David Williams

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on securing this important debate. Barriers to learning and skills development affect not only children and young people in my constituency of Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove, but adults. Upskilling is key to economic participation and engagement in the labour market, yet last week, when I met our local Staffordshire chamber of commerce, it highlighted concerns from local employers about a lack of basic skills development among young people and adults at all points in their careers, so it is important that we focus on helping people to achieve those qualifications. Our city council, local further education and independent providers work incredibly hard to upskill adults, and that is reflected in our higher participation rates in further education and skills. Tackling barriers to educational opportunity is really important in promoting social mobility in my constituency of Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove, and many of our local schools and colleges focus on and recognise that. However, as we know, barriers to opportunity are multifaceted. They are linked to deprivation, housing conditions and household income, and improving educational outcomes goes hand in hand with addressing socioeconomic inequality. Perhaps the most significant barriers to educational opportunity in Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove are the high rates of speech, numeracy and language deficiency in our early years outcomes. As we all know, early years development is a significant predictor of our educational outcomes across the whole life course. Sadly, last year in Stoke-on-Trent, only one in two of our two-year-olds had a good level of development compared with nearly 80% in England, and the level of development locally has been declining for a number of years. Tackling barriers to educational opportunity begins in the very early years. I hope the Minister will agree that investment in our early years is critical to tackling those barriers.