MP calls for more support for young people

Seema Malhotra, MP for Feltham & Heston, uses this week’s column to call for more support for young people.

This week and next, we should put our young people centre stage and celebrate their achievements as school pupils receive their much-anticipated GCSE, A-level, BTEC and T-level results.

I remember my own feelings of anxiety and trepidation on results day at The Green School, which I attended with my sisters. As a young person, GCSE or A-level results represent a major step in your education and provide a foundation on which you continue to build your future. I want to take this opportunity to wish each young person success – whether you are going on to further studies, getting a job or an apprenticeship or still deciding the right direction for you.

We must remember that those receiving their A-level, BTEC and T-level results this week took their GCSEs at the height of the pandemic, when exams were scrapped. Their experience was abnormal in so many ways – confined to homes that may not have been suitable for study, sitting their first public exams two years later than they should have, and potentially missing chunks of content due to disruption. We should be proud of their resilience.

I am concerned that the government’s hasty decision to impose pre-pandemic grading on A-levels and GCSEs in England threatens to broaden the attainment gap between the most privileged and most disadvantaged. The pandemic-era grade inflation that this move seeks to reverse was heavily skewed towards private, grammar and selective schools. The pandemic hit the quality of life and attainment of poorer students harder, and the government’s National Tutoring Programme has failed to close that gap.

It’s important that we respect and address the impact that the pandemic has had on our young people. It’s why Labour’s Children’s Recovery Plan will provide quality mental health support in each school and small group tutoring for all who need it. It’s why Labour will end tax breaks for private schools, raising £1.5 billion to invest in an education system that offers opportunity to all. It’s also why Labour has called for work experience to be compulsory, a campaign I have backed since it was changed under David Cameron. My Freedom of Information request in 2013 showed that in the first year after it was dumped from the school curriculum, there were 60,00 fewer work experience placements for young people across the country.

I have always been invested in helping young people in our borough to have the best chances in life. Four years ago, I set up the charity Hounslow’s Promise, working with headteachers, the Hounslow Chamber of Commerce and young people on educational attainment, employability, youth leadership and social mobility. It sets a very simple message: that every young person is valued, all young people should be supported to accomplish their goals and no young person should be left behind.

The charity is holding employability skills courses this summer for 18-24 year olds, and anyone in Hounslow wanting to register for the courses next week are still able to do so by emailing [email protected] or calling 07594311390.

As well as education, it’s vital to support projects like youth facilities, community projects and sports like grassroots football to develop the leadership and wider talents of our young people.

Once again, I want to give my congratulations to all young people receiving exam results this week and next. This is a generation that has already worked hard through adversity and deserves better than a broadening attainment gap under the Tories. A Labour government will invest in their future, and the future of the country.