PM: Britain must be ready to seize new opportunities

Britain must start preparing for the eventual economic upturn, Gordon Brown said today as he set out ambitious plans to improve the chances of the most disadvantaged in society.

The Government's New Opportunities White Paper on social mobility included an offer of £10,000 "golden handcuffs" payments to the best teachers who were prepared to work at the worst performing secondary schools.

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The deal forms a key plank of the proposals, alongside an extension of free nursery and childcare places to 15% of the most disadvantaged families with two-year-olds.

It follows research indicating that children in Britain are less likely than those in other developed countries to move up the social ladder and get better jobs than their parents.

Launching the White Paper, the Prime Minister said he wanted to ensure that everyone was able to take advantage of the eventual economic recovery when it comes.

While he acknowledged that the coming months would be "tough", he said the global economy would return to growth in the years ahead, creating up to 1 billion skilled jobs worldwide.

"During this global economic downturn we must continue to invest in people so they have a fair chance to achieve their potential," he said.

"The world economy is set to double and the expansion of digital and green industries will offer new opportunities. We must be ready to seize these opportunities and ensure that these better jobs can be captured by everyone."

Other measures in the White Paper - which brings together a number of recent Government announcements - includes a guarantee that vulnerable mothers will have access to a dedicated family nurse to help them through pregnancy and the first two years of childhood.

A total of 35,000 new apprenticeship places will be created to ensure that all qualified young people have the right to an apprenticeship by 2013.

There will be a new guarantee for "high potential" young people from low income households to enable them to get the help they need to go to university, while a panel will be established to identify and remove barriers preventing fair access to professional jobs.

Existing professional will be able to retrain and gain new skills through a trebling of the number of professional and career development loans - from 15,000 to 46,000 - over the next two years.

There will be an employment support programme for young people leaving care and a £500 back-to-work entitlement for carers - including parents - who take up jobs after five years or more of caring for someone.

A new full-time vocational volunteering programme will be established across 33 local authorities with places for people who are not in education, training, or employment.

Much of the focus, however, was on the measures to improve retention of teachers. From September, headteachers at the toughest secondary schools will be able to offer recruits £10,000 payments at the end of three years' teaching.

The scheme will apply to around 500 "National Challenge" schools where less than 30% of pupils achieve five good GCSEs including maths and English, and a large proportion are eligible for free meals.

Heads will be given discretion over which recruits are offered the incentive to stay, but it is expected to be those who perform best at training colleges.

Some 6,000 new appointments in England are expected to be covered by the scheme, according to Government officials, and the costs will be divided between the school and Whitehall budgets.

Since Labour came to power, the average teacher's salary has risen from around £21,500 to more than £34,000 - including performance-related elements.

Unions have long argued that the top teachers should be paid more, but there are concerns that hundreds of thousands who do not benefit may feel resentful of their colleagues.

The Government's offer of free childcare for two-year-olds will reach around 23,000 children per year at an additional cost of £57 million.

It will include 10 hours of high-quality care per week, 38 weeks per year, and will start in some local authorities as early as April.

Cabinet Office Minister Liam Byrne said it was essential that help was available at every stage of people's lives if class barriers were to be broken down effectively.

"You can't improve social mobility with a one-club policy. We have got to invest at every stage of life," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

While there was a guarded welcome from some in the teaching profession for the "golden handcuffs" plan, there were also calls for the Government to do more at the earliest stage of a child's life.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said that while heads recognised that schools had an important role to play, they could not be expected to solve all of society's problems.

"While the £10,000 golden handcuff will be useful for the most challenging schools to recruit more excellent teachers, research shows that it is intervention at the earliest stage in a child's life that does most to improve its life chances and so increase social mobility," he said.

"In particular, parenting classes with families most at risk should be the highest priority."

He said that reform of the funding and accountability systems for schools was also needed to provide some incentive for schools to take the most disadvantaged children.

Brett Wigdortz, chief executive of Teach First, a charity which recruits bright UK graduates to teach in challenging schools, said that while the "golden handcuffs" payments would help, they were not the only factor in improving teacher retention rates.

"There is no denying that, particularly at a time when young people are concerned about securing a steady income, the new payments for teachers showing long-term service in challenged schools may help to attract and retain people to the profession," he said.

"However, at Teach First we have found that money is only one of the factors that encourages top graduates to teach in challenging urban schools.

"Our main focus is ensuring that all teachers in these schools see themselves as part of a leadership profession that works help all children to achieve at the highest possible level."

For the Tories, shadow skills secretary David Willetts said an important obstacle to social mobility was a lack of careers advice from schools and parents for the children from disadvantaged backgrounds who would most benefit from it.

"The careers service, which used to be so important, has been dismantled under this Government and we are committed to putting it back together, so that every child gets objective advice at school about how they can achieve their ambitions," he told the Today programme.

Mr Brown was joined by several members of the Cabinet at the launch of the White Paper in Downing Street.

He told a room full of community and health workers, volunteers and mentors, that delivering opportunities to young people was only achievable with the involvement of all Government departments.

He said: "The first thing we want to do is encourage the aspirations people have, and the ambitions, to be realised and that requires secondly that there is real opportunity."

He said: "Opportunities must be delivered from childhood, through schools and into the teenage years so that every 16-year-old will have the opportunity to go to college or university, or become an apprentice.

Mr Brown was joined by several members of the Cabinet at the launch of the White Paper in Downing Street.

He told a room full of community and health workers, volunteers and mentors, that delivering opportunities to young people was only achievable with the involvement of all Government departments.

He said: "The first thing we want to do is encourage the aspirations people have, and the ambitions, to be realised and that requires secondly that there is real opportunity."

He said opportunities must be delivered from childhood, through school and into the teenage years so that every 16-year-old will have the opportunity to go to college or university, or become an apprentice.

Mr Brown said his own father had always told him everybody should have the opportunity to develop their talents.

"Everybody has that talent and our duty is to make it possible for that to be developed," he said.

"Every generation can do better than the previous generation - that is what upward mobility is about.

"Measures we are announcing today are designed to do exactly that.

"You are the aspirations for what we are doing. Let's make sure that, in the great new challenges of this global era, we can say to every young person that they have the chance to make the most of their talents."

Among the high-profile Cabinet figures in attendance in the State Room were Schools Minister Ed Balls, Leader of the House of Commons Harriet Harman, Universities Secretary John Denham, and Cabinet Office Minister Liam Byrne.

Mr Byrne said: "For 30 years after the 1970s social mobility did not move but since 2000 the signs are that things are changing.

"Our argument is that, if we are to succeed in the future, we have to invest in aspiration today.

"Supporting people to turn their opportunities into success is not cost- free, it does need investment."

Joyce Moseley, chief executive of young people's charity Catch22, warned that the Government must not just focus on children.

"While early intervention is key to this agenda, the Government must continue to invest more to ensure it is never too late to enable young adults to turn their lives around," she said.

"Having the opportunity to improve your situation is most critical to those young people who have already experienced difficult lives - possibly as they leave care or get out of the criminal justice system.

"Our experience shows there is an abundance of talent among these young people who are all too often written off by society, and who can simply need help to get back into training, to steer clear of crime or to live independently."

Clare Tickell, chief executive of Action for Children, said: "It is right that the Government is recognising the need to bolster the social mobility of the most disadvantaged youngsters.

"However, these plans in isolation will not work.

"Our own research has found that a lack of emotional well-being at a young age has a significant impact on social mobility later in life, and the British public believe emotional well-being to be twice as important as social class in their own social mobility."

Dr Lee Elliot Major, research director at the Sutton Trust, said: "We particularly welcome the introduction of financial incentives for the best teachers to teach in the lowest-performing schools and the announcement of a mentoring and advice programme to support bright but poor students on a pathway to higher education.

"It is also critical that the qualifications and skills of those involved in the delivery of early years care are improved and that proven parenting schemes are expanded."

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: "It is a scandal that in today's Britain two children born at the same time in the same hospital still have wildly different life chances based simply on the income of their parents.

"After more than a decade in power the Government must wake up and stop tinkering at the edges. If Gordon Brown is serious about turning Britain into a fairer society he finally has to make some tough choices and deliver big, permanent and fair tax cuts for families who desperately need money in their pockets now.

"We must target additional resources in schools to those children who need most help, boost vocational education for teenagers, and radically alter the tax credit system so it is focused on helping those families most in need."