicine requires a five-year degree, and law a three-year degree followed by one or two years of training. Not only do people face the additional cost of studying for a longer period of time, but they have to put off until later their ability to start earning. That makes it difficult for some people even to contemplate going into those careers. It is just too big a step for them to take right at the beginning. That is one reason why it should be easier to get into those careers later on. Those who had the aspiration at a young age but found the financial barrier too great at the age of 18 would be able to find other ways in through working that enabled them to reach the same end result. It is also important that we flag up that this is not just about education. The right hon. Member for Darlington mentioned some of the other great barriers that prevent people from disadvantaged backgrounds from being able to progress into professional roles. Elements as basic as expectations and the drive to succeed are affected by other factors as people are growing up. It is not just parents' expectations that affect people's views and aspirations, but those of friends at school and of the community. One thing that has had a significant impact on people's expectations and aspirations over the past few decades has been segregated social housing. It has exacerbated a lot of the problems in areas that are blighted by crime, family problems and health problems, but there is also a lot of evidence that negative forms of social capital have built up in certain geographical areas that are often associated with social housing. There is much more likely to be a culture of worklessness, higher levels of antisocial behaviour and higher levels of drug abuse. There are likely to be a lack of positive role models in the community, negative peer pressure and a poverty of ambition around people as they grow up, and that has had a significant impact on large numbers of communities across the UK. That situation is very difficult to unpick, because so many different influences pull down the young people growing up in those communities. We can knock down one barrier by giving them a good education, but if we do not solve the other problems there are still many barriers to overcome. It makes it much more challenging for them to progress out of the social environment in which they have grown up. A lot of practical problems are associated with areas where there are concentrations of social housing. For instance, access to private transport is significantly lower, and public transport is often not very good either. That presents a simple, physical barrier to studying, going to job interviews or to working outside the immediate area. Such areas also tend to have poorer-quality public services—not just in education, but in the provision of health, leisure facilities and the other things that children need for self-confidence and a belief in their ability to progress. For instance, it has been shown that sporting activities can have a big impact on young people's ability to work in teams. In turn, that gives them self-confidence and improves their ability to progress, but lack of appropriate facilities can be another disadvantage for people trying to get into work. The right hon. Member for Darlington talked about ghettos, and I have described how people in severely deprived areas are affected by practical disadvantages in terms of education, health provision and transport. Young people from such areas are more likely to have lower birth weights and to exhibit later behavioural conditions, and to begin primary school with lower levels of personal, social and emotional development. The fact that they are also likely to have higher levels of communication, language and literacy problems means that even the ones with high intelligence and great potential at an early age are held back. Even if we discount the other factors affecting their lives and concentrate on education, it is very difficult for such young people to break out of their circumstances. I turn now to the question of broader inequality in society that the right hon. Member for Darlington raised at the end of his contribution. Social mobility is not the only problem in that regard, as increasing inequality across society as a whole also plays a part. In 1991, the richest 1 per cent. of people owned 17 per cent. of the nation's wealth, but that proportion had risen to 23 per cent. by 2002. The gap is getting wider. There has been a huge amount of research internationally into equal and unequal societies. We know that the more unequal a society, the more unhappy it is. We also know that unequal societies have more of almost every social problem, from a greater incidence of teenage pregnancies to higher murder rates, and that the standard of health across the community is less good. As was noted earlier, inequality also generates high levels of what could be called social jealousy or frustration. In more equal societies, people have more chance to thrive because of their intellect, with their parents' backgrounds being less important in that regard. However, there is a clear link between inequality and social mobility: in all countries, children born of more educated parents are more literate than those from uneducated homes—that is common sense—but the gap between children with uneducated parents and those with educated parents is much smaller in more equal countries than it is in unequal countries such as the UK. In other words, in more equal countries, the built-in disadvantage for children from uneducated, illiterate households is much smaller. It is to be expected that in all countries there will some differential, based on parental background, in the proportion of young people who go to university and progress into the professions, but the gap in the UK is much wider than could normally be explained by reference to genes, upbringing and so on. All the evidence shows that bright children from disadvantaged areas are being let down by the systems that we have at the moment. In school, they are overtaken at a very early stage by their less bright but wealthier counterparts. They are less likely to go into higher or further education, and they are far less likely to enter a profession. The changes made to education over the years have not made enough of a difference. I have five, quick suggestions about what would make a difference. The first concerns early-years education, which I have already mentioned. We need much wider availability of really high-quality early-years education that not only enables parents to work, to get trained or to pursue further education, but helps children to develop, and helps to even out some of the disadvantages that they might face right at the start of life. Secondly, we need to look at the housing mix so that we can inject more opportunity and aspiration into deprived areas and break up the deprivation cycle that is pulling people down. Thirdly, Liberal Democrat policy is to introduce a pupil premium, which would mean that children from disadvantaged backgrounds had more money attached to them. It would follow them into whatever school they went to, which would mean that the finances were in the school to help provide additional support that might be needed. That would make such a child much more financially attractive to a school. If a school gets more money for taking such a child, it would be an incentive for it to do so. That policy might help to ensure a broader mix of backgrounds among young people in schools. Fourthly, we need to reduce the financial barriers to higher and further education. That does not just mean looking at internships and so on; it also means considering tuition fees and the cost of going to university. For some young people, that hurdle is just too high. The final issue is non-graduate routes into professions. I am sure that other people will talk about that, too. As has already been said this afternoon, that is not just an issue for the individuals concerned, although it is a criminal waste of human potential in a lot of cases. As a country, we need the best people to be in the top roles. We need the best people as our top soldiers, Cabinet Ministers, doctors and lawyers. If we do not make sure that those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds who show potential are able to get into those jobs, we are all missing out. I really look forward to seeing the report that the right hon. Member for Darlington is to bring forward. Today, he mentioned a lot of practical suggestions; I hope that we will all be able to pull together behind them, because the issue is not party political. It is a matter in which we all, as citizens of the UK, have a huge stake. Fortunately, it is right at the top of the political agenda of all three parties, and I hope that we can see progress over the next 12 months.