Local leadership is the way forward for improving social mobility
We examined social mobility policy in the UK
It’s time to reframe our approach to social mobility.
Everyone agrees that a person’s life chances – including a good education and decent job prospects - should not be prescribed by their background.
There have been numerous different attempts over the years to pinpoint and dismantle barriers to social mobility, and to promote equal access to educational and work opportunities.
But barriers to social mobility still exist. And new ones even seem to be emerging.
There are now a million young people in the UK who have fallen out of education, training and work, known as ‘NEETs’. This figure has increased by 300,000 in the past five years.
There is no greater obstacle to socioeconomic progression than complete educational and economic inactivity.
Thinking on social mobility has moved on. Education – for so long considered the silver bullet – is only one element. Nor is it about people having to move to live in a city or change the way they are.
“We saw it as supporting young people in having access to choice and opportunity but without having to lose a sense of self and to have to change who they are as a part of that.”
We identified three key areas that need to be addressed and our recommendations to solve the issues.
1. Supporting vocational training
We are convinced that education remains a fundamental barrier to many seeking to improve their socioeconomic status and lead a fulfilling life.
At GCSE level, the focus on academic learning and a narrow set of core subjects means many students are not encouraged, or miss the chance to study more creative, technical and vocational subjects, and the pool of skills needed in our workforce becomes increasingly inadequate.
Many students struggle to pass the outdated and unnecessarily rigid gateway of Maths and English GCSEs in order to join their chosen apprenticeships in industries in which they want to work and thrive.
This year, 20% of those taking English and Maths GCSEs were resitting their exams, with an additional burden on the colleges and employers who are left having to help them to clear an unnecessary hurdle.
While vocational training is devalued, the financial barriers facing those from low income backgrounds who may wish to attend university are increasing.
Students are encountering spiralling living costs, yet the cut off for a maximum maintenance loan remains frozen at its 2008 level.
Those financial pressures create an obstacle to social mobility.
We recommend that the Government should reform the EBacc model to support technical education, by allowing more flexibility for schools to tailor their offering to students. They should also increase the household income threshold at which a student can get the maximum maintenance loan during their time at university, to match inflationary rises.
2. Building local partnerships
Reform to social mobility is not a one size fits all problem.
It can’t be left to central government to lead change. Local government must be given the powers and guidance needed to tackle social mobility in their area – tailored to the needs of coastal, post-industrial and rural areas, as well as towns and cities.
“Rural, coastal, city, post-industrial settings, … each will have their own place-based challenges.”
Every part of the country has its own character and coastal, post-industrial and rural areas, as well as towns and cities, all host their own particular hurdles to social mobility.
Lack of affordable housing, inadequate transport provision and poor broadband connectivity continue to prove barriers to social mobility in rural areas.
We believe that it is only people with experience and knowledge of an area who are in a position to pinpoint its particular challenges and build plans to support all those who live there to learn, work and thrive.
The current local government restructure and the creation of mayoral combined authorities is an opportunity for Government to devolve the power and resources needed for those authorities to lead work.
This can be through local partnerships with schools, colleges, universities and employers, in order to reduce barriers to social mobility and help those who are educationally and economically inactive back towards training and employment.
We recommend that the Minister for Skills, with their role in both the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions should have responsibility for social mobility policies.
3. Helping NEETs into training and jobs
“One of our concerns has been that perhaps the focus should shift to what we have been calling the truly disadvantaged, who get lost sometimes.”
Those outside the labour market, or not preparing for employment through training, are furthest away from being able to improve their socioeconomic status, and likely therefore to be facing the biggest barriers to achieving social mobility.
NEET is a general term used to describe a very heterogeneous group of people, which has implications for initiatives aiming to support them into the labour market.
Initiatives in Blackpool
For example, we went to Blackpool to see what initiatives were being run to help NEETs in their local areas.
We heard that there is a partnership of organisations, including Blackpool Council, the Department for Work and Pensions, local educational bodies and employers, who have developed a system of grouping those who are NEET into four tiers so that the right interventions can be offered to support people back into training and the workplace more effectively.
We further recommend that the Government explores ways in which the partnership work currently underway in Blackpool to support NEETs back into work, might be used as a best practice model in other parts of the country.
What happens next?
We have made our recommendations to the Government and it now has two months to respond to our report.
Read the full report on our website.
Our committee is a special inquiry committee for 2025.
Find out more about our inquiry and our committee.
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