{"text":[[{"start":5.84,"text":"The writer is an economist and former UK Department for Education chief analyst"}],[{"start":11.1,"text":"The greatest sin in a politician is to believe something is true when it is not. Erroneous understanding leads to policies that are ineffective, and can do real harm."}],[{"start":21.78,"text":"In an interview last week, Andy Burnham talked about feeling like an imposter at Cambridge and struggling to find work after graduating, unlike well-connected friends. I am a year younger than Burnham, and we were both the first generation to go to university. My background is humbler than his: my dad left soon after I started school, never to be seen again; my mum worked as a cleaner, a shop worker and in a warehouse. I went to Oxford and of course felt like an imposter. I get where the prime minister is coming from."}],[{"start":52.92,"text":"Burnham’s conclusion from his experience, that connections matter significantly in careers, is not, however, supported by the data. Children who grow up poor are much more likely to be poor as adults than other children. But this is not primarily about connections. Resolution Foundation analysis shows that a child who grew up in deep poverty will earn just 5 per cent less than someone from a more affluent background, with the same degree from the same university."}],[{"start":80.92,"text":"Perhaps connections account for that 5 per cent. Ed Miliband no doubt had a head start in politics over Andy Burnham or Ed Balls. But 5 per cent seems pretty small to me. If you had told me, aged 12, eating (and detesting) my free school meals, that I could expect to earn 95 per cent as much as better-off people in my cohort, I would have been delighted, and proud of Britain for offering me that level of opportunity."}],[{"start":105.28,"text":"Children who grow up poor are more often poor as adults in Britain overwhelmingly because they do worse at school. They are typically two years behind by age 16, and only half as likely to go to university. If they do, they typically go to less prestigious universities and are more likely to drop out. These results are bad news for poorer children whether they aspire, in the PM’s soundbite, to a hard hat or a mortar board."}],[{"start":130.04,"text":"Burnham and I were lucky — his father, like my mother, wanted us to do well in school. I am sure his parents read to him, tested his spelling and checked that he had done his homework. My mum did all of those things and set me up for life. Not all children have that advantage, and that is why properly funded, high-quality nursery provision matters so much. Creating that good start in every postcode is in Burnham’s gift as prime minister. He should do it."}],[{"start":155.08,"text":"Good schools change lives. That was true of my school, and it is true of many schools that I saw when I worked for the Department for Education. But it is not true of all schools by any means — and there is still a huge job to be done to raise standards in many places, particularly for poorer children. The OECD’s Pisa scores for educational attainment show that this is the case in England, and even more so in Wales and Scotland, where results for poor children are now awful."}],[{"start":180.76,"text":"Again, improving schools is in Burnham’s gift, at least in England. He should ensure that schools in the poorest and toughest neighbourhoods have enough money to attract the country’s best teachers. And he should take Professor Becky Francis’s evidence-rich review of the curriculum very seriously. That it was commissioned under Sir Keir Starmer should not be held against it."}],[{"start":200.32,"text":"If those things happen, more kids from ordinary backgrounds will do better at school and have more choices in life. Employers should, of course, offer work experience, which can open up new vistas for young people — particularly for working-class children who may know no one who works in a higher-paying job. But what matters above all, and what is in government’s control, is providing a high-quality education: nursery, school, college and university. Burnham should concentrate on that, because that is what the evidence says matters most to his — and my — goal."}],[{"start":235.27,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1785830496_9168.mp3"}