Baroness Garden of Frognal
Main Page: Baroness Garden of Frognal (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
First, I pay tribute to the work my noble friend did as Education Secretary to increase opportunity and drive up standards. Levelling up means setting the highest standards for all pupils and ensuring that they are helped to achieve their full potential, regardless of their background or location. We want schools to address the needs of every individual pupil using the resources available to them, including the pupil premium. As she knows, the disadvantaged white pupil cohort is the largest such group in our schools, so attracts the most pupil premium.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, universities and colleges make great efforts to improve inclusivity strategies, but can find it difficult to access the information to identify the particularly disadvantaged youngsters, such as free school meals data. Could that information be made available to them so that they can more readily identify the needy children?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
That is a sensible suggestion, which I shall take back to the department. The noble Baroness is absolutely right to point out the important work that universities do to increase access. They work with the Office for Students to increase access to university for people from underrepresented backgrounds. A number of universities are also helping with specialist maths schools—indeed, the University of Liverpool Mathematics School opened last week.