It’s Party Conference season. Read a breakdown of the debates and discussions related to education and social mobility at the Liberal Democrat’s Party Conference by our Head of Communications and Public Affairs, Rocky Lorusso.

The Sutton Trust will be attending all three major party conferences this autumn, and we’ll be blogging throughout conference season, looking at each parties’ policies on education and social mobility. 

First up, the Liberal Democrats held their annual conference over the past few days, with education policy debates featuring prominently on the agenda as the party gears up towards creating its General Election manifesto. So what’s changed, and what does this mean for the prospect of improving social mobility? 

Keynote speech and tutoring announcement 

The party’s Education, Children and Young People Spokesperson, Munira Wilson MP, was one of the first keynote speakers of the conference. She used the opportunity to set out a new announcement, committing the party to putting the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) on a permanent footing for schools, sixth forms and FE colleagues in England. Currently, the Government has not committed to extending the NTP beyond 2024. The Lib Dems’ plans would see £390 million a year made available for intensive small-group sessions for students who have fallen behind in class, with tailored support over 12 weeks in English, Maths, Science, or another academic subject.  

Under the party’s plans, schools and colleges would be expected to select and prioritise children from low-income backgrounds, with low prior attainment or with additional needs. This would be a positive direction of travel, but the Sutton Trust has called for action beyond prioritisation. To seriously address the attainment gap, which is now higher than at any point in the last decade, stricter targets must be set for levels of uptake by students eligible for the pupil premium. The original stated purpose of the programme was to target disadvantaged students, but Year 1 had no explicit targeting for this group, and the initial target set in Year 2 was subsequently dropped, with both years criticised for not reaching a high enough proportion of disadvantaged students.  

Overall this is a positive announcement. COSMO research, conducted between October 2021 – March 2022, has shown that access to private tutoring is highly unequal – for Year 11 students, 14% of those with parents in professional roles received private tutoring, compared to just 4% in working class families or whose parents were not in work. There are also large regional gaps in access, with London substantially above other regions (27%) in private tutoring rates, compared to a rate of just 12% in the North East, whilst access to private tutoring is also associated with lower levels of neighbourhood deprivation. The NTP has started to close these access gaps, and research from the Education Endowment Foundation has also demonstrated the positive impact of small group tuition as an evidence-backed intervention too. With long-term funding it could be a powerful contribution to closing the attainment gap. 

High quality early years access 

The Lib Dem conference is a fairly democratic event, with party members getting the opportunity to debate, amend and vote on policy motions that will go on to form the party’s overall policy platform (although that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be prioritised and included in the party’s election manifesto).  

There were two key education policy motions voted through during this conference. The first was an early years proposal, ‘A Better Start in Life’, which set out a number of positive reforms to move towards universal free high quality early years education and childcare,  including: 

  • A review of the rates paid to providers to ensure they cover the actual costs of delivering high-quality early years education and childcare. 
  • Investing in high-quality early years education with targeted funding for disadvantaged children aged two to four, an extra five free hours, up from 15 –20  hours a week and tripling the Early Years Pupil Premium to £1,000 a year. 
  • Developing a career strategy for nursery staff, including a training programme with the majority of those working with children aged two to four to have a relevant Early Years qualification, or be working towards one. 

These measures were voted through, and if implemented by a future government would represent a significant improvement in early years education and a significant step towards universal provision, which would be the ideal offer. We know that a child’s early years are a vital stage for tackling educational inequalities, and access to high quality early education should be equal for all, particularly at ages two, three and four where clear educational benefits can be seen. We have also called for the Early Years Pupil Premium to be raised in parity with the level available for schools, so the Lib Dem’s proposal to significantly increase this to £1,000 a year is also welcome as it would raise the hourly rate to be on a level with schools. 

However, the Sutton Trust and those we work closely with in the early years sector are keenly aware that providers are facing considerable challenges. Further reforms and expansion will be difficult and require appropriate funding at each age. As such, any government implementing such reforms would probably need to stagger them so that providers have time to successfully deliver high-quality additional places, for example by focusing on delivering a universal entitlement to all 3 and 4 year olds before moving on to 2 year olds.  

School investment and reform 

 The second major education debate was on the ‘Investing in Our Children’s Future’ motion, focused mostly on schools. This set out various recommendations, such as: 

  • Increasing school and college funding per pupil above the rate of inflation every year. 
  • Extending free school meals to all children in primary education and all secondary school children whose families receive Universal Credit, and automatically enrolling eligible children. 
  • Reversing cuts to the Pupil Premium and free school meals, and introducing a Young People’s Premium for those aged 16-18. 
  • Expand provision of extra-curricular activities, such as sport, music, drama, debating and coding, starting with a new free entitlement for disadvantaged children. 
  • Support the education of children in care, extend Pupil Premium Plus funding to children in kinship care, and guarantee any child taken into care a school place within three weeks, if required to move schools. 
  • Putting a dedicated, qualified mental health professional in every school. 
  • Creating a teacher workforce strategy to ensure that every secondary school child is taught by a specialist teacher in their subject. 
  • Establish a standing commission to build a long-term consensus across parties and teachers to broaden the curriculum and make qualifications at 16 and 18 fit for the 21st century, drawing on best practice such as the International Baccalaureate. 
  • Implement root-and-branch reform of school inspections, including replacing single-grade Ofsted judgements with report cards that show parents the true strengths and weaknesses of each school. 
  • Investing in new buildings and clearing the backlog of repairs. 

There is much to welcome here. Many of these proposals are in line with Sutton Trust asks around increasing overall school funding, the extension of free school meals for those whose families receive Universal Credit, introducing a Pupil Premium for 16-18 year olds, boosting extra-curricular activities for disadvantaged pupils and a clear workforce strategy. And improving the mental health support available in schools is also a welcome measure, given our COSMO research shows we are arguably in the midst of a mental health and wellbeing crisis amongst young people. It will be interesting to see further detail behind the Lib Dem’s plans to reform the curriculum, particularly given that the Conservatives are making plans for a new British Baccalaureate. However, achieving cross-party consensus on such a bold move, particularly this side of an election, seems unlikely. 

Finally, although party leader Ed Davey did not particularly focus on education in his speech at the conference’s finale, there were a few other policy announcements dotted throughout the conference, such as pledging to increase apprentice pay to “at least the minimum wage” to counter high dropout rates – something we would certainly welcome. The party also committed again to expanding the “broken” apprenticeship levy into a “broader and more flexible” skills and training levy, something that Labour is also talking about. 

However, the big omission at this year’s event seemed to be higher education, with no further indication from the party on their proposals on improving the funding crisis in the sector or supporting disadvantaged students. The relative absence of focus on apprenticeships during most of the plenary sessions was also somewhat surprising, given that increasing the quality of and numbers of these opportunities is of growing importance for both the Conservatives and the Labour party.  

Overall, there’s much to be positive about in the Lib Dems’ education policy announcements. But given the party is unlikely to form a future government, these proposals are more useful for indicating which way the party will vote if either of the other main parties should decide to commit to a similar programme of reform aimed at tackling educational inequalities. The Sutton Trust will of course be engaging with all the main parties in the run up to the election. Look out for our roundup of the Conservative party conference next week.