Your five-point guide to the coalition's social mobility report
Peter Hoskin 3:20pm
The government's
new report into social mobility is, it tells us, all about "opening doors" and "breaking barriers" — but it's probably taxing attention spans too. 89 pages of text and
graphs, offset by the same pea soup shade of green that's used for all these coalition documents. To save you from wading through it all, here's our quick five-point summary:
1) The same story… Much of the report, as James suggested earlier, is familiar territory. After all, the coalition's two most developed policy areas — welfare and education — are precisely designed to improve opportunities for the least well-off; so here they are again, restated and slightly reframed. The pupil premium is given particular emphasis, as is the thinking behind the coalition's policy on tuition fees. Indeed, there's so little new content that it's hard not to conclude that this report is a crutch for the Lib Dems ahead of next month's local elections: a chance for Nick Clegg, who is fronting the whole operation, to point out how social-minded the coalition is, and how much his party is achieving in government.
2) …told particularly well. Not that point 1), above, is really a criticism of the report. The coalition's reforms to schools and benefits do not become any less impressive through repetition. In fact, repetition may help to impress them — and their compassionate nature — upon the public consciousness. Aside from tackling the public finances, the coalition's greatest achievement is likely to be the implementation of its welfare and education policies. Today's report is a useful summary of the whys, whats, hows and wherefores.
As for Nick Clegg being the ringmaster of all this, I take Paul Goodman's point that "Downing Street mustn't [solely] present the Liberal Democrats as the caring face of the coalition." After all, there's a thick streak of blue in this report's pea green script — and one for which credit is due to IDS, Gove, etc. But, that said, Clegg is, to my eyes and ears, the most convincing set-piece defender of the coalition's policies. And he has been pushing these themes since the very start of his leadership. Here, for instance, is what he had to say on social mobility in his speech to the 2008 Lib Dem conference:
"A better Britain would put education and opportunity at its very heart so no child, no parent, is ever trapped in poverty.
These days, a clever, but poor child, will be overtaken at school by a less clever, but wealthier child by the age of six. The age of six. Just two thousand days old, and already let down by the system.
We cannot let this go on.
I met a remarkable young man a couple of months ago in Southwark. Ashley had the kind of drive and charisma that fills you with hope — and the kind of childhood that makes you want to weep. Passed about from one set of foster parents to another. These days, the government calls kids in care 'looked-after children'. Too often, 'looked-after' is just a painful euphemism for a childhood on the scrap heap. You know how many looked-after children go to university? Five percent. But Ashley defied the system, defied the statistics, and got into Cambridge. By sheer force of personality, and with the help of a good school, he has conquered circumstance.
But it shouldn't be so hard. The system should pave the way for people like Ashley, not set up roadblocks."
That kind of fieriness was sprinkled throughout Clegg's appearance in Parliament earlier — particularly when he emphasised the failures of Labour's spend, spend, spend approach to tackling poverty — and there's even a dose of it in his foreword to the report itself.
3) Some striking metrics. While we're on the subject of communication, the report contains plenty of decent graphs and figures to help convey the government's arguments. There is even a graph to illustrate the claim made by Clegg in his 2008 conference speech (see above) that, "these days, a clever, but poor child, will be overtaken at school by a less clever, but wealthier child by the age of six." Here it is:
And here are Coffee House versions of a some of the report's other numerical highlights. First up, a table showing the proportion of former comprehensive school pupils in various professions:
A graph of the persistent gap in performance between those pupils who are on Free School Meals and those who aren't:
And one to show that the UK has the worst income mobility in Europe. The higher the value, the less likely it is that the country's children will earn more than their parents:
4) All across the lifecycle. If there is anything particularly new in this report, then it's the proposals on internships. Although, in truth, there is not much to them: the government will effectively "encourage" companies to stop hiring unpaid labour, while the civil service and Parliament will "lead by example" with several schemes to recruit interns from all social backgrounds. Already, Clegg has confirmed that the Lib Dems will, "from today," always pay its interns — if only to fend off allegations of hypocrisy. Expect Hypocrisy Watch to snare some Westminster-based victims in future, though.
More generally, the light emphasis on internships is part of the coalition's plan to improve social mobility "at every stage in the life cycle." The message is that the government's policies shouldn't start and end with school, but stretch from birth through to work — and beyond.
5) More work for Alan Milburn. No surprise that the report name-checks Alan Milburn, the coalition's "social mobility tsar". But the extent to which it leans on his work, and the work he is yet to complete, is still fairly striking. Not only will he continue to produce an annual report on social mobility for the reading pleasure of parliamentarians, but he will also "add child poverty to his remit with immediate effect," and temporarily head a new "Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission". There's one Blairite who won't be struggling for work, unpaid or otherwise, in the next few years.
Previous
CmdKeen
April 5th, 2011 3:41pm Report this comment"State schools" and comprehensives are not the same thing as implied by the percentages graph. There are still plenty of grammar schools in the country, even more from the time when your average judge, Royal Society member or British Academy member were going through secondary education.
Rue de la Loi
April 5th, 2011 3:57pm Report this commentNick Clegg's anachronistic belief that good jobs are accessible only though social connections is presumably based on his own personal experience:
From the Guardian, 20 April 2010:
'One of his [Clegg's] jobs was secured by his family's neighbour: former Tory foreign secretary Lord Carrington recommended him for a job in Brussels with the Conservative EU commissioner Leon Brittan.'
Can we make a start on implementing this policy by putting Mr Clegg in a post appropriate to his abilities rather than where his connections have vaulted him?
Your table of the educational backgrounds of those in high office is interestingly labelled as identifying the percentage of those from comprehensive schools. If you had produed such a table 40 years ago, it would have shown the relevant percentages were zero, so on that flawed basis considerable progress has been made. What your table really ought to show is the percentage of those educated at State schools, or those whose parents had no higher education. The fact that the number of State educated students at Oxford and Cambridge has fallen over that period tells you where the fault lies, with the State's abandonment of anything recognisable as rigour in secondary education. Posturing from Putney will not address that deficiency.
Pete Hoskin
April 5th, 2011 4:10pm Report this commentCmdKeen: thanks for spotting that. I've amended the text now so at least it matches up with the table. Will look around for figures that reflect "state school" proportions, rather than just "comprehensive school" —as that would probably be more useful.
AF
April 5th, 2011 4:20pm Report this commentIt's not hard to understand without all your graphs,pie charts and powerpoint presentations that social mobility went into decline at about the same time as two parent families,it was enough that a child brought up with two parents(who weren't either pushy or with sharp elbows)in the main gave that child confidence to make the effort to succeed.
Today with feckless fathers, young family divorces creating a new social strata of welfare dependent single mothers, this in itself goes a long way to explain the decline of our young.
We have to resist the cries and bemoaning of our left wing luvvies that such a statement provokes.
JohnPage
April 5th, 2011 4:25pm Report this commentSo Alan Milburn had the right answers all the time. Who knew?
2trueblue
April 5th, 2011 4:44pm Report this commentNick Clegg is fronting .....
The Libs are getting a lot of credit for the 'good' things, whilst the Tories are getting all the blame for the hard decisions.
Our educational system needs to get back to basics. We have not moved forward, we now have more children leaving school without the basic skills. A child who has the ability and is given the care in school to read, write and grasp the basics of numeracy is a child in which you can instil the confidence and love of learning. Liebore wasted billions and gave better grades for lesser quality work in the name of progress and patted themselves on the back. The work starts at the beginning.
Maggie
April 5th, 2011 5:58pm Report this commentPeople are always complaining about middle class parents being "pushy" and having "sharp elbows" and "moving near good schools" as though wanting your children to do well in life is some sort of crime.
When is someone going to start complaining about the useless parents who do nothing for their children except teach them how to live off the state?
Rue de la Loi
April 5th, 2011 6:38pm Report this commentPete: I will be interested to see the new data on senior figures educated at State schools rather than only at Comprehensives. A comparison with the past will be more illuminating still. As an example, take Sir Tasker Watkins VC, born in 1918 the son of a miner in Caerphilly, awarded a VC in Normandy in 1944, had a career at the Bar, finishing in the Court of Appeal. He was State educated.... at a Grammar School.
TomTom
April 5th, 2011 8:29pm Report this commentIt was amusing to watch Jon snow interview Nick Clegg on this. Jon, my father was Bishop of Whitby friend of Macmillan who got me into Liverpool Univ even though I was dim; and when I dropped out cousin Peter Snow got me a job interview at ITN........interviewing Nick, my father was a wealthy banker who got me an internship with Leon Brittan in Brussels.
I do love these backstories of how the 'lucky sperm club' gets its advancement but pretends to be prolier than thou
Cynic
April 5th, 2011 8:50pm Report this commentI should like to see a comparable set of tables for social mobility before the destruction of the majority of grammar schools.
MacG
April 5th, 2011 11:47pm Report this commentWhat a load of complete bollox. I grew up in a pit village in Yorkshire, as did several of my friends. We completed Btec diplomas at a local further education college. We now total seven doctorates and eight MSCs. We set out as "one in tens" and put in effort to improve our lives rather than blame the chances we were given coming from Rotherham.
I know none of my contemporaries that earn less than Mr Clegg, and get quite annoyed at todays "on a plate" society.
If you can't invest in yourself then just get off the bus!!! Too many "I didn't get the chance" whinges. You make your own chances in life. I am not here to make it better for wasters! Get off your backsides and make an effort.
Rhoda Klapp
April 6th, 2011 9:32am Report this commentSo the privileged are here to lecture us on social mobility? This is so wrong I can't express what's wrong with it.
Suffice to say that the barriers are illusory, the only engine of social mobility is the individual, and all these figures count for nought. However, if the government were to apply its endeavours to something that is actually its responsibility, it would ensure access to good education for all who can benefit from it. No ideology, no teachers' unions having a say, no excuses. But they can't do that, so they ought to shut up ubtil they can.
John Bowman
April 6th, 2011 2:48pm Report this commentOr put in less than 89 pages, thick parents who consequently did badly at school have low paid jobs or live permanently on welfare and produce thick children who will consequently do badly at school and get low paid jobs or live permanently on welfare.
The solution is to hold non-thick children from non-thick parents who work back, say the magic words 'fair' and 'equality' and lo all shall be poorly educated and do low paid jobs or live on the dole.
Verity
April 6th, 2011 4:33pm Report this commentWhat the hell is Cameron doing getting involved in "social mobility"? People have been climbing out of their own class and advancing themselves and their families since the beginning of time without the patronising "help" of Cameron and his ilk.
Cameron: Shut up.
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