Britain’s flagging productivity is commonly thought to be the root of the country’s present economic struggles. And as successive governments have painfully discovered – not least Liz Truss’s – there is no quick fix for it. Looking longer-term and investing in the skills of the future workforce satisfies nobody’s desire for instant results. Yet it’s actually the best lever ministers can employ to reverse the slide.
A strong, internationally competitive economy requires a flourishing pipeline of home-grown talent coming through schools, colleges and universities and into employment or entrepreneurship. Yet many of the future scientists, mathematicians, engineers and start-up gurus that this country needs to produce simply don’t make it through. The reason? Our education system blocks them off. Social mobility has stalled, and the conveyor belt of talent has come to a grinding halt alongside it.
In the UK we now routinely squander the potential of highly able but disadvantaged pupils. This perpetuates a generational cycle of inequality and compounds the country’s slumping productivity.
While the inequalities that hinder academic attainment emerge early in life, they intensify in the secondary years
Analysis by the Sutton Trust, which I founded and chair, reveals just how drastic the situation has become. We examined a cohort of 2,500 young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who exhibited high academic potential at the end of primary school, and compared their progress at secondary school with that of their similarly placed but non-disadvantaged peers. The findings entirely disperse any fond notion of a level playing field.
Bright but poor students are now nearly twice as likely as their similarly talented, more affluent peers to drop out of the top third of attainment at GCSE, achieving on average a whole grade lower per subject. In 2021, 62 per cent of privileged high-potential pupils attained five or more grades 7-9 at GCSE, whereas less than 40 per cent of their less well-off peers achieved the same.
While the inequalities that hinder academic attainment emerge early in life, they intensify in the secondary years. Falling behind early on creates significant challenges for catching up, a problem which has only been worsened by missed classroom time during the pandemic. Between 2017 and 2021, over 28,000 young people from less well-off families who demonstrated the potential at primary school to achieve top grades at GCSE failed to do so.
This has far-reaching implications for A Levels, apprenticeships, and university placements, where the most competitive courses and positions are allocated based on school grades.
At the same time, recent economic modelling conducted for the Sutton Trust quantifies beyond doubt what boosting social mobility could do for the economy. Raising levels of social mobility to those of other Western European nations that we currently lag behind has the power to generate an astounding £39 billion annually in GDP.
It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of this opportunity. Minimising the influence of pupil’s backgrounds on their educational futures undeniably benefits everyone. When the mission is economic renewal, that shift of approach becomes imperative.
To unlock the potential of this generation, ministers must urgently review funding for schools in the most disadvantaged areas and prioritise the integration of the National Tutoring Programme into a comprehensive national strategy to bridge attainment gaps.
This should not be a hard sell for a government apparently keen to make systemic change in the economy by driving talent and human potential into our start-ups and our corporates. The Prime Minister signalled that he understood this argument as well as anyone earlier this year when he said he would introduce mandatory maths to 18.
And, after all, it’s the Treasury that stands to gain most by working more closely with the Department for Education to turn the tide on productivity by focusing on talent. Greater productivity results in larger tax receipts, which in turn allow for greater investment in schools. We are in a vicious circle of decline. We could make that circle virtuous.
Opportunities for young people must become the priority as political parties draft their manifestos for the approaching general election. By investing in the most disadvantaged areas and integrating support schemes, we can maximise the potential of the next generation and pull the country upwards. That way, we build a fairer society, of course. But we also build a richer one.
Sir Peter Lampl is founder and chairman of the Sutton Trust and chairman of the Education Endowment Foundation
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