• Contact
  • About
  • Authors
DONATE
NEWSLETTER SIGN UP
  • Login
Yorkshire Bylines
  • Home
  • News
    • All
    • Brexit
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Health
    • Home Affairs
    • Transport
    • World
    Prime minister PMQ prep

    Brexit isn’t working – something we can all agree on

    The small number of trees shows that even the high uplands of the Dales was a woodland environment. Much has been nibbled down to the ground by heavy populations of sheep. Photo by Andy Brown

    Government policies destroying upland Yorkshire farming with no regard for the land or our health

    schools bill

    Johnson’s education power grab: from ‘liberation’ to dictatorship in one generation

    Emmanuel Macron

    French parliamentary elections 2022: shockwaves across the Channel

    Rail strikes

    Millions affected by biggest rail strike action in 30 years

    cost of living march london

    Trade union movement marches to demand better

    European Union

    After the seismic shocks of Brexit and Covid, what next for the European Union?

    Eurovision 2022 stage - photo by Michael Doherty on Wikimedia Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0

    What does Ukraine’s Eurovision win tell us about the politics of solidarity?

    Refugee Week

    Refugee week: a chance to celebrate refugees

    Trending Tags

    • Johnson
    • Coronavirus
    • Labour
    • Starmer
    • NI Protocol
    • Brexit
    • Culture
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Home Affairs
    • Transport
    • World
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Culture
    • Dance
    • Food
    • Music
    • Poetry
    • Recipes
    • Sport
    Nostell Priory, Wakefield

    Glastonbury? What’s Glastonbury? When the music world came to Wakefield

    Headingley Cricket Stadium

    A view from the Roses match: is everything ‘rosey’ in English cricket?

    Bettys' Fat Rascals

    Scallywags, scoundrels and rascals abound in Yorkshire (we do like our scones)

    'Woke' beliefs

    Woke and proud: Compassion must never be allowed to go out of fashion

    Eurovision 2022 stage - photo by Michael Doherty on Wikimedia Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0

    What does Ukraine’s Eurovision win tell us about the politics of solidarity?

    Red Ladder

    Climbing the Red Ladder – bringing theatre to the community

    Kaiser Chiefs in Doncaster

    Kaiser Chiefs never miss a beat in Doncaster

    Bradford Council leader Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, second from right, is joined by Keighley Creative representatives, from left, Georgina Webster, Jan Smithies and Gemma Hobbs.

    Bradford announced as City of Culture 2025

    Queen cakes fit for a Queen

    Queen Cakes fit for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

    • Food
    • Music
    • Poetry
    • Sport
  • Business
    • All
    • Economy
    • Technology
    • Trade
    Freya Osment from Northern Gas Networks

    International Women in Engineering Day 2022

    Rail strikes

    Millions affected by biggest rail strike action in 30 years

    conservative party

    The Conservative Party: fiscally irresponsible and ideologically incapable of addressing the current crises

    Yorkshire cows

    British farmers are being offered a lump sum payment to leave the industry – but at what cost to agriculture?

    cost-of-living-crisis-in-voluntary-sector

    Cost-of-living crisis looming for the voluntary sector

    Money on the floor - £20 notes

    The huge cost of Brexit is being seriously understated

    Financial problems

    Surge in bad debt and late payments indicate mounting business distress in Yorkshire

    An evening photo tour of Drax power station near Selby, North Yorkshire, with excellent light towards sunset.

    Winter blackouts and rationing for six million homes as government plans for disruption to energy supply

    Jar with money cascading out of it

    Boosterism doesn’t put food on the table

    Trending Tags

      • Economy
      • Technology
      • Trade
    • Region
    No Result
    View All Result
    • Home
    • News
      • All
      • Brexit
      • Education
      • Environment
      • Health
      • Home Affairs
      • Transport
      • World
      Prime minister PMQ prep

      Brexit isn’t working – something we can all agree on

      The small number of trees shows that even the high uplands of the Dales was a woodland environment. Much has been nibbled down to the ground by heavy populations of sheep. Photo by Andy Brown

      Government policies destroying upland Yorkshire farming with no regard for the land or our health

      schools bill

      Johnson’s education power grab: from ‘liberation’ to dictatorship in one generation

      Emmanuel Macron

      French parliamentary elections 2022: shockwaves across the Channel

      Rail strikes

      Millions affected by biggest rail strike action in 30 years

      cost of living march london

      Trade union movement marches to demand better

      European Union

      After the seismic shocks of Brexit and Covid, what next for the European Union?

      Eurovision 2022 stage - photo by Michael Doherty on Wikimedia Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0

      What does Ukraine’s Eurovision win tell us about the politics of solidarity?

      Refugee Week

      Refugee week: a chance to celebrate refugees

      Trending Tags

      • Johnson
      • Coronavirus
      • Labour
      • Starmer
      • NI Protocol
      • Brexit
      • Culture
      • Education
      • Environment
      • Home Affairs
      • Transport
      • World
    • Politics
    • Opinion
    • Lifestyle
      • All
      • Culture
      • Dance
      • Food
      • Music
      • Poetry
      • Recipes
      • Sport
      Nostell Priory, Wakefield

      Glastonbury? What’s Glastonbury? When the music world came to Wakefield

      Headingley Cricket Stadium

      A view from the Roses match: is everything ‘rosey’ in English cricket?

      Bettys' Fat Rascals

      Scallywags, scoundrels and rascals abound in Yorkshire (we do like our scones)

      'Woke' beliefs

      Woke and proud: Compassion must never be allowed to go out of fashion

      Eurovision 2022 stage - photo by Michael Doherty on Wikimedia Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0

      What does Ukraine’s Eurovision win tell us about the politics of solidarity?

      Red Ladder

      Climbing the Red Ladder – bringing theatre to the community

      Kaiser Chiefs in Doncaster

      Kaiser Chiefs never miss a beat in Doncaster

      Bradford Council leader Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, second from right, is joined by Keighley Creative representatives, from left, Georgina Webster, Jan Smithies and Gemma Hobbs.

      Bradford announced as City of Culture 2025

      Queen cakes fit for a Queen

      Queen Cakes fit for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

      • Food
      • Music
      • Poetry
      • Sport
    • Business
      • All
      • Economy
      • Technology
      • Trade
      Freya Osment from Northern Gas Networks

      International Women in Engineering Day 2022

      Rail strikes

      Millions affected by biggest rail strike action in 30 years

      conservative party

      The Conservative Party: fiscally irresponsible and ideologically incapable of addressing the current crises

      Yorkshire cows

      British farmers are being offered a lump sum payment to leave the industry – but at what cost to agriculture?

      cost-of-living-crisis-in-voluntary-sector

      Cost-of-living crisis looming for the voluntary sector

      Money on the floor - £20 notes

      The huge cost of Brexit is being seriously understated

      Financial problems

      Surge in bad debt and late payments indicate mounting business distress in Yorkshire

      An evening photo tour of Drax power station near Selby, North Yorkshire, with excellent light towards sunset.

      Winter blackouts and rationing for six million homes as government plans for disruption to energy supply

      Jar with money cascading out of it

      Boosterism doesn’t put food on the table

      Trending Tags

        • Economy
        • Technology
        • Trade
      • Region
      No Result
      View All Result
      Yorkshire Bylines
      No Result
      View All Result
      Home News Education

      Schools are back, but are they the engines of social mobility the country needs?

      Are schools delivering the skills and the social mobility we need for a successful post-pandemic, post-Brexit economy?

      Charlie McCarthybyCharlie McCarthy
      12-03-2021 11:41
      in Education
      Classrooms social mobility

      Image: Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy 2016 by Scottish Government

      5
      VIEWS
      Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
      ADVERTISEMENT

      For two decades, successive governments have made the pursuit of higher levels of social mobility one of the holy grails of public policy. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson is the latest politician to embark on the quest, armed with a vision of ‘revolutionising’ reforms that will “be transformative in terms of changing and improving the opportunities for young people”. What sort of task is he taking on? Are schools delivering the skills and the social mobility we need for a successful post-pandemic, post-Brexit economy?

      The 2019 State of the Nation report from the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) drew the depressing conclusion that:

      “Inequality is still deeply entrenched in Britain: there is a persistent gap in early literacy; the attainment gap at the end of secondary school has hardly shifted since 2014 and the better off are nearly 80 per cent more likely to end up in a professional job than those from a working class background”.

      This is despite the fact that, as a 2017 SMC report reminds us, “For two decades, successive governments have made the pursuit of higher levels of social mobility one of the holy grails of public policy”.

      Post-pandemic and post-Brexit: schools and social mobility

      As described by the SMC, social mobility is about “ensuring that a person’s occupation and income are not tied to where they started in life”. Upward social mobility is about ‘fairness’: it depends on people of all backgrounds having equal opportunities to achieve their potential.

      Obviously, this is desirable because it ensures the national economy remains robust, dynamic and strong, so it’s in all our interests to get it right.

      For some, social mobility can be achieved through the status and financial rewards of specific aptitudes they’ve been born with, such as a talent for sport or for music. However, for most of us, our future life chances and economic success will depend on how we fare in the general education system.

      Social Mobility Commission report

      In this regard, the SMC’s 2019 report makes uncomfortable reading. Among its depressing findings:


      Gaps that exist between children’s attainment at the start of school continue to widen in subsequent years. Some 18 percent of all pupils (98,799 pupils) leave school without reaching Level 2 qualifications (at least five GCSEs at Grade 4 or above or the equivalent technical qualifications).


      The report makes no bones about the main factor driving attainment gaps. This being the relative advantage or disadvantage of the background into which a child is born:

      “Child poverty has an important influence on social mobility, as children living in poverty can often have worse health, worse education outcomes and start school developmentally behind their more advantaged peers.”

      The education gap and social inequality

      Children on free school meals start with a 14-percentage point deficit in phonics attainment at the age of six. By the age of 11, only 46 percent of these children will have reached the standards expected for reading, writing and mathematics. Only 16 percent will finish school with two A-levels (compared to 39 percent of other pupils).

      Thus, disadvantage causes social mobility barriers to kick in early. This makes the fact that 500,000 more children were found to be in poverty in 2018 than in 2012 very problematic.

      Apprenticeships and social mobility

      Apprenticeships should be a “powerful vehicle for social mobility”. But this is undermined by the fact that comparatively higher numbers of young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are found in “lower-returning and lower level apprenticeships”.

      In addition, the fact that apprenticeship placements at levels 2 and 3 have dropped since 2016/17 means that the benefits gained from even a low-level apprenticeship have become less available.

      Social inequality and the pandemic

      The situation has unfortunately been made worse by the closure of schools during the pandemic. This has led to major inequalities in access to learning.

      The government’s response has been to appoint a ‘catch-up’ tsar. It has also announced £1.7bn funding for ‘education recovery’. And Williamson spoke recently about extending the school day and the school year to make up for lost time.

      But even Sir Kevan Collins, the government’s appointee driving this strategy, is cautious:

      “The recovery needs to be long term, sustained and far-reaching. Catch-up is not the language I’m using. It’s much more about recovery over time. We need to go much further, with a more fundamental and long-term piece of work.”

      Educational reform for social mobility

      Other voices seek more fundamental, long-term reform. They think this may be a good time to ring in major changes, for example to exams and assessments.

      Rethink Assessment is a growing movement that seeks fundamental reform of our current system. The organisation’s advisory group is especially critical of GCSEs – “high stakes national exams”, taken at a vulnerable stage of adolescent development – which they regard as no longer making any sense, given that students are now locked into the education system until they are 18. 

      Social and economic equality

      One theory of social mobility holds that individual mobility simply entrenches societal distinctions. What we should instead aim for is “the achievement of social and economic equality for all”.

      Within the education system, a good start towards this would be to raise the profile of further education. If the 14+ curriculum were to be reformed, it could, for example, give pupils many more opportunities to start Level 2 and Level 3 apprenticeships whilst still at school. This would greatly enhance the kudos of skills training, boost the further education colleges’ role in secondary education provision and help to raise the social status (and perhaps ultimately the financial rewards) of skills-based jobs.

      Funding inequality

      Funding for education provision is, of course, a fundamental issue. According to the Independent Schools Council census 2019, on average, the cost of sending a child to a private day school is £19,206 per annum. State schools receive £5,000 per secondary pupil and £3,750 per primary pupil. Rectifying this discrepancy is long overdue.

      Can policy change make a difference to social mobility?

      It is certainly true that, as Gavin Williamson suggests, improving the opportunities of all young people will require a revolution of sorts. Whether it is entirely within the capacity of schools to bring it about is questionable.

      However, while there are societal barriers to mobility, schools have a huge role to play. In this period when change does seem to be possible, it will be interesting to see whether the education secretary is able to bring us any closer to attaining the holy grail of high social mobility than his predecessors did.

       

      ADVERTISEMENT
      Previous Post

      Cheap tricks from our wealthy chancellor

      Next Post

      Joe Biden: is the Middle East still worth it?

      Charlie McCarthy

      Charlie McCarthy

      Charlie is a writer who lives in North Yorkshire. Originally from Glasgow, he has lived in the North of England for most of his life. Before becoming a writer, Charlie was a science teacher. His areas of interest include politics, the environment and education.

      Related Posts

      schools bill
      Education

      Johnson’s education power grab: from ‘liberation’ to dictatorship in one generation

      byDr Pam Jarvis
      27 June 2022
      William Gomes with Chris Nicholson at his graduation ceremony
      Education

      My road from refugee to university graduate

      byWilliam Gomes
      29 May 2022
      Child playing
      Education

      Children first: a challenge for Wakefield parliamentary candidates

      byDr Pam Jarvis
      23 May 2022
      Image of children's learning blocks.
      Education

      No place for family and community in Johnson’s England

      byDr Pam Jarvis
      30 March 2022
      Yesterday, the Beatles
      Education

      Get back to play: concerns that children’s lack of unstructured play leads to social anxiety

      byDr Pam Jarvis
      17 March 2022
      Next Post
      Biden Middle East

      Joe Biden: is the Middle East still worth it?

      Want to support us?

      Can you help Yorkshire Bylines to grow and become more sustainable with a regular donation, no matter how small?  

      DONATE

      Sign up to our newsletter

      If you would like to receive the Yorkshire Bylines regular newsletter, straight talking direct to your inbox, click the button below.

      NEWSLETTER

      LATEST

      boris johnson clown poster

      Johnson, Nixon and dangerous duplicity: half a century of ‘gate’ scandals

      28 June 2022
      Prime minister PMQ prep

      Brexit isn’t working – something we can all agree on

      28 June 2022
      The small number of trees shows that even the high uplands of the Dales was a woodland environment. Much has been nibbled down to the ground by heavy populations of sheep. Photo by Andy Brown

      Government policies destroying upland Yorkshire farming with no regard for the land or our health

      27 June 2022
      schools bill

      Johnson’s education power grab: from ‘liberation’ to dictatorship in one generation

      27 June 2022

      MOST READ

      schools bill

      Johnson’s education power grab: from ‘liberation’ to dictatorship in one generation

      27 June 2022
      Prime minister PMQ prep

      Brexit isn’t working – something we can all agree on

      28 June 2022
      10/05/2022 Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the House of Commons. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street

      The country needs more than just ‘Booting Boris out of Downing Street’

      26 June 2022
      Conservative Party Meeting

      Hypocrisy, desperation and excuses: Conservative Party clutch at straws over by-election losses

      27 June 2022

      BROWSE BY TAGS

      antivaxxers Charity climate change Coronavirus Cost of living Creative industries Crime Cummings Democracy Devolution education Equality Farming Fishing hgv History Immigration Johnson Journalism Labour Local Democracy Mental Health mining money NHS NI Protocol omicron Pies pollution poverty PPE Public Health Review shortage social media Starmer tax travel Ukraine Yorkshire
      Yorkshire Bylines

      Yorkshire Bylines is a regional online newspaper that supports citizen journalism. Our aim is to publish well-written, fact-based articles and opinion pieces on subjects that are of interest to people in Yorkshire and beyond.

      Learn more about us

      No Result
      View All Result
      • Contact
      • About
      • Letters
      • Donate
      • Privacy
      • Bylines network
      • Shop

      © 2022 Yorkshire Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

      No Result
      View All Result
      • Home
      • News
        • Brexit
        • Education
        • Environment
        • Health
        • Home Affairs
        • Transport
        • World
      • Politics
      • Opinion
      • Lifestyle
        • Culture
        • Dance
        • Food
        • Music
        • Poetry
        • Recipes
        • Sport
      • Business
        • Economy
        • Technology
        • Trade
      • Donate
      • The Compendium of Cabinet Codebreakers
      • The Davis Downside Dossier
      • The Digby Jones Index
      • Newsletter sign up
      • Cartoons by Stan
      • Authors

      © 2022 Yorkshire Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

      Welcome Back!

      Login to your account below

      Forgotten Password?

      Retrieve your password

      Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

      Log In