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Saturday 26 May 2012

Opportunity has stopped knocking: who will be its new champion?

Anne McElvoy says that the decline of social mobility is a modern scandal and should be the great battleground of post-Blair politics. The answer used to be grammar schools: now it lies in radical educational diversity

Here’s a conundrum as we leave the Blair years behind us. Never has so much faith been placed in the idea of a society open to social mobility; never have so many politicians’ speeches been delivered in praise of a more classless society and the need to promote ability, regardless of background. Yet their rhetoric isn’t matched by the facts. Britain is becoming far less socially mobile. On the present indicators, we can only argue about whether it has stalled or is going backwards. What no one can convincingly argue is that it is going forwards. One of the oft-cited pieces of evidence is that of a celebrated study of children born in 1958 and children born in 1970. Those born in 1970 are more likely to have ended up poor themselves than the children born in 1958. There is no sign that the trend has changed.

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