Social Mobility Committee Report

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, it was indeed a privilege to serve on this committee. I, too, am grateful to the many people who gave evidence to us and to the committee staff, Luke Hussey, Emily Greenwood and Morgan Sim, who responded to my numerous requests, often at the last minute. I view the Government’s response as an introduction, as our report ran to nearly 140 pages and the response is only 11 pages of very widely spaced text with large margins. I hope the Minister will agree to meet interested members of the committee to discuss the detailed report in more depth.

I came through the academic route from school—A-levels at sixth-form college, university and then a pupillage in Kings Chambers in Manchester—to become a practising barrister, but from a background of parents who worked all their lives in a factory. I was therefore not hugely conversant with what I now know to be the vocational route, but you soon learn that if you are to get that elusive tenancy as a barrister you need to impress not only your fellow barristers, your pupil mistress, the head of chambers, if you come across them, and those solicitors who give you work, but also the clerks. Clerks then had usually joined chambers at 16 as a runner, and then had a junior role in the clerks’ room before becoming a junior clerk and rising up the ranks. They were vocationally very talented as salespeople and negotiators and were incredibly business-savvy. Even after you were taken on as a barrister, you soon knew if they were not pleased with you when the work given to you as a junior barrister involved travelling from Manchester all the way to Pontefract or Hull for a 10-minute hearing.

Looking back, there was a clear career progression for clerks, and they were deservedly highly respected. They had not picked up any of the social conditioning that Mr Tony Moloney of National Grid described to the committee in his evidence, which said that,

“if you do not go to university you have failed”.

Besides being wrong as an attitude, this would mean that the majority of our young people have failed as the majority do not go on to higher education or become NEETs. The majority—the committee debated many labels for this group but settled on simply “the majority” to get this simple point home—go into further education, work or apprenticeships.

I will not be able to do justice to the enormous amount of evidence we heard as I make four brief key points. They are, first, looking at ourselves, then a simple system, then flexibility and, finally, a new vision for the majority. Let us begin here at home, looking at ourselves, the House, Members and the Civil Service. I commend wholeheartedly the recent introduction by the House of Lords of apprenticeships that will provide high-quality entry-point careers to young people within the administration of this workplace. The committee met the head of the House of Lords staff privately, and I am very pleased to see this development. With regard to Members of your Lordships’ House, I recognise that it can be difficult to provide work, or even work experience, when many of us are part-time and have few support staff, but I know that many noble Lords wish to give back and to provide opportunities, which is why a group of us will be writing to the Lord Speaker to ask him to look at the viability of running a formal work experience scheme here. This would seem an obvious next step from Peers’ outreach to schools and, combined with the contacts gained by Parliament’s excellent Education Service, there must surely be a network to advertise and recruit for a meritocracy-based work-experience scheme here.

Also close to home is the Civil Service scheme, which I have raised in your Lordships’ House previously and about which I was in correspondence with my noble friend Lord Bridges under the previous Government. If I understand correctly—and I read his letter very carefully—there are high-quality apprenticeships in the Civil Service, but you cannot join the fast track at the age of 18 on an apprenticeship. You have to transfer in later on. Why? We received evidence that you can join Deloitte, National Grid or M&S and be on the path to the top from the start. In fact, they were clear in their evidence that senior managers, even directors, of M&S and National Grid began as apprentices. The noble Lord, Lord Stone of Blackheath, who ran Marks & Spencer, joined from being a market trader in Pontypridd. Sir John Parker, who former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asked to run Harland and Woolf and who turned it around between 1983 and 1993, joined that company as an apprentice and went on to be president of the Royal Academy of Engineering. You can join the British Army as an officer at 18, so why not the Civil Service? Such embedding of the lack of parity of esteem for graduate entry against those who enter at 18 undermines the stated view of Her Majesty’s Government that vocational and academic routes are equal in value. I hope the Minister will be able to inform your Lordships’ House today that the fast track is being reviewed to sort this matter out lest talented young people be deterred from applying.

My second point is about simplicity. Our report recommends a system along the lines of the UCAS system so that the majority of students have a simple access point with the relevant information about various vocational qualifications, careers and earnings. This recommendation is repeated in the State of the Nation 2016 report by the Social Mobility Commission, and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that of all the recommendations, it should be a priority for the Government. I was going to say that the current system is complicated, fragmented and so on, but it is not actually a system. It really is not if you try to engage with it. It needs coherence. It sets too many young people up to start on the wrong route. Too many young people spend a year doing the wrong vocational course or starting A-levels and then needing to switch. If at this point they find the right route for them, that year can have funding implications for their study as the next two years may fall partly under the adult education budget, apparently partly depending on their birthday. I confess I never felt confident that I fully understood the complexities of the funding arrangements for the 16 to 19 cohort. Some simplicity, as with UCAS, is urgently needed.

My third point is about flexibility. In this regard, I shall refer first to a case that struck me and other members of the committee: young people who are carers. A charity facilitated discussions with young people. A lady in her early 20s, whom we met, had been thwarted in her career choice as her caring responsibilities, which she had borne most of her life, entitled her to carer’s allowance. She wanted to be a midwife, but that was a full-time course. Although she could have done the time around her caring responsibilities, the inflexibility of the system meant she would lose her carer’s allowance. She was allowed to undertake only a part-time course, and midwifery was a full-time course in her rural, east-coast location. Many noble Lords, including the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, rightly champion the situation of care leavers, but we hear much less about young people who are carers. Will the Minister confirm that this issue, which is specifically raised in our report, will be investigated by Her Majesty’s Government and/or the Social Mobility Commission to look at proposed solutions?

Another point is about flexibility and self-critique by employers to ensure their recruitment is open to all. I found the evidence from Mr Moloney of National Grid and Ms Codd from Deloitte in October 2015 most compelling. National Grid not only focuses on trying to recruit ex-offenders, which is admirable enough, but has also sought to reach young people with learning disabilities, of whom only 7% get into employment, although 70% of them gain employment from the programme in the firm. Deloitte has gone to great lengths to recruit 200—rising soon to 400—people at the age of 18 on a level playing field.

Ms Codd’s evidence is worth quoting to your Lordships, as it gives some indication of the depth Deloitte has gone to in order to achieve that level playing field. She said that,

“the BrightStart scheme … has five components, and we have looked at each of those components thoroughly over the past two years to make sure that the playing field is completely level and we are not inadvertently favouring anybody from middle or upper socioeconomic backgrounds. For example, we still set a requirement for 260 UCAS points. However, when we look at academics we contextualise that now, so it is about looking at the background within which any achievement was attained. We have also introduced blind CVs when it comes to institutions where individuals have studied to make sure that we can remove unconscious bias … we have moved away from a competency-based interview to an interview that focuses more on values, because again we realised that if we focused on competency, as in, ‘Give us an example of when you did something’, that was inadvertently disadvantaging those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds”.

It is taking this to its suppliers and clients. Why? It is the right thing, but she also said it is a smart thing to do:

“For us it was a real business imperative. We want the right talent. We want the best, and the best does not necessarily have to come from a particular background”.

I hope it will be a key government priority to ensure that the new job creation we are witnessing in the digital economy is, again, open to all. I hope the Government will look at how high-tech start-ups are ensuring that there is a level playing field. This very new business model needs to ensure that it breaks the mould and is open to all.

Finally, even if all firms had the best procedures, our report recognises the deeply embedded cultural problem that vocational training is viewed as the poor relation. If we are to have shared—or some might say, British—values, we also need a vision for our country where every job counts and is valuable. Changing culture is about more than changing policy; it is about promoting different role models, particularly in the media. I join the right reverend Prelate in his concerns about the context of social mobility. It seems often to be portrayed as people only progressing up an already established class structure. What message are we sending to the hundreds of thousands of people we need to build homes or to care for older people? We need to return to a national vision that does not just value work on its income—although I accept that in some areas the wage needs to be raised to the living wage—but under which every person’s job is valuable, to bring about the cohesion that we all desire to see in 2016.

Education: British Values

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of the think tank, British Future.

I could not agree more with the commitment by the Secretary of State for Education,

“to ensure that all schools—faith and non-faith—make sure that children are integrated into modern Britain”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/6/2014; col. 269.]

I am grateful that my noble friend Lord Storey’s debate explicitly states that this should be for all educational establishments, universities as well as schools, private as well as state-funded. But I regret that this discussion is against the backdrop of the issues in Birmingham and so soon after the often acrimonious debate around whether Britain is a Christian country.

British values have been left for too long in the “too difficult” box and we stir only when there are headlines about gender segregation in universities and have a feeling that that is not quite right. The increase over the past 15 years in the messages and ideas from all over the world that we can receive via our smartphones means that this debate is long overdue. Of course, it is difficult to pin down British values, but failing to agree on everything does not mean that we will not agree on some things. Whether others share our values does not dilute their Britishness.

I have two quick examples. Women are equal citizens in our country, exhibited by equal pay; voting rights; being on the board of a FTSE company—for the first time in our history there are no all-male FTSE company boards; staying at home with your children, or working, or doing both; and having equal access to our courts. Some girls grow up within rural or religious communities where women’s roles are assumed. The role of British values in education, practically, is to show girls that there are other options for them—then, they choose. I am not naive about the community or cultural barriers that there are to exercising such a choice, but unless these girls are shown those other roles, we know that the choice that they make to stay in assumed roles is no choice at all.

Secondly, there is the issue of choice in religious identity. As chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on International Religious Freedom I have accidentally picked up evidence that the freedom to change your religious beliefs is not as widely embedded in our society as I had assumed. A report from a lady within a black Pentecostal Church community, who wants to become a humanist but is not at liberty to convert, broke all my stereotypical thinking on that issue. The United Kingdom promotes freedom to convert in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and broadcasts such values via the BBC World Service. So why do we not do the same in our education system? We must stop assuming that values are somehow picked up by osmosis. They need to be taught, promoted and defended. Two world wars won us the freedom to have this very debate on British values and it is time that we used it.

Education: Social Mobility

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for this wide-ranging debate and particularly for its focus on social mobility. I am not an expert in the field of social mobility; I am a case study. I am so fiercely proud of the state education that I received that my title, The Vale of Catmose, was the name of my state comprehensive school. It is now called Catmose College, and in its 2012 Ofsted inspection it received “outstanding” in all four categories as well as overall. I warned your Lordships—I am fiercely proud.

I am the first generation of my family to go to university, and sometimes I still pinch myself to think that from a great-grandmother in service, to a mother who worked the most punishing shifts in a local factory, to my being on the Conservative Benches in the House of Lords is quite a journey. However, I am sure that I am not alone in becoming more and more grateful as time goes by for all the education that I received. A quick glance around the globe, particularly at girls’ education, should make us all appreciate the level of primary and secondary education available in this country at no cost to the child. Such education is pivotal and is the key foundation stone of all social mobility.

I have to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, that I have some unease myself with the term “social mobility”, as education is important for all human flourishing, and social mobility has somehow come to imply rising up some kind of economic ladder or even a class system. I have appreciated the Government’s focus on vocational education and apprenticeships, as I believe that good education will mean that someone at Eton who wants to be a plumber will be encouraged just as much as a budding brain surgeon in Brixton.

However, education enables children to be socially mobile in this limited sense, and the OECD report in 2010 marked us as the worst among the developed countries. Secondary education is particularly important to social mobility as this is when exposure to the workplace begins, particularly through work experience placements. It is so often a teacher who acts as a talent scout, spotting the gifts of their pupils, opening up horizons and offering them advice. When I began, at 16, to enjoy the more extensive freedom that existed at a sixth-form college, I was advised by a teacher that if I stopped skipping lessons I might get to a land called Oxbridge.

Before global technology brought the world to your smartphone, many rural children needed the world opening up for them. I recently had my nephew Kyle in for a week’s work experience. He lives in deepest rural Derbyshire, and he commented that he had never met so many people from different countries before. None of his friends did anything like as adventurous as coming to London for a week, but I could not help wondering how to ensure that such work experience was opened up more equally to children. Your first work experience placement is often the first rung on the ladder of your CV. As a former lawyer, I was interested to note the recent comments of the Supreme Court judge, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, about the “startling leap” in the proportion of privately educated and Oxbridge lawyers now entering the profession. She said:

“One of the causes of this, apart from … the networks that their parents have, is the”,

preponderance,

“of work experience and internships in today’s recruitment criteria”.

So although primary and secondary education is one factor in social mobility, it is not the only one. Law is not alone as a profession in this regard; fashion, the creative industries, the media and of course politics all suffer from this. It is through the Twitter campaign, Intern Aware, and friends who work at the BBC that I have been told that you can no longer get work experience at the BBC through knowing someone who works there; everyone goes through a central system and is selected on merit. Could this be a model to be adopted for all public institutions? I understand that some commercial firms, such as Deloitte, are also adopting that strategy. Would it not be possible for the wonderful Peers’ outreach scheme somehow to connect that to the work experience placements offered in your Lordships’ House? I do not just mean with Peers ourselves, as I have outlined.

Recently I was on a train to Cambridge when I stumbled across two 18 year-olds, who were clearly going for the day, sitting opposite me. Obviously, their parents were on the opposite side of the carriage, being embarrassing. They got into a conversation and one of them happened to mention that she had been here to do work experience. At an appropriate juncture I interjected into the conversation and asked for some feedback about that, and inquired where she had been. She mentioned some department to do with seals that I had never heard of. She had had a wonderful time, which I thought was great. I asked her, “How did you happen upon your placement?”. She replied: “My daddy knows the person who runs the department”. When the taxpayer is paying to keep the lights on and to keep the place running, I wonder whether we should be looking at a more objective system of selection.

Secondary education will also be aided to enhance social mobility with what I consider to be this Government’s most radical and exciting policy: to get rid of the divide, however one wants to term it, between private and public schools. However, I believe that this change and partnership began under the previous Government with the significant change to the Charities Act so that no longer is education presumed to be a charitable benefit. One has to produce some evidence to receive gift aid.

I am pleased to note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, that schools have much to learn from each other. I commend Future First, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, which is bringing in something that private schools have been good at: keeping in touch with your alumni. The state system has lost much by not keeping records and not calling on the experience of those who have been through the system, which Future First seeks to introduce.

I grew up in Oakham, a small market town where, in relation to this divide, there is a context to look at. Oakham is dominated by one private school, but has a state comprehensive school. Over the years, when people have asked, “Where did you go to school?”, and I have answered, “Oakham”, they have immediately leapt to the assumption that I went to the private school. Back when I was being educated, there was complete separation. It was not safe for us to play sport against each other. We went to different bakeries at lunchtime, and we were instructed to use different newsagents. I know that things are changing, but the Minister would do well to look at geographical—

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

I hate to interrupt the noble Baroness, but I cannot resist asking her whether she is aware that Oakham School and Uppingham School were founded by Archdeacon Robert Johnson in the 1580s for poor boys and poor girls.

[Baroness Berridge]

Yes, I am aware of that. Indeed, when Oakham was a grammar school my father passed the 11-plus to go there. I say that that was when I grew up. I believe the context is changing, but there are sometimes particular geographical issues which matter to children growing up in such small areas. There can be that divide between children at the private school and children at the state school. It perhaps does not matter if you live in London.

Most encouraging for this fiercely proud state-educated Baroness is that it seems that the daughters of the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister will follow in my footsteps.

Will the Minister outline how we are going to sort out the key problem of work experience placements on the “mummy and daddy know” basis? As I have outlined, I confess to my involvement in that system.

Schools: History

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Luke for securing today’s important debate. As previously outlined by the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell and Lady Walmsley, history is thankfully back in fashion. People are spending time researching their family history on the internet, and “A History of Ancient Britain” and “Mixed Britannia” are just some of the 36 episodes of historical programming available today on BBC iPlayer. I do not approach this debate as a TV producer, professional educationalist or historian but merely as the recipient of inspired history teaching at GCSE and A-level.

However, at the age of 18 I would have been a disappointment to many in your Lordships’ House. I had no overall timeline of British history. I would have struggled to give the correct century for the Battle of Waterloo; I had not covered a world war; and I just thought that it was quite curious that some borders in Africa happened to be straight lines. I know that I am not alone in that experience, as friends of mine spent a new-year holiday watching the boxed set of Simon Schama’s TV series “A History of Britain” back to back.

Over many years now, I have been privileged to know some of Britain’s black and ethnic-minority communities. I have watched as politicians and commentators have flailed around with concepts like multiculturalism and trying to redefine Britishness. Obviously the teaching of history in schools is not a silver bullet and I am not for one minute suggesting that we make teachers responsible for national identity. But I have become convinced that inspired teaching of our national story is an essential element in forming our national identity, which includes the English story and the multicultural story.

I say the “English story” deliberately. As a wise friend of mine said, people identify as British Asians, not English Asians. The teaching of the English story in schools is essential to the British identity and it has been, until recently, the missing part. Why is that? It should be simple—start perhaps with King Alfred and tell the narrative. But many of the English still do not know how to, or some say are not willing to, deal with parts of the national story.

In 2007, I was involved in organising an event to commemorate the bicentennial of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. Again, politicians and commentators seemed unsure about how to handle the anniversary. Is it a celebration? Is it a commemoration? Do we apologise? This lack of national peace over contentious events does little to assist our history teachers who have to teach this without making white children feel bad and black children feel angry. It is not an easy task. As if the Empire and the transatlantic slave trade were not difficult enough, in the post-9/11 American response, President George W Bush saw fit to use the word “crusade”. I think many of the English wanted to go and hide. But national peace with our history will not come if children are not even taught the basic content of it. Analysis of events you do not even know about is of course impossible.

Simon Schama, the Government’s adviser on the national curriculum, puts it like this:

“Without this renewed sense of our common story—one full of contention not self-congratulation—we will be a poorer and weaker Britain”.

I believe we have been poorer and weaker as a people who do not know their own story and identity are more vulnerable to malevolent influences such as the EDL and the BNP.

In some senses Britain has always been multicultural as we are made up of four nations. Over the last 60 years, however, Britain has sought to include millions of people who often have a different heritage, culture and tradition. Without a strong English story being taught and known, who knows what these newer communities were expected to integrate with? However, the change in the British population means that the teaching of the nation’s history in schools is a more varied and perhaps a more challenging task. We all need to know why Britain is the way it is.

I remember one sunny afternoon at Hampton Court Palace when I happened to notice that virtually all the visitors were white. This caused me to reflect, and I realised that I felt connected to the history I was seeing there because my ancestors, whoever they were, were around at the time of Henry VIII. I did wonder, however, if the same could be said for some of my black friends. Maybe not, because the history of their ancestors at that time would of course be elsewhere. Some British black people will feel just as connected as I do but many will not. As a young black Londoner, Sam Kamasu, said to me only yesterday, young black people are not engaging with history as much as they should. Black youth in particular has such a multilayered history because black is such a large cluster—African and Caribbean, for instance. Many young people from this group struggle to find what history to connect with, especially second and third-generation migrants. At times they might find it difficult to identify with current course content. Allowing young people to shape their historical learning by choosing the content from earlier in the academic system may contribute to them being more inspired to keep on learning”.

I would ask the Minister to take this suggestion of allowing more choice in the content of the curriculum to Simon Schama, the Government’s adviser, and to those within Britain’s ethnic minorities whom Mr Schama and of course the department will be consulting with. Although many people acknowledge that the content of the curriculum has improved over recent years, many still feel that it does not appreciate the contribution of or tell the stories of those from Britain’s newer communities. This gap is being filled by initiatives such as Black History Month.

I learnt much about the sacrifice of Commonwealth soldiers in World War 2 from speeches by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, and novels such as Small Island by Andrea Levy. The Caribbean islanders were apparently never conscripted but chose to fight. It is stories like this that Britain’s Caribbean community want emphasising in the nation’s classrooms.

It is only since joining your Lordships’ House that I have had to begin speaking publicly about multiculturalism and diversity. In my previous role, I would always ask members of Britain’s black community to do this, not least because it is their tale often to tell. “My family history ends with a ship”, said Bishop Wayne Malcolm in 2007 to a dumbstruck audience of 800 people, including the current Prime Minister. “Thank you for your ancestors’ bravery and courage for bringing Christianity, healthcare and education to Ghana. Without their sacrifice, my family and I would not be where we are today”. That is my summary of Reverend Kingsley Appiagyei’s words to MPs, peers and councillors at a training event. Many had never before heard Britain’s contentious missionary history so described.

These perspectives and the courageous stories of migration to the UK need telling in the nation’s classrooms. I wonder if inviting different people into schools to tell their and their families’ stories would aid our history teachers as well as building community relationships. I would be grateful if the Minister would consider this suggestion.

Simon Schama is right. We cannot be self-congratulatory but we may find that some of those most affected by our past are more at ease and forgiving about what happened than the English might expect or indeed deserve. So I would suggest that Britain’s colonial history and the current heritage of the population necessitates that the national history taught in our classrooms contains strands of world history. Rightly or wrongly, Britain has been on the world stage and people came to live here as a result. This could be a tremendously exciting curriculum.

To conclude, it may seem too much perhaps to some people to link teaching history in schools, as I have done, to our national identity but I pray in aid the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, who in his book The Home We Build Together argues for the need for a fragmented Britain to build a covenantally based society; one based on a mutually binding promise to one another sustained by loyalty, fidelity and faithfulness. He argues that a covenantally based society would,

“integrate diversity into national unity without asking anyone to abandon their independence or identity”.

How does the noble Lord suggest such covenantal societies achieve this lofty goal? They tell a story.

So if telling our story in the nation’s classrooms and through the media and around our dinner tables will give us anything like the strong sense of national identity the Jewish people around the world have retained, despite persecution and often living as a diaspora, it is a task well worth undertaking.