Prospects bleak for city youths

Dundee is fourth bottom of social study, while its Courier Country neighbours are all ranked in the top 10

Young people growing up in Dundee have among the worst job and education prospects in Scotland, according to a major social study.

The city came fourth bottom in a league table compiled by the Social Mobility Commission, which ranked the 32 council areas in Scotland for the life chances of residents.

Dundee’s neighbouring councils of Angus, Perth and Kinross and Fife all featured in the top 10.

Dundee folk have some of the smallest wage packets in the country averaging at £390 a week, although they are in a stronger position than most Scots for being able to buy a home locally.

While Fife and Perth and Kinross top the table for reading, writing and numeracy performance for the youngest pupils, Dundee languishes at the bottom end.

Richard McCready, chairman of the Labour Group in Dundee, said the report should be a “wake-up call to all of us in Dundee”.

He said all parties in the city chamber shared responsibility for having “failed some of the young people of Dundee”.

“We should remember that when the council makes cuts it has a real impact on the lives of real people.

“The young people of Dundee deserve the best chance in life the council should work together to make sure that we are investing in education, especially in early years, to make a real difference to the life chances of every young person in Dundee.”

The report also found the gap between the percentage of Dundee pupils from the most and least deprived communities getting at least one National 5 qualification or equivalent was the fourth widest in the country.

Only Clackmannanshire had a worse record than the City of Discovery in another table charting the proportion of youngsters leaving school with good qualifications and then going into work, education or training.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said: “The news that Dundee consistently falls in the bottom fifth in terms of education and employment outcomes is extremely worrying.

“To boost social mobility requires a transformative investment in education to ensure that people have the skills they need to build a highly skilled, high wage economy for the future.”

Dundee City Council leader John Alexander said they were “absolutely determined to make Dundee a better city for everyone”.

“We have been clear from the outset that the city has its social problems and we will continue to work together to improve the lives of our citizens,” he said.

He said there was “an extensive array of work” going on in key areas of education, employment and skills and predicted the Tay Cities Deal would equip Dundonians with more skills to transform lives.

“The council is investing hundreds of millions of pounds into the infrastructure of Dundee to shape a new future for the city. We want as many people as possible to benefit.”

Angus and Perth and Kinross were towards the bottom of a table for affordable homes for local people, with the latter seeing house prices 7.5 times higher than average wages in the area.

A spokeswoman for P&K council said it was tackling the issue with its local housing strategy and encouraging employers to think “more creatively”.

“(The strategy) seeks to deliver 150 affordable units per year. To achieve this target the council has its own house building programme and works closely with social landlords and developers to deliver affordable houses across a range of tenures,” she said.

An Angus Council spokesman said: “Our recently approved local plan provides for over 4,000 new homes in the next 10 years – around £1 billion of potential investment – 25% of which are affordable.”

Alan Milburn, chairman of the Social Mobility Commission and a former UK minister, said the country seemed to be “in the grip of a self-reinforcing spiral of ever-growing division”.

“There is a stark social mobility lottery in Britain today,” he said.