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
