The author is an FT contribution editor, Chief Executive of Royal Society of Arts and former Chief Economist at Bank of England
Imagine that this is June 2029 and we are on the eve of a general election. , ,
It is clear that the UK was a decisive moment for the Government of 2025. Reducing dissatisfaction about stable standards was boiled in the second consecutive summer of riots. Jerk in action, Prime Minister Sir Kir Stmper launched Lifting Lives (LL) program.
Its purpose was to change opportunities for young people, especially from poor background. Echoing the words of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, the stormer said: “Our nation’s youth are the most obvious mirrors of our performance. Today, for many people, that is torn in the mirror. The government will be judged how well we repair it, raise every young man’s life and aspirations in Britain.”
Poverty is a punitive tax on aspiration. In 2025, the hair poverty in Britain was expected to move from 4.5mn to 5mn. By scrapping two-child profit cap and restoring 1,400 shores start centers since 2010, child poverty has begun to fall, reducing financial obstacles for aspirations. But these obstacles are not only financial – they belong to digital, health, function and community. They were also settled on a scale and at the source.
In 2025, about 40 percent of the youth lacked broadband and access to a computer at home. Under the LL program, a coalition of technology companies agreed to provide state-of-the-art technology to every school in the UK and every child with computer, broadband access and an-enabled personal tutor to each child, with partially cutable cost against digital service tax imposed on them. On a stroke, digital exclusion for children was erased.
Digital tuition was based on “Khanmigo”, an AI-powered device developed by Khan Academy. Since its introduction, it has achieved its 2025 target of improving educational performance at similar levels of human tuition, but on a fraction of the cost. Individual teaching has benefited the most people including neurodivers and low-obtained children, which reduce the widespread attainment differences of the UK.
In 2025, mental health problems suffered one of the five youths, yet 10 state secondary schools had less than one nurse. The LL program provided each school with an in-house clinician, which offers programs funded by preventive health budget in everything to the treatment of mental and physical health problems as well as well to anxiety. Spiral, mental health problems are now falling in school children.
In 2025, the bridge from education to training and work, for many people, broke: 1MN youth were neither in employment nor training. These problems were sour into school, where funding for career advice had fallen by two-thirds since 2010. This was then mixed by narrowed commercial routes, especially for people with low or no qualifications-day education for colleges more than 10 percent and more than the number of more than a quarter since 2010.
Under the LL program, funding advisory services for school career were restored to the 2010 levels in every school, local businesses provided a structured program of volunteers, dialogue and work experience for every 14 to 18-year. To provide a clear route for technical work, a technical baccalaureate (TBACC) was introduced in all schools from the age of 14, which was modeled MBACC Leader in Manchester.
To strengthen the post-school path after employment, at the age of 18, every young person was guaranteed to either degree, degree-infinite or apprentice place. To ensure that the business actively participated in two later programs, the LL program offered tax credit to the participating companies, along with additional funding for colleges and universities offered additional funding as well as courses fulfilling local business demands, which is cooperative by trade.
These initiatives have inspired the restructuring of post -18 education. The new models offer a mixture of technical and mutual, academic, skills and matching with local employment needs. While Blackpool and Felde College and NMITE University were the initial examples in Hurdford, degree-directlys are becoming increasingly ideal and tomorrow’s universities are becoming rapidly becoming “multi-purposes”.
The path of social mobility is often outside education and work. Research has found that community and holiday activities are the best single means of creating social connections and Fast-tracking social mobility In Britain. But the number of youth clubs, holiday centers, football pitches and libraries across the UK had declined by thousands of thousands between 2010 and 2025, especially at poor places.
The LL program has since reversed these trends. Since 2025, each of the 134 teams in the English and Scottish Football League has sponsored a youth club in their city or city, which has been prepared on the onset youth zone offering sports, music, cultural and holiday activities for the age of eight to 25 years. Under the leadership of Sir Gareth Southgate, every young field advises to deal with “lost boys”.
Half stopped for half a century, the opportunity escalator is in speed. On the eve of the election, the Prime Minister again attracted to Kennedy’s words: “GDP does not measure for our children’s health, quality of education or their sports.” He said: “As a result of lifting life, a computer and tutor for every child, a nurse in every school, a career route for every young adult and a club for every community. A mirror is now being repaired.”
