David Cameron's social mobility and child poverty inquiry to issue grim warning as debt and job fears create 'perfect storm'
Daniel Boffey
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Children growing up will struggle to achieve the same living standards as their parents. Photograph:
Photononstop/Alamy
Today's middle-class children
are on track to be the first in more than a century to be materially
less well off in adulthood than their parents, a government commission
is expected to warn this week.
Leaked findings reveal the
existence of a national trend not experienced since the early 20th
century, with children from families with above-average incomes, as well
as the most deprived, set to enjoy a worse standard of living when they
grow up than their mothers and fathers.
The social mobility and child poverty commission, established by David Cameron,
is expected to warn that government initiatives have all too often been
aimed at the poorest 10%. Yet the inability to get on in life is a now a
major and growing problem for middle-class children and this group is
in dire need of attention, it is expected to report.
A Whitehall
source said: "This will be controversial, but for the first time in over
a century there is a real risk that the next generation of adults ends
up worse off than today's generation. This is a problem for the children
of parents with above-average incomes, not just a problem for those at
the bottom. Many, many children face the prospect of having lower living
standards than their parents."
The findings, to be laid before
parliament on Thursday by education minister David Laws, will electrify
the political debate over the so-called "squeezed middle", who have done so badly in the economic downturn.
Such
is the expected political impact that the planned publication date for
the commission's report was delayed so that it did not clash with the
party conference season and become "a political football", according to
one government source.
Among its conclusions, the commission is
expected to say that those at particular risk are low-attaining children
who are not poor enough to enjoy additional help from the system, but
whose parents are not wealthy enough to insulate them from failure.
Pupils on free school meals benefit from an additional spend of £14,300 to improve their chances in life through the pupil premium.
Yet nearly two-thirds of those who fail to attain an A to C grade in
English and maths are from backgrounds not considered to be deprived.
The cross-party commission, chaired by former Labour minister Alan
Milburn and whose deputy is John Major's one-time education secretary
Baroness Shephard, describes this group as the "missing piece in the
jigsaw" of the government's education policies.
The commission is
also expected to warn that children in the south-east but outside London
are being let down by the system. Children in the capital on free
school meals do 50% better in their GCSEs than those in other regions. A
major cause of this geographical shift, the commission is expected to
say, is that a higher proportion of high-quality heads and teachers live
in disadvantaged areas in London than elsewhere, in part because of the
so-called "London weighting" wage lift for those in the capital. Some
of the weakest schools, it is set to point out, are located in bastions
of middle England, such as Peterborough, west Berkshire, Herefordshire
and satellite areas around London.
The commission is also expected
to warn of a gathering "perfect storm" of graduate debt, lack of
finance to buy homes and job insecurity that threatens middle-class
children as they emerge from full-time education. Graduates will come
out of university with up to £50,000 of debt to their name;
the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds who own their own homes has
fallen from 60% to 40% in the past decade and is expected to plunge
further; and the number of 18- to 24-year-olds unemployed for more than
two years is at its highest since 1994.
The commission is expected
to note that for the first time, a grandmother in her 80s can expect to
enjoy higher living standards than someone in their 20s even if they
are working, due to housing costs and poor wages.
|
