On Tuesday we will be publishing the coalition’s plans for improving social mobility. It is, of course, about fairness — but not just that. Socially mobile economies grow faster than immobile ones. By one estimate, if the lower attainment of children from poorer families were tackled, that would add 4% to GDP by 2050.
Achieving that means breaking free from the previous government’s obsession with measuring transfers of income. Instead we will focus on opening up opportunities. We are not setting targets or quotas but we have indicators that will help us to see how our society is opening up to talented people, whatever their background.
Our approach is new in another way as well. Under Labour we drifted into the lazy habit of always tracking the problem to some earlier stage in the education process. So universities say they cannot broaden their access unless secondary schools are better. The schools say that they have to teach children who have never held a crayon or seen a book. They ended up believing that you could improve social mobility only by giving orange juice and playing Mozart tapes to pregnant mothers — the depressing doctrine of infant determinism.
The truth is that we can improve social mobility at every stage of people’s lives; that is just what our report is all about. Our motto should be: “It is never too early to start and it is never too late to try.” So, alongside early years and schools, we are looking at vocational training and access to university.
We can improve social mobility if, as well as the academic route, there is a route into well-paid solid jobs via apprenticeships and vocational training. That is why one of our first decisions last summer was to create 50,000 extra apprenticeship places this year. Sceptics said that we would not be able to find the employers to take people on but figures this week show that 50,000 more people aged over 19 started an apprenticeship this year than last year. These high-quality apprenticeships will boost people’s earnings and transform their life chances.
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One of the best ways in which we can ensure that apprenticeships are really valued is to recognise that for some people they can be a route into university. At the moment figures suggest only 5% of apprentices go on to university. But if you start as an engineering apprentice, you might well at some point in your career find it is worthwhile getting an engineering degree. That is one of the reasons why we want to see the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) awarding more tariff points to people who have done apprenticeships. It is reviewing its tariff system at the moment, and it would be great if it offered a fairer deal for apprenticeships and vocational qualifications.
Apprenticeships should not just be equivalent to A-level. At the moment there are only about 1,500 apprenticeships each year that go beyond A-levels. In his budget, George Osborne found the funds to enable us to more than double that by the end of this parliament.
We are also backing the vocational qualifications at these higher levels that people recognise and value — HNCs, HNDs and BTecs. We are getting rid of the barriers in the way of a BTec degree. It is a vocational qualification at a level equivalent to higher education. In fact, it would be a great way for people to get a really worthwhile higher education qualification at their local college and perhaps linked to a local employer.
There is a well-established academic route leading through A-levels on to university degrees and postgraduate qualifications. We need a similar ladder of vocational routes. You should not have to face an enormous fork in the road after which you can never move between them again. If our system is more open and flexible, it can improve social mobility.
Social mobility in Britain has been stuck for a generation. The leading professions, mainly recruited from our top universities, have become more dominated by the children of affluent parents. Both parties in the coalition are deeply committed to improving on that depressing record. That is the shared mission behind Nick Clegg’s ministerial taskforce on social mobility that reports on Tuesday. Opening up education opportunities is key.
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I think of the lone parent who dropped out of school with no qualifications and goes to university to study part-time to get the qualification she needs to get a job as a radiographer in the NHS. (And we will be helping her with fee loans for the first time.) I also think of the young man fed up with the classroom who starts to get maths only when he needs to work out the angle for the rafters of the roof he is constructing at his local further education college.
Our economy will be better as a result and our society more open and more fair.
David Willetts is minister for universities and science