The writer, an FT contributing editor, is chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts and former chief economist at the Bank of England
Imagine it is June 2029 and we’re on the eve of a general election . . .
It is clear the decisive moment for the UK government came in 2025. Simmering discontent about stagnant living standards had boiled over into a second successive summer of riots. Jolted into action, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer launched the Lifting Lives (LL) programme.
Its aim was to transform opportunities for young people, especially those from poorer backgrounds. Echoing the words of Robert F Kennedy in 1968, Starmer said: “The youth of our nation are the clearest mirror of our performance. Today, for many, that mirror is cracked. The government will be judged by how well we repair it, lifting the lives and aspirations of every young person in the UK.”
Poverty is a punitive tax on aspiration. In 2025, child poverty in the UK was expected to rise from 4.5mn towards 5mn. By scrapping the two-child benefit cap and restoring the 1,400 Sure Start centres lost since 2010, child poverty has since started falling, lowering financial barriers to aspiration. But these barriers are not only financial — they are digital, health, work and community related. These too were tackled at scale and at source.
In 2025, around 40 per cent of young people lacked access to broadband and a computer at home. Under the LL programme, a coalition of technology companies agreed to provide every school in the UK with state-of-the-art technology and every child with a computer, broadband access and an AI-enabled personal tutor, with costs partly deductible against the digital services tax levied on them. At a stroke, digital exclusion for children was erased.
Digital tutoring was based on “Khanmigo”, an AI-powered tool developed by the Khan Academy. Since its introduction, this has achieved its 2025 goal of improving academic performance at similar levels to human tutoring, but at a fraction of the cost. Personalised learning has benefited those with complex educational needs the most, including neurodiverse and lower-achieving children, shrinking the UK’s stubbornly wide attainment gap.
In 2025, mental health problems afflicted one in five young people, yet fewer than one in 10 state secondary schools had a nurse. The LL programme provided every school with an in-house clinician, offering programmes funded by the preventive health budget in everything from eating well to anxiety, alongside treatment for mental and physical health problems. Having spiralled, mental health problems in school-age children are now falling.
In 2025, the bridge from education to training and work was, for many, broken: 1mn young people were neither in employment nor training. These problems were sourced in school, where funding for careers advice had fallen by two-thirds since 2010. This was then compounded by constricted vocational pathways, especially for those with low or no qualifications — funding for further education colleges having fallen by over 10 per cent and apprentice numbers by more than a quarter since 2010.
Under the LL programme, funding for school careers advisory services was restored to 2010 levels in every school, with local businesses providing a structured programme of volunteers, talks and work experience for every 14 to 18-year-old. To provide a clear pathway to technical work, a Technical Baccalaureate (TBACC) was introduced in all schools from age 14, modelled on the MBACC pioneered in Manchester.
To strengthen post-school pathways to employment, every young person at age 18 was guaranteed either a degree, degree-apprentice or apprentice place. To ensure that business participated actively in the latter two programmes, the LL programme offered tax credits to participating companies, together with extra funding for colleges and universities offering courses satisfying local business demand, co-financed by business.
These initiatives have prompted a reconfiguration of post-18 education. Innovative models have emerged offering a mix of technical and interpersonal, alongside academic, skills and matched to local employment needs. While Blackpool and Fylde college and NMITE university in Hereford were early exemplars, degree-apprenticeships are fast becoming the norm and yesterday’s universities are rapidly becoming tomorrow’s “multiversities”.
The route to social mobility often lies outside education and work. Research has found that community and leisure activities are the best single means of building social connections and fast-tracking social mobility in the UK. But the number of youth clubs, leisure centres, football pitches and libraries across the UK had fallen by many thousands between 2010 and 2025, especially in poorer places.
The LL programme has since reversed these trends. Since 2025, every one of the 134 teams in the English and Scottish football leagues has sponsored a youth club in their city or town, modelled on the Onside youth zones offering sport, music, cultural and leisure activities for ages eight to 25. Under the leadership of Sir Gareth Southgate, every youth zone also offers mentoring services to tackle the “lost boys” (and girls) problem.
Stalled for half a century, the opportunity escalator is in motion. On the eve of the election, the prime minister again drew on Kennedy’s words: “GDP does not measure for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.” He went on: “Lifting Lives has resulted in a computer and tutor for every child, a nurse in every school, a career pathway for every young adult and a club for every community. A mirror cracked now being repaired.”
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