Social Mobility: Regional Attainment Gap

Baroness Afshar Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I first acknowledge the tireless work that the noble Baroness does in this incredibly important area of social mobility. To answer her specific question, the funding provided through the pupil premium means that there is funding available to support local priorities such as recruitment, retention and development of teachers. Further to this, we recently published the teacher recruitment and retention strategy, which reiterates our ambition to shift incentives so that more good teachers work in schools with more disadvantaged intakes.

[Baroness Afshar (CB)]

My Lords, what measures have the Government taken specifically to deal with the needs of minority pupils and minority communities, where young girls and women, in particular, are discriminated against at will? Are there specific measures that would deal with this problem?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, all our efforts around social mobility are aimed at helping all those who are not getting a fair crack of the whip. We have 12 opportunity areas operating at the moment and, just to take the case study of Derby, where money is being specifically targeted to help children who are struggling to read or have English as an additional language, we are already seeing improvements at key stages 1 and 2. Things are improving faster in Derby than nationally.