PM proposes social mobility payments

Gordon Brown has set out plans to improve rates of social mobility.

In a speech to education leaders on Monday the prime minister was set to propose paying poorer parents to put their children forward into health and education schemes, and call on members of the public to "aim high" for themselves and their children.

Under the plan, parents who agree to participate in programmes such as treating children with behavioural difficulties or accepting free childcare places could receive £200 payments from early next year.

Pilot projects in low-income neighbourhoods will trial the one-off grants as part of a £125m three-year project to find innovative solutions to child poverty.

Brown said unlocking social mobility was "the great test of our time - to build a fairer, more prosperous and upwardly mobile Britain".

"Social mobility starts with parents wanting their children to do better than they did themselves," he was to tell the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust.

"But this cannot be achieved without people themselves adopting the work ethic, the learning ethic and aiming high."

Teachers

Visiting a children's centre earlier in the day, the prime minister also unveiled the latest recruitment drive to encourage more graduates into teaching.

Brown said that the graduate teacher training scheme, Teach First, would be doubled in size over the next few years.

"The key to a good education is having the best teacher and the best headteacher," he said.

"Now we want to make a plan for the best of our graduates to come into teaching."

"We want to be world-class; we don't just want to be above average, we want to be the best."

Thatcher

Brown also blamed Baroness Thatcher's government for the decline in mobility rates in recent years.

"In the 1970s and 1980s, this rise in social mobility stalled," he was set to say.

"Skilled manufacturing jobs were lost. The opportunities for social mobility narrowed. Inequality and child poverty worsened.

"As unemployment rose to three million, the sons and daughters of many families missed out on many of the new educational opportunities that were being created.

"At a time when many of their fathers were hit by unemployment, many of the generation that some have called Thatcher's children - the lost generation - were sadly denied the chance to progress."