State of the Nation 2016: Social Mobility in Great Britain

Britain has a deep social mobility problem which is getting worse for an entire generation of young people, the Social Mobility Commission’s State of the Nation 2016 report warns.

The impact is not just felt by the poorest in society but is also holding back whole tranches of middle, as well as low income, families - these treadmill families are running harder and harder, but are standing still.

The problem is not just social division, but a widening geographical divide between the big cities - London especially - and too many towns and counties across the country that are being left behind economically and hollowed out socially.

In the North West:

• Less than half of children from low-income families (48 per cent) are school-ready at five, compared to more than two-thirds of their wealthier peers (67 per cent). The local authority with the biggest development gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children in the early years is Wigand, where just 41 per cent of poorer children are school-ready at five.
• Blackpoll, Knowles and Oldham area all among the ten local authority areas with the largest proportion of children in schools rated inadequate.
• Just 3.9 per cent of children eligible for free school meals gain five A grades at GCSE. In Knowles, only one in five children eligible for free school meals achieve five GCSEs at grade C or above (including English and maths).
• Blackpoll is one of the worst local authorities in the country for keeping poorer children in education after 16. Some 18 per cent of poorer young people are not in education or training (NET) at 16, compared to 7 per cent in the six best local authorities.
• At Bolton University, nearly a quarter of all students from low participation areas end up dropping out before they complete their courses.
• Near three quarters of local authorities in the North West have more than one in four workers earning below the Living Wage, compared to less than one in four local authorities in the South East. The lowest hourly pay averages in the country are Rosendale (£8.83) and Eden (£8.97).

The State of the Nation 2016 report, which was laid before Parliament this morning, lays bare the scale of the social mobility challenge facing the Government. It finds fundamental barriers including an unfair education system, a two-tier labour market, a regionally imbalanced economy and an unaffordable housing market.

The Social Mobility Commission welcomes the high priority that the current, as well as successive, governments have given to social mobility and finds that some real progress has been made. But it concludes that the twentieth century expectation that each generation would be better off than the preceding one is no longer being met.

It points to evidence that those born in the 1980s are the first post-war cohort not to start their working years with higher incomes than their immediate predecessors. Home ownership, the aspiration of successive generations of ordinary people, is in sharp decline, among the young especially. Most shocking of all, today only one in eight children from low income backgrounds is likely to become a high income earner as an adult.

The Commission calls for new thinking and new approaches to deal with these deep structural problems. It recommends that an ambitious ten year programme of social reform is needed which the Government should lead and which employers and educators should join.

The Rt Hon Alan Milburn, chairman of the Social Mobility Commission, said: “The rungs on the social mobility ladder are growing further apart. It is becoming harder for this generation of struggling families to move up.

“The social divisions we face in Britain today impact many more people and places than the very poorest in society or the few thousands youngsters who miss out on a top university. Whole sections of society and whole tracts of Britain feel left behind.

“The growing sense that we have become an ‘us and them’ society – where a few unfairly entrench power and wealth to themselves – is deeply corrosive of our cohesion as a nation.

“As the EU referendum result showed, the public mood is sour and decision-makers have been far too slow to respond.

“We applaud the Prime Minister’s determination to heal social division and foster social progress. That is a big ambition. It will require big action. Fundamental reforms are needed in our country’s education system, labour market and local economies to address Britain’s social mobility problem. That should be the holy grail of public policy, the priority for government and the cause which unites the nation to action.”