This is the Commission’s second annual State of the Nation report to be presented to Parliament. The Commission was created by the UK Government in 2012 as an independent and statutory body to monitor and report on what is happening to child poverty and social mobility in the country.
The report assesses what the UK government, the Scottish government and the Welsh government are doing (the Commission’s remit does not cover the Northern Ireland government), what progress is being made, and what is likely to happen in future. The report also examines the role of employers and professions, councils and colleges, schools and universities, parents and charities. The report makes a number of recommendations for action.
The Commission makes 12 key recommendations:
1. Supplement the existing child poverty targets with new measures to give a more rounded picture of poverty and publish a new timescale for achieving them;
2. Ensure that welfare reforms and fiscal policies protect the working poor from the impact of austerity, including by empowering the Office for Budget Responsibility to report on each Budget’s impact on poverty and mobility;
3. New focus in the early years on ensuring children are school ready at age five, with 85 per cent of children school ready by 2020 and all by 2025;
4. A national parenting campaign to be launched to help more parents become excellent parents, funded by removing childcare tax breaks from families where at least one parent earns over £100,000 per year
5. Higher pay to get the best teachers into the worst schools in deprived areas of the county through a new Teachers’ Pay Premium and new pay grades commissioned from the Teachers Pay Review Body
6. End illiteracy and innumeracy among primary school leavers by 2025 and a new focus on quality careers advice, character development and extra curricular activity in secondary
7. Closing the attainment gap between poorer and better-off children to be a priority for all schools so that by 2020 more than half of children entitled to free school meals are achieving five good GCSEs rising to two-thirds by 2025;
8. Long-term youth unemployment to be ended by 2020 through a package of
measures including half of all larger workplaces providing apprenticeships and a new Day One support service to help unemployed young people straight back into work or education;
9. Britain to become a Living Wage country by 2025 at the latest, underpinned by a new national pay progression strategy and an expanded role for the Low Pay Commission;
10. More shared ownership options for young people to get on the housing ladder and longer-term tenancies to become the norm for famililes with children in the private rented sector.
11. Universities to use the removal of the student numbers cap to significantly close the access gap so that by 2020 they are aiming to admit 5,000 more students from a free schools meals background, with Russell Group universities aiming to admit 3,000 more state school students who have the grades but currently do not get the places;
12. Unpaid internships to be ended – through legislation if necessary – by 2020
To read the report, visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/state-of-the-nation-2014-report