If we are to save the lost souls of education, we need a new model of social mobility that develops all talents, not just the academic, say Stephen Machin and Lee Elliot Major

In 2011 following the summer riots, Michael Gove gave one of his most revealing speeches as education secretary.

“For all the advances we have made, and are making in education, we still, every year, allow thousands more children to join an educational underclass,” Gove told an invited audience at the Durand Academy in Stockwell, south London.

“They are the lost souls our school system has failed.”

Teachers had reported a growing number of children unable to form letters or even hold a pencil. Many could not sit and listen during lessons. Others could barely speak a full sentence of proper words, let alone frame a question.

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