Education is the key to reviving social mobility

‘Creativity is central to the core curriculum and Keir Starmer’s plan for Labour to prioritise this looks promising.’ Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

In her depressing article, Polly Toynbee states that social mobility has gone into reverse (Keir Starmer has finally used the C-word: acknowledging the barriers of class that still divide us, 6 July).

She refers to the progress made during the postwar years, and I experienced this directly; after leaving school without A-levels, I got into university as a mature student in the early 1970s. Evening classes were my access route and they transformed my life. There were a lot of groundbreaking initiatives in that period. One was the National Extension College (NEC), created in the early 1960s by Michael Young, author of the seminal The Rise of the Meritocracy, and Brian Jackson, co-author of Education and the Working Class.