Bright, poor students are being badly failed by Britain's schools

Britain’s flagging productivity is commonly thought to be the root of the country’s present economic struggles. And as successive governments have painfully discovered – not least Liz Truss’s – there is no quick fix for it. Looking longer-term and investing in the skills of the future workforce satisfies nobody’s desire for instant results. Yet it’s actually the best lever ministers can employ to reverse the slide.

A strong, internationally competitive economy requires a flourishing pipeline of home-grown talent coming through schools, colleges and universities and into employment or entrepreneurship. Yet many of the future scientists, mathematicians, engineers and start-up gurus that this country needs to produce simply don’t make it through. The reason? Our education system blocks them off. Social mobility has stalled, and the conveyor belt of talent has come to a grinding halt alongside it.

In the UK we now routinely squander the potential of highly able but disadvantaged pupils. This perpetuates a generational cycle of inequality and compounds the country’s slumping productivity.