Social Mobility: Sutton Trust Opportunity Index

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The whole Government are responsible for ensuring that young people’s opportunity is not determined by where they come from or other factors of their background. That is why the Government have an opportunity mission, as I outlined in my initial Answer; it is owned across government, and all parts of government are expected to make a contribution to ensure that young people get the best start in life, that they can achieve and thrive in school, and that they are then able to gain the skills necessary to succeed further on in their lives.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, as we have heard, this excellent report highlights the uneven impact of where you live on your opportunities. For instance, a free school meals pupil in Stratford and Bow in London is over 10 times more likely to attend university than someone in Bristol North West. This brings to mind the findings of the 2020 report from the Social Mobility Commission, The Long Shadow of Deprivation. In response to that report, the Minister at the time pointed to the 12 opportunity areas, which later became 55 educational investment areas, as important for driving change. Can the Minister say what lessons were learned from both those programmes, which have now closed? Crucially, how are they being applied in the new approach that this Government are taking to addressing regional inequalities?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I think that the lessons that were learned are feeding every aspect of the work that is happening across the opportunity mission. For example, there is the need for high-quality schools and excellent teaching throughout the whole of the country; the need for young people to have the access to skills wherever they are in the country; the need for our higher education sector to do more to ensure that all those who can benefit from higher education can access it, which will be a key part of the Government’s higher education reforms; and, of course, the need to start early in children’s lives, to ensure that they have access to early years education of the highest quality. It is work on all those areas that will ensure not just that the benefits are felt equally across the country but that we are able to close some of the gaps that the Sutton Trust report identified.