Commenting on Justine Greening’s plans to improve social mobility and a new action plan launched today, Sir Peter Lampl, Chairman of the Sutton Trust and of the Education Endowment Foundation, said:

“We welcome today’s social mobility action plan. It will play an important role in enabling less advantaged young people to get on in life. We particularly welcome the Future Talent Fund, which will enable bright young people to fulfil their potential.  We also welcome the new role for the Education Endowment Foundation to evaluate early years practice.”

“We welcome support for the Sutton Trust recommendation that universities should be more transparent on contextual admissions.  We also support the need to encourage more disadvantaged young people to take academic subjects at GCSE for the English Baccalaureate.  Both measures are important to widening university access.

“It is good that there is a focus on identifying ‘what works’, especially through working with the Education Endowment Foundation, and  spreading best practice from high performing Local Authorities to underperforming areas.

“However, there are areas where more should be done. We need to be sure that the resources are there to match the ambitions of the new plan, particularly to support good teaching in disadvantaged areas. Admissions policy seems to have put in the ‘too difficult’ box yet without reforming admissions poorer pupils will continue to miss out on the best schools.

“We would like to see more done to ensure that disadvantaged young people progress to the best apprenticeships and that they don’t graduate with the highest debt. Internships should not be a barrier to social mobility – those over four weeks should be paid and advertised.”

The Sutton Trust response to the social mobility action plan was quoted by the Guardian which you can read here.

NOTES TO EDITORS

  1. The Sutton Trust is a foundation set up in 1997, dedicated to improving social mobility through education. It has published over 200 research studies and funded and evaluated programmes that have helped hundreds of thousands of young people of all ages, from early years through to access to the professions.
  1. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) is a grant-making charity set up in 2011 by the Sutton Trust as lead foundation in partnership with Impetus Trust (now part of Impetus–The Private Equity Foundation), with a £125m founding grant from the Department for Education. Since its launch the EEF has awarded £96.3 million to 160 projects working with over 1,000,000 pupils in over 10,000 schools across England. The EEF and Sutton Trust are, together, the government-designated What Works Centre for Education.
  1. Launched earlier this year, the EEF’s Research Schools Network supports the quality of teaching in the Opportunity Areas through better use of research.