HM Government

Investing to build up everyone’s capabilities throughout their lives

Four specific factors are crucial to building people's capabilities:

• support for parents and children in the early years which have a profound impact on later life chances;
• success in school, as educational attainment at 16 remains one of the most important determinants of future success;
• investment during the critical transition years from compulsory education through further and higher education and into work; and
• fresh opportunities to get on in work throughout people's lives, ensuring they have continuing chances to fulfil their potential.

Investing in children's early years

There is now overwhelming evidence that the earliest years of life are crucial to the development of all children. The countries with the highest rates of social mobility provide comprehensive, high-quality pre- school care and education. The Children's Plan set out our goal of making this the best place in the world to grow up.

This Government has doubled maternity leave and pay, introduced parental leave for fathers and given parents with young children the right to ask for flexible working. Free early learning and childcare places have been provided for all three- and four-year-olds and over 3,500 Sure Start Children's Centres will be up and running by 2010. We have improved financial support for parents, created tax credits with extra support for families with children under one, and introduced Child Trust Funds.

These measures have already reduced the disadvantage suffered by thousands of children when they enter primary school and helped to improve the academic performance of pupils from lower-income families. We must now go further in the development of a comprehensive system of early learning and childcare. The Government's long-term ambition is to make a free early learning and childcare place available to all two-year-olds. We are already committed to providing free places in 63 local authorities by 2010 and we will now begin to roll out this ambition across the country, by providing free places for two- year-olds from low-income backgrounds who will benefit the most from such provision in every local authority area.

The Government will also continue to raise the quality of early learning and childcare through improved training and qualifications for those who work with children. We want a more skilled workforce with leadership on the ground from those with qualifications at degree level and will now consider making childcare a profession that requires qualifications equivalent to A-levels. This will underline the importance of Early Years education and help us continue to improve its quality. We want to give parents confidence that provision will not only be safe and fun, but that it will also help their children develop and start primary school ready to learn.

Investing in children's schooling

Education is a key driver of social mobility. Success in school remains one of the most important determinants of future success. Our Children’s Plan vision is for every school to be an excellent school, raising standards and helping all children overcome any barriers to learning they may face, such as a learning difficulty or a disability. We have raised standards across the board, improved behaviour in schools, introduced personalised learning and started to close long standing attainment gaps by investing over £35 billion a year. This is double in real terms what was spent in teaching and facilities in all our schools in 1997. Academies, the National Challenge, and other new initiatives are driving up achievement where standards have been too low. We now want to build on this progress.

The evidence shows that the most important factors in raising attainment are the quality of teaching and the level of parental support and involvement in a child's education. We intend to take further steps to raise teaching standards everywhere, to ensure schools get all the support they need from other services, and to ensure parents are centre-stage in their children’s schooling.

To accelerate this progress, we will now introduce new programmes to attract even more of the most talented individuals into teaching. We will pilot direct campus recruiting to attract high-flying graduates and improve routes for those wanting to enter the profession mid-career. It is important as well that we do more to encourage the most effective teachers to work in schools where the pupils need most help. With a new package of additional support, including a special £10,000 bonus, we will now attract thousands more of the most effective teachers every year to work in more than 500 of the most challenging schools in the country. Up to 6,000 teachers will potentially benefit.

Investing in young adults as they move from education to work

The growing premium on skills means that those without good qualifications will struggle to share in our rising prosperity as a nation. Our goal is that every young person should have a clear path to their future - a skilled Apprenticeship, a job with prospects and training or a place at college or university. We have already legislated to raise the education and training participation age, to 17 in 2013 and then to 18 in 2015, and we have supported young people to stay in learning beyond secondary education with new Education Maintenance Allowances. We have expanded the number of Apprenticeships and university places, and over 50% of young people from every social background now want to go on to higher education. The gap between the rates of participation in post-16 education for different groups has fallen steadily.

We will now build on these reforms with new measures to support increased participation in learning. This year, every 16- and 17-year-old will be guaranteed a place at sixth form, college or in training. We are legislating so that every suitably qualified young person will have the right to an Apprenticeship. To help individuals and businesses through the downturn another 35,000 places will be provided over the coming year in both the public and private sectors, bringing the total number of apprentices to well over a quarter of a million for the first time ever.

The Government will renew efforts to remove all the barriers, whether financial, cultural or aspirational, to education. We will review the way in which financial support is made available for 16- to 18-year-olds - a decisive factor in whether young people stay on in education - so no one is prevented by lack of money from continuing in education or training.

We know that young people from families who have had experience of higher education get a lot of informal encouragement and practical support to apply to university. For those who come from families without such experience, we must provide equivalent support. We will ensure that all children from low-income backgrounds with the potential to benefit from higher education will receive the mentoring, advice and support they need at secondary school to get into university. And the Government has agreed with 11 research-intensive universities that they will work together to seek out young people from poorer backgrounds with high potential, and invite them to show what they could achieve, given the opportunity. We expect 10,000 young people per year to benefit from this scheme when it is up and running.

Investing in people to help them get on in work

The majority of people who will make up the workforce at the start of the decade after next are already over 25, so it is imperative that the Government supports adults to get on as well as young people. If people are out of work, have low skills, or are trapped in a low-paid job, this doesn't only affect them, it can have a negative effect on their children’s life chances too. As well as increasing incomes, raising the skills levels of adults can improve the aspirations and achievements of their children. That's why the Government is committed to offering second, third and fourth chances to people who want to improve their skills and get on throughout their lives. The Government has therefore increased spending on further education by more than 50% over the past decade. By 2010/11, we will be investing over £1 billion through our flagship Train to Gain service.

As well as general barriers to opportunity - such as low skills levels - there can be other obstacles to careers in certain high- status professions. To help ensure that everyone, including those on moderate and middle incomes as well as the wealthiest, has a fair chance to access careers in high-status professions, we will establish a panel to work with the professions themselves to identify obstacles including cultural barriers to access and how they can be removed.

Lifelong learning should be supported by fair chances, fair funding and fair rules. A young person who goes to university soon after leaving school will typically have significantly more spent on their lifetime learning than one who goes from school to work. We believe that those who do not go to university but who have the desire and ability to study and train throughout their working life should also be able to access the support they need in order to raise their skills levels.

To help people through the downturn and support them to gain the new technical and professional qualifications which our future economy will need, we will build on our career development loans programme to create a more generous product. New Professional and Career Development Loans will offer lower interest rates and will allow people to apply for loans of up to £10,000, an increase from the current limit of £8,000. Like career development loans they will be offered interest free while people study. In the next two years we will treble the number of loans available from 15,000 to 45,000. We will proactively promote the loans both as a key part of helping people through the downturn and as a way of enabling people to move up the skills ladder to take advantage of future opportunities.

People who take time out of work to bring up children or care for a disabled or elderly relative are contributing to society, but they often find when they return to work that they need to update their skills. So we want to recognise their contribution by giving them a helping hand back to work. We will pilot new earned rights to training, offering an entitlement of up to £500 for those returning to work from caring to encourage them to update or refresh their skills.

The Government will also bring in new measures to ensure those who missed out on education first time round or face additional disadvantage in the labour market get a second chance. We will therefore trial new rights for low-income families in work who are on tax credits, give further training help to agency workers and to those with learning difficulties and mental health conditions.