What sort of society is Gordon Brown inheriting? As the new prime minister
finally enters No 10 next week there will be many challenges in his in-tray.
But for me one issue stands above all others: Britain has the lowest social
mobility of any advanced nation for which figures are available. I know that
tackling this is a matter of extreme urgency for both him and the
Conservatives, which has set up a taskforce on social mobility led by David
Davis, the shadow home affairs spokesman.
Social mobility defines the chances of an individual climbing the social
ladder and moving from a lower to a higher-income bracket as an adult. It is
a barometer of how meritocratic and fair a society is. It is a powerful
measure of equality of opportunity as it highlights the prospects for our
children and indeed our children’s children.
The Sutton Trust helped to place this issue at the top of the political agenda
when in 2005 we published a study showing that there had been a sharp fall
in cross-generational mobility between those who grew up in the 1960s and
1970s and those who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. This was shocking
enough. But the study by Stephen Machin’s group at the London School of
Economics (LSE) also found the US and Britain were less mobile than other
advanced countries. We – a nation that prides itself on fairness – and the
US (the land of opportunity) were bottom of the league table. In no other
country were the prospects of those from nonprivileged backgrounds more
limited.
This is an issue that is close to my heart. As someone who started out from a
modest background, I went to some excellent state schools, Oxford and the
London Business School and then left Britain in 1973 and worked in the
United States, France and Germany. I was lucky enough to be successful.
Coming back to the UK in the mid1990s I saw a much less mobile society.
Just to give a couple of examples. I visited my old school, Reigate, which was
a free grammar school when I was there but had become a private school now,
charging fees of more than £12,000 a year. It occurred to me that most of my
fellow classmates – many of whom have gone on to great things – would now be
excluded on financial grounds. I discovered that the direct grant scheme
whereby the government funded a majority of places at 180 of the best
private day schools – 5% of all secondary schools – had been discontinued.
It was a similar story when I visited my Oxford college. In my day it took a
number of students from south Wales, all working class, most of them
brilliant. The president told me that it has taken hardly any such students
in the past 10 years. In fact the proportion of state-educated
undergraduates at Oxbridge has fallen from around two-thirds in 1970 to just
over half today.
So what has happened? The LSE researchers identified two main reasons for this
decline in mobility: the increasing level of income inequality in the UK and
the fact that the expansion of educational opportunities has
disproportionately benefited the better-off. Those countries that do well in
the social mobility stakes – Sweden and Canada, say – have much less of a
gap between the bottom and top earners, and the quality of education a child
receives has far less to do with how well-off his or her parents are.
A recent paper by Canadian researcher Miles Corak echoes the LSE’s findings.
Summarising some 50 studies on intergenerational mobility from around the
globe – including studies from America, Canada, France, Germany, Sweden,
Denmark and Finland – its findings are unequivocal: in no other advanced
country for which figures are available is social mobility as low as in the
UK and in no other country is the link between a parent’s education and the
cognitive skills of their children stronger.
Our own Millennium Cohort Study has shown that many children from
disadvantaged backgrounds are already up to a year behind more privileged
youngsters by the age of three. In a German study of educational
opportunity, England emerges as the country where a child’s test score at
the age of 13 is most closely tied to the number of books at home.
The crucial points here are that children’s test scores are a good indication
of where they will end up later in life: cognitive mobility mirrors to a
great degree social mobility. It is also no coincidence that the UK came
bottom out of 21 countries in the recent Unicef report on child wellbeing.
Social mobility matters because there are questions of both justice and
utility at stake. It is neither fair nor efficient that a well-born person
of average intelligence stands a much better chance of reaching a position
of power and importance than a bright child who happens to be from a poorer
home. If we want to remain competitive as a nation – and healthy as a
society – then we need to nurture talent from all backgrounds and make sure
the most able reach the top.
So what should Brown do to give children from nonprivileged backgrounds the
chance to prosper?
- Invest more in early years support that reaches the right families. Bright
children from poorer homes are likely to fall behind their better-off peers
of lower ability by the time they are six. The evidence shows that high
quality, sustained early years education and parental support can help
combat this trend. Sure Start, the government plan to help parents and young
children, has made some huge strides, but has too often failed to reach the
families who need it most.
- Make school choice a reality for all. Our top state schools have become the
preserve of the well-off, accepting very few children from poorer homes.
Brown should take two practical steps to ensure choice operates equitably.
First, there should be a national school bus system to ensure poorer parents
– who are less likely to have access to private transport – can reach the
better state schools in their area, even if they cannot afford to live next
to them. And we need to make sure that our top comprehensives play fair when
it comes to admissions, and take children who reflect the make-up of their
neighbourhoods.
- Open up grammar schools to bright children from nonprivileged backgrounds.
David Willetts, the Tory education spokesman, was right to point out that
existing grammar schools serve too narrow a social pool. But how can we make
them engines of social mobility? At Pate’s grammar school in Cheltenham we
have been working with the local primary schools in less affluent areas,
encouraging bright children to apply.
- Democratise access to independent day schools. Studies show that UK private
schools are the best schools in the world. They have the lion’s share of the
best teachers and provide a disproportionate number of our elites. So Brown
should follow the example of our open access scheme at the Belvedere school,
Liverpool, run with the Girls’ Day School Trust, and open up the top 100 or
more private day schools on a needs-blind basis, with parents paying a
sliding scale of fees according to their means. We know this works: the
intake of the Belvedere now reflects the Liverpool area and its academic
results are the best ever.
- Supply high-quality provision out of school hours to develop young people.
Extra language tuition, music lessons and art classes are all things that
middle-class children expect and which builds their confidence and
character. As soft skills become more important in determining life chances,
Brown should guarantee that all children have access to meaningful
opportunities beyond the school day to enrich their learning.
Give the brightest and best the opportunity to prosper. The expansion of
higher education in this country has disproportionately benefited the
better-off, yet it has never been more important to get to university, with
the earnings premium of UK graduates among the highest in the world. In
recognition of the unevenness of the schools system, Brown should introduce
a measure of potential such as the American Sat tests that we are trialling
with the government. This should be used in conjunction with A-levels to
identify bright children who may not have had access to the best education.
We also need to move to a system of true postqualification application where
students apply to university once they know their exam grades.
- Create an independent body to monitor education performance. One of Brown’s
first moves as chancellor was to create a monetary policy committee to take
key economic decisions away from politicians. An education policy committee
may be a step too far, but an authoritative body to look independently at
standards, both across time and in relation to other countries, is
desperately needed. Education is always going to be a political issue, but
policymakers, teachers and parents need to know accurately and objectively
how our schools measure up.
Sir Peter Lampl is chairman of the Sutton Trust, which aims to promote
social mobility through education. He will be taking part in a BBC Today
programme week on social mobility, starting tomorrow
the trouble with gordon brown is that he thinks he can push people around especially unemployed who are forced by the jobcentre to apply for rubbish jobs outwith where they stay paying minumum wage yet a job paying £7 an hour which is local wasnt offered to me though i did apply for it myself i got the impression the employment advisor wasnt best pleased i had applied for a job locally paying more an hour than they get which is min wage the trouble being they dont want you to earn more an hour than they do but if these jobs are paying more than what they get why dont they apply for them? sooner gordon gets round to purging the jobcentre staff the better their problem is they wouldnt know a hard days work if it gave them on the job training just as long as they can suitt in front of their computer all day especially winter time while the rest of us have to work outside in rubbish jobs
dave smith, cupar , fife
Private schools - where you have to pay to attend, and adhere to rules - does allow less bright pupils access into better Universities. This is largely as a result of a forgotten principle which is firmly applied in most private schools - DISCIPLINE. State schools are, on comparisson, far less able to maintain discipline due to our current misguided aproach to tackling bad behaviour. The teachers are fighting a loosing battle against poorly behaved pupils and as such, the brighest pupils suffer and never reach their full potential.
In order to maximise the Country's potential in terms of skills, early intervention is required to stream pupils into either vocational/technical Schools or into coventional academical Schools.
Many people that are currently out of work due to having failed through the conventional school system 'might' have flurished if their skills had have been highlighted at an early age of say, 13/14. This in turn would empower the poor and relieve unemployment.
W Beesley, Wrexham, Wales
By accepting "Social Mobility" as an unambiguous good we are assuming that there is something inherently superior about being "middle class". I know lots of young people who have spent a few years at university gaining some vague liberal arts degree in order to set them up in a dreary office job. How is this better than spending your time working at a useful practical trade? Personally, I would much rather be a first rate carpenter than a second rate call-centre manager.
Nobody is in favour of poverty and deprivation, but this need have no connection whatever with "social mobility". It is hardly surprising that middle class parents wish to mould their children in their own image, and thus push them towards university. Although the state schools are, in my experience, unbelievably awful, the opportunity already exists for anyone to gain a university education if they really want it. Sir Peter seems to be annoyed that many people don't.
Anthony Norbet, Reading, UK
Admissions policies AND practice in many schools play an enormous role in 'entrenching advantage' which was David Willett's description of grammar schools. He was right to identify this as contradicting the view that these schools wre 'ladders out of disadvantage'. Sir Peter has broadened this debate in a very helpful way - and The Sutton Trust's 'example' projects have shown that - with goodwill, commitment - schools can become again institutions that promote not only 'good education', but also help overcome some of the barriers for bright pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. Perhaps we should look again at the dismembering of the Direct Grant schools and also the loss of the Assisted Places schems.
Sir Peter is to be congratulated on his straightforward (and elegant) articulation of what is needed as Brown takes on the mantle of 'Education, education, education'
David Jesson, St Ives Cornwall, England
What Peter Lampl is arguing for is in essence the return of the Direct Grant system. This would be useful, but not enough. We also need to improve the state system. Enough has been said about the relative merits of selection and mixed ability as such for the arguments not to need repeating. However there is another angle.
In a selective secondary system, academic teachers are attracted to work with pupils of their own level of intelligence. After two generarions of mixed ability it is now, for instance, rare to find a maths department staffed by mathematicians; most children are taught by non-mathematicians who themselves have never been taught by a high-level specialist. There is no incentive for maths specialists to move into the nightmare of many modern schools when so many other jobs are on offer. Less spectacularly, the same is true of other subjects.
Current policies leave the independent schools without competition. No wonder they dominate the best universities.
Michael Bruce, Selby, Yorkshire
Interesting but mostly pure fantasy. This analysis is correct in that wealth or the position one starts from is the most important factor in what position in the social hierarcy you end up and always has been and probably always will be. It is true at the top and sadly for the underprivileged now that they are mostly going to stay at the bottom where they started, after all it simply wouldn't do to have little Harvey Henry selling burgers at McDonalds would it? What a waste of their posh accents that would be and how would the family ever live it down? Social class, privilege and social advantage will mostly prevail and we should therefore not be suprised that our society is largely closed and with little social mobility up or down the ladder. The reforms proposed need support in a democracy and sadly there is no support for allowing the children of the middle classes to fall down the ladder. We have to face facts education as a means of social mobility is largely dead in the water.
David Hambly, ST ALBANS, Herts
Unfortuately you can implement all the recommendations made in this article and still not improve Social Mobility.
Why?
Because due to the welfare state there is now no incentive for anyone, least of all those from poorer famillies to work hard and better themselves. If you can get free accommodation, cash and benefits without being able to even read or write then why bother?
I started an evening NVQ level 2 in Pastry and Patisserie for which I paid oevr £250. On the course were several teenagers from poorer famillies. They informed me they were doing the course purely for the £40pw handout they got and the free food. After the course they would revert to being unemployed since they told me only mugs work.
Odd how in India kids will walk 10 miles barefoot for the chance of getting some education. There the drive to better oneself is based on the fact there is no welfare state. Perhaps the answer is to scrap the safety net and see what happens then.
Stephanie James, London, England