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Becks Boomer-Clark, chief executive of Lift Schools, gave evidence at today’s Social Mobility Policy Committee at the House of Lords, sharing insights from our network on the complex interplay between education, place, and opportunity.
Asked to define what we mean by ‘social mobility’ at the beginning of the meeting, Becks explained that “we simply view social mobility as the challenge to unlock choice and opportunity for all young people.”
Her contributions to the discussion highlighted the need for education policy that recognises and responds to the distinct challenges faced by young people across different parts of the country. Emphasising that social mobility is profoundly shaped by “people and place” factors, she shared a core part of our mission at Lift Schools:
“We define our challenge of social mobility as one of entitlement. So how do you deliver an entitlement to an excellent education that unlocks that choice and opportunity for all young people regardless of what part of the country they happen to grow up in or how wealthy their family are.”
Becks emphasised how attendance is a key factor in determining whether children go on to be NEET (not in education, employment or training). This is not simply an attendance crisis, she urged, but an engagement crisis. She called for a radical rethink of Key Stage 3, highlighting that pupil engagement often drops sharply at this stage, findings revealed in our recent Culture and Climate Survey. The current curriculum, she suggested, risks meeting students' developmental and motivational needs, creating a deficit that is hard to recover from. She urged the sector to listen more closely to students and involve them in reshaping the learning experience.
She took the opportunity to highlight the high levels of speech and language needs among young children. These are challenges we already know how to fix, she argued, but we can only do this through early intervention.
We are proud to have been invited to contribute to the national discussion on social mobility, which speaks so directly to our mission to provide an excellent education for every child, in every classroom, every day.
