Social Mobility: Sutton Trust Opportunity Index

Baroness Smith of Malvern Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Newcastle]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the Sutton Trust’s Opportunity Index and what steps they are taking to increase opportunities for social mobility across the country.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Sutton Trust’s valuable report highlights that too many children face barriers to success because of who they are or where they come from. That is why, through the Government’s opportunity mission, we will break the link between young people’s backgrounds and their future success by tackling child poverty and ensuring that all children have safe and loving homes, get the best start in life, achieve and thrive in school, and develop skills to succeed in life.

[The Lord Bishop of Newcastle]

I thank the Minister for her Answer. The opportunity index shines a light on the great disparity of prospective outcomes for children and young people in London and the south-east compared with those in the north-east, particularly Newcastle. What consideration have the Government given to reforming the national funding formula to address some of the granularity of that disparity and improve chances for all our young people?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Funding is important, which is why the Government will consider the national funding formula and ensure that it focuses on the right places and addresses need in the way the right reverend Prelate outlined. But it is also important that we take action—across schools, for young people through training, and in the early years, when children need to have the best start in life. We have already started taking that action.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank the Sutton Trust for this piece of work. It is worrying that, of the 20 constituencies with the highest ranking for opportunity, all are in London. Among the top 50, all but eight are in London. The lowest, of course, are in the north, including Newcastle, followed by Liverpool. We have had levelling up—whatever happened to that? My concern is that, often, government works in silos, but issues such as this have to be across silos. Is there a case for a Minister having responsibility for getting hold of this issue and making a real difference?

[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.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Will the Minister look very carefully at social mobility in rural areas and, in particular, the fact that the rural deprivation grant was withdrawn, which has had a major impact in North Yorkshire? I pay tribute to the work in rural areas that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans has done as head of the Rural Coalition. He will be greatly missed in this House.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am sure the noble Baroness is right that there are particular challenges in rural areas—and, particularly, as she identifies, in terms of the pockets of poverty found there, where perhaps there is no infrastructure of support, that might explain why those children and young people in London are doing comparatively better than people in other parts of the country. She makes a very fair point, and we need to keep a focus on rural poverty and how we ensure that children and young people in rural areas get the opportunities that they deserve.

[Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)]

My Lords, when it comes to opportunity, a ubiquitous one is service in the Armed Forces, which offers access to the greatest number of apprenticeships, longer life expectancy and highly successful second careers. It probably represents the biggest engine for social improvement in the country. In the context of a dangerous world and 9 million people on benefits, might the Government not commit to a narrative that makes that more evident?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble and gallant Lord makes an important point. I was discussing exactly that point with the Minister for Veterans just a couple of weeks ago; as he says, we were talking about the excellent apprenticeship programmes that there are within the armed services, as well as the opportunities that there are for young people who choose to take that route to benefit from it.

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, long before the term “nepo baby” was ever invented, we understood the role of unpaid internships in ensuring that professions remain a closed shop for the offspring of the well-to-do, and how difficult it is for young people from ordinary backgrounds to move to London without contacts, where they simply cannot afford to work for free. The law is already clear that productive work should be paid at least the national minimum wage, but it is not enforced. Will the Minister talk to colleagues about the need to boost the labour inspectorate in the proposed fair work agency to ensure that young people from all backgrounds get the paid work that they need?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a very important point. It is for employers to ensure that they provide access to the types of opportunities that will enable young people to experience different forms of work—but it is of course also the responsibility of those agencies tasked with enforcement to make sure that, where the law is not being properly applied, there are consequences for it. Of course, it is also our responsibility, which this Government take seriously, to make sure that all children have, for example, better careers education and the opportunity to have two weeks’ high-quality work experience and that we work with employers to ensure that placements are available to those young people doing T-levels while ensuring that apprenticeships are open to all. So there are a range of ways in which we need to make sure that young people get equal access to the experience of work that will set them up for a successful future.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, the Sutton Trust opportunity index rightly looked at the importance of early intervention and the early years, and the Minister will be aware that there are about 50,000 children annually on free school meals who go into year 3 without sufficient reading skills to be able to engage successfully in the curriculum. Will the Minister agree to look at the Apex programme funded by the Fischer Family Trust, which has worked providing reading mentors to children in years 1 and 2 where there are significant concerns about their ability to read? At the end of year 2, 81% of them reach the expected standard in reading, compared with 60% for a comparable cohort, and 95% pass their phonics test, compared with 85% nationally.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The scheme that the noble Baroness talks about sounds interesting and important, and I shall certainly undertake for the department to look at it in detail. She makes an important point, as she did in the previous Question, about the need to ensure that children are supported to make a successful start at school at the point at which they arrive. That means the sort of support that the Government are providing through family help and Start for Life to support not only the children but the parents to provide learning environments at home. That is supported, of course, by this Government’s priority to ensure that more children arrive at school ready to gain the benefits of that education.