Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

Tony Blair's son, Euan, who started his career in investment banking & now has a £22 MILLION London home, founded an apprenticeship training BUSINESS now valued at £700 MILLION, & has been awarded an MBE for "services to education".

In the UK, social mobility is dead.

Last year it was reported that Euan Blair's start-up – Multiverse – had been valued at £639 million, making him worth around £160 million.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence his dad is Tony Blair.

But did he really benefit from an accident of birth?

tatler.com/gallery/tony-b…

Nothing against Euan Blair, & I don't know much about his Multiverse business, but imho his life trajectory highlights unequal Britain's absence of true meritocracy & the abject failure of successive Govt's to break the elite stranglehold on top jobs & improve social mobility.

Euan Blair avoided a state education when his parents played the (Catholic) faith card & got him into the acclaimed London Oratory. He also received costly private tuition from masters at Westminster to help boost his A-level grades.

Euan received an conditional offer from Trinity College, Oxford, where the Master is, by sheer coincidence, a friend of his parents, Tony & Cherie. He didn't get the grades so went to Bristol, where his mum bought him a new designer flat with help from Serial conman Peter Foster.

To help make ends meet, instead of working in a bar or supermarket, Euan got work experience from Steven Spielberg on Band Of Brothers & a Harry Potter film, & when he expressed an interest in politics, he was offered an internship on Capitol Hill, but dropped out after 2 weeks.

Fortunately for him, he was awarded a £50,000 scholarship to do an MA at Yale, much to the surprise of other Yale students, who have no recollection of such a grant being made to a postgraduate before, particularly one with an unspectacular 2:1 in ancient history.

In the highly unequal, free-market obsessed UK, household income can play a decisive role in socioeconomic & educational outcomes. People from low-income backgrounds are much less likely to excel in school, to access HE, or have a professional occupation.
cumberlandlodge.ac.uk/sites/default/…

Most of what follows is taken from this briefing document, prepared to guide & inform discussions at 'Shaping Social Mobility' cross-sector conference held at Cumberland Lodge in March 2022, providing an independent review of current research, practice & background information.

Even those who defy the odds & are upwardly mobile face many social & cultural barriers to further progression within society. The UK is consistently ranked as one of the least socially mobile nations amongst developed countries, along with the US & Italy.

According to UK educational charity the Sutton Trust, if social mobility in the UK rose to the average level across western Europe, it could lead to an increase in annual GDP of approximately 2%, equivalent to £29bn to the UK economy.

oxera.com/wp-content/upl…

Social mobility is the link between a person’s socio-economic status (eg occupation, class or income) & the socioeconomic status of their parents. Where there is a strong link, there is lower social mobility. Where there is a weak link, there is a higher level of social mobility.

Social mobility & wealth inequality are inextricably linked.

Most people - especially those on the Right - still believe that a certain amount of inequality is good for social mobility, as it is though to incentivise people to work harder to improve their socio-economic status.

However, international research has shown that there is an inverse relationship between inequality & social mobility.

This relationship is known as the Great Gatsby Curve - the basic idea being that high inequality leads to low social mobility.

academic.oup.com/sf/article/94/…

This is particularly worrying in the UK context, as it has one of the highest rates of income inequality in the Western world, measured by Gini coefficient: the poorest 20% of the UK population earn 8% of total income, while the top 20% earn 40%.

data.oecd.org/inequality/inc…

'Wealth' measures the stock of valuable possessions. In the UK, inequality of wealth is even greater than inequality of income: the poorest 50% of the UK population own just 9% of wealth in the UK, the top 10% of households holding 44%.

equalitytrust.org.uk/scale-economic…

The Great British Class Survey reveals a polarising trend in the UK: an elite (roughly 6% of the population), who continue to pull away from the rest of society, & a precariat, (roughly 15% of the population), an emerging class of people who
face job insecurity & precarity.

Inequality begins even before school, children from poorer backgrounds are at an academic disadvantage to their peers. Children eligible for free school meals & living in disadvantaged areas were 2.3 times more likely to have speech, language, or communication educational needs.

The gaps appear from early years education and only increase from then on. There is a pronounced divide in our education system across private schools, selective and non-selective schools, and the socio-economic consequences for life chances.

epi.org.uk/wp-content/upl…

While only 7% of the UK population are educated at independent schools, 39% of the Cabinet, 44% of newspaper columnists & 65% of senior judges were privately educated.

The same pattern is found amongst the elites across other professional fields.

gov.uk/government/pub…

You are 60% more likely to be in a professional job if you were from a privileged background rather than a working-class one. Even when defying the odds & overcoming all the educational inequalities present, w/c employees still face pay disparities.

bbc.com/worklife/artic…

In 2019-2020 - before the current #CostOfLivingCrisis - one in three children (around 4.3 million) were living in poverty in the UK, with children from Black & minority ethnic groups being around 1.8 times more likely to be in poverty than children from White British families.

Intergenerational elasticity is a measurement of intergenerational persistence of income in a society, in other words, relative social mobility. Data from the British Cohort Study shows that only 10% of those from the poorest fifth of society make it to the top fifth of earnings.

In comparison to other countries, the UK is clearly a low mobility, high inequality society.

According to the OECD, social mobility in the
UK is below average, taking around five generations to reach the mean income when you start out in the bottom 10% of income distribution.

Comparisons find that Nordic countries are highly socially mobile, & countries such as the UK, US & Italy have lower social mobility.

The Global Social Mobility Index 2020 ranked the UK 21st out of 82 countries, & fifth out of the G7 countries.

aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…

Research into the education status of surnames in 1170 & 2012 in England suggests that historically, status has been more inheritable compared to genetic factors, & that despite many societal changes, social mobility today is not much different than social mobility centuries ago.

Considering the effects of the pandemic, experts warn we may see a decline in social mobility, & 42% of 24-49 yr-olds believe it is getting harder for people from less advantaged backgrounds to progress in UK society in the aftermath of the pandemic.

independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…

A report by the Social Mobility Commission in 2020 examined differences in opportunities across England. The study was not able to measure the difference in opportunities for women due to data limitations & so this research does not reflect the experience of women in the UK.

The report measured mobility in different areas by looking at the difference in earnings between sons from the most & the least deprived families growing up in the same region. Nationally, advantaged sons earned double the income of those from the most deprived families.

Research identified localities with low life chances, which were typified by having fewer professional & managerial occupations, fewer ‘Outstanding’ schools, more areas of deprivation & moderate population density, & included places such as Bolton, Bradford, Chiltern & Thanet.
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Areas in the North & coastal seaside towns are thought to have relatively low mobility.

These findings spurred policy initiatives such as the #LevellingUp Fund, which is *supposed* to decentralise power to local partners & communities & invest in them.

Education is considered one of the key drivers of social mobility, sometimes referred to as ‘the great equaliser’. However, it can also pose barriers to increasing social mobility. People from low-income backgrounds face structural barriers to making
progress.

While attainment gaps have decreased, the attainment gap between children from low income & higher income backgrounds appears early in life.

51% of children eligible for free school meals (FSM) achieved a good level of development at age five, compared to 69% of other children.

The attainment gap varies regionally, with only 40%
of FSM children in areas such as Herefordshire & Leicestershire demonstrating a good level of development at age five, while 60% of FSM children did so in Inner London, up to rates of 70% in
places such as Lewisham.

Research emphasises the importance of early childhood education & care. The first four years play a significant role in determining their chances later in life, & it only gets harder from that point on for children from low-income backgrounds to catch up with their peers.

While the 30 or so hours of free early years childcare & education per week is a step in the right direction, according to The Sutton Trust’s Fair Start campaign, early education in England is “underfunded, underappreciated & unequal”.

In England, 70% of the families eligible for the full 30 hours were in the top half of earnings distribution, but just 20% of families in the bottom third were eligible.

High-quality early education & care programmes improve life chances for disadvantaged children.

The evidence is clear: participants in the Perry Preschool Project, launched in the 1960s in Michigan, USA, were more likely to graduate from high school, more likely to hold a job and have higher earnings, had fewer teenage pregnancies, and committed fewer crimes.

The attainment gap widens throughout schooling. While the majority of the UK’s population attended state comprehensive schools, those who progress to professional careers are disproportionately represented by those who went to fee-paying schools,

Right-wing newspapers & politicians regularly campaign to bring back grammar schools, but results are mixed: while they may help individual students from poorer backgrounds to excel, they often lead to worse results overall for children from low-income backgrounds.

Not only does attendance at a fee-paying school increase predicted earnings & educational attainment, they disproportionately improve highly-valued soft skills such as communication & confidence, access to advice, & more opportunities to develop powerful social networks.

Endless policies, recommendations, programmes & interventions aim to decrease the attainment gap. Yet, teachers & schools are already strained. Better funding for state schools, higher pay for teachers, & fairer access to high-quality schools may be part of the solution.

State school students are underrepresented at the top universities. The University of Oxford admits more students from eight top performing schools than almost 3,000 state schools combined, & 42% of places in Oxford & Cambridge went to private
school students between 2015 & 2017.

This representation problem goes hand in hand with the elite cultures that are replicated at elite universities, with working-class students reporting feeling out of place in the middle-class cultures prevalent at Russell Group universities.

In the mid-2000s, privately educated pupils were nearly 25 times more likely to study medicine than their peers who were eligible for FSM. Different subjects aid social mobility: computing, law & economics at London HE institutions dominated the top 20 courses for mobility rates.

Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, particularly women, are more likely to choose courses that lead to low-earning careers. Those from a privileged background are 30% more likely to take a course leading to a high-earning career than those in the most deprived group.

The labour market is also crucial to enabling social mobility. Incomes are affected by social class and background even when controlling for education, with graduates from lower income households earning 10% less than others studying the same course at the same university.

Unpaid internships can be the key to kickstarting certain careers, yet often people from disadvantaged backgrounds are unable to take them due to financial barriers.

Certain industries rely on unpaid internships more than others, such as retail, the arts, & the media.

Another barrier for pupils from disadvantaged
backgrounds is unadvertised internships which are offered through networks. Under UK law, interns classed as workers should receive the National Minimum Wage, but a loophole exists by classing interns as volunteers or student interns.

Soft skills (eg resilience, confidence, creativity, & self motivation) are highly sought after by employers, which can be improved with extra-curricular activities but participation is driven by household income: kids from the poorest households are much less likely to take part.

Other non-educational barriers to certain occupations can include top firms valuing ‘middle-class characteristics’ over objective measures of ability. In interviews, employers may judge candidates based on how much they have travelled, places they've been, & even their accent.

Some sectors are much less representative of the population than others. Some employers are beginning to see the value of ensuring recruitment practices are fair & open to all. Employees from disadvantaged backgrounds often perform better than their more advantaged colleagues.

For instance, a study shows that employees educated at state schools are 75% more likely to feature in the top decile of performers in seven leading law firms compared to those educated at independent schools.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…

Progress on eliminating the attainment gap at all levels of education is slowing down, and the gap is even widening at primary level, while people from working-class and state school backgrounds are underrepresented across the professions.

It really is crystal clear that systemic changes are needed to tackle these challenges.

But Britain's free-market obsessed press & a succession of Governments have promoted the ideology that poverty is the result of individual moral failings, rather than structural inequalities.

Reducing inequalities between people from different backgrounds & ensuring people get equal opportunities from the start must be key objectives - but this is anathema to many in Government or employed by right-wing media, who worship at the altar of neoliberal individualism.

When focusing on upward mobility for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, we must acknowledge that upward mobility for some means downward mobility for others – something that those with higher socio-economic status, & who control the levers of power, are certain to resist.

A socially-mobile society means a society where
people have the opportunity to pursue the right life path for them.

We must consider how we measure success & merit & reframe our priorities to support people’s wellbeing.

Social mobility is a complex issue, & the preceding #THREAD - adapted from the Conference briefing document for this year's 'Shaping Social Mobility: Education & Employment' conference explores many issues.

But we've certainly not arrived here overnight:

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1359445197113950208?s=20&t=pcI2j2pncYXwTsD4jQ8eDw

Credit to Dr Edmund Newell & others at @CumberlandLodge, & especially to @EsmeLillywhite, for providing much of the content of this #THREAD on social mobility.🙏