As this year’s A-level and GCSE results come out, the effects of the recession on young Britons comes into acute focus. The struggle for university places is but one aspect of the difficulties that young people are facing in the current economic climate.
Ensuring that young people have the right amount of choice in the first steps that they take after leaving school is crucial, not only for those young people but for the country as a whole. Building an opportunity society goes to the heart of Labour’s mission. It ensures that every person can contribute fully, both to their own life and to that of the country.
That is why, from September, every Briton aged 16 – 18 has a guarantee from the government that they will be provided with a job, training, an apprenticeship or a place on a full time course. This represents a major expansion of the welfare state under Labour. The government has committed to investing in young people and demonstrating that, in a time of acute financial crisis, young people remain its top priority. The Tories have, yet again, enunciated no policy to protect young people during the downturn and ensure that Britain has the skills it needs to retain and develop the competitiveness that it currently has in the modern, globalised economy.
Opening and improving access to education, training and work is also central to Labour’s mission because it is a key to social justice. Improved A-level grades are a British success story. The Tories, on the other hand, seem to believe they are somehow part of their ‘Broken Britain’ narrative. We need to be clear about the success of our young people. But we also need to be cautious about the worrying fissure that appears to be opening up between state and private schools and the type of post-16 options being taken up by their respective pupils. This year more than 50% of A-levels taken by private school students resulted in ‘A’ grades. This gave privately educated students a big advantage in the tighter competition for university places this year.
Labour has improved education, particularly after inheriting the neglected, underfunded disaster that the Tories left behind, but ensuring that students make an informed choice about what path they take at the age of 16 is about more than improving educational attainment. Every month I mentor at a comprehensive school, not far from the comprehensive that I went to. My fellow mentors are doctors and bankers, often also from similar backgrounds to the students that we mentor. Questions from our well motivated students invariably drift away from study plans and revision techniques (the skill of their teachers tends to make that a somewhat redundant task for us) and onto the reality of becoming, or being, a doctor or a lawyer. Experiences that their everyday environment simply does not provide them with.
In providing choices, and guaranteeing education and training up to the age of 18 we must not ignore the nurturing and guidance from an early age which will make the investment in our country’s young people really pay off. Labour has provided this for the pre-school years with the Sure Start programme, it is time to do the same for the post-school years. As with Sure Start, giving voice to our values shows that these are British values and exposes the Tories’ lack of ideas on ensuring that Britain emerges from the downturn stronger than before.
Selman Ansari is a barrister specialising in public law