Last week, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, Chaired by the former MP for Darlington the Rt Hon Alan Milburn, launched its first annual State of the Nation report. The aim is to hold the Government and other agencies to account for the progress and actions taken to address child poverty and improve social mobility in the UK. The report is very detailed (348 pages!) and wide ranging, covering the many different agencies and strategies that have responsibility for, or are in a position to impact on, this important agenda. It includes many recommendations that resonate strongly with current discussions in the North East; in particular, chiming strongly with the Adonis Review’s call for a North East Challenge. The Commission recommends the introduction of:
“More area-based approaches to improve the quality of local schools and promote collaboration, such as new versions of the London Challenge that gets schools, local authorities, central government and other agencies working together to systematically focus on how standards can be raised and attainment gaps narrowed in areas where schools are weaker.”
In its introduction, the report identifies “high-quality schools and teachers relentlessly focused on raising standards, building social skills and closing attainment gaps” as key to unlocking social mobility. The Commission welcomes the Government’s “energetic focus” on school reform to drive social mobility and the work of schools in this area, but concludes that the scale and depth of activity are insufficient to “combat the headwinds – economic and fiscal - that Britain faces if it is to move forward to become a low-poverty, high-mobility society”.
The report makes 10 principal proposals including:
- Urging business leaders and the Government to come together to ensure that half of all firms offer apprenticeships and work experience as part of a new effort to make it easier for “the other 50 per cent” to pursue high quality vocational training;
- Urging schools to adopt a dual-mandate of raising the bar on standards and closing the gap on attainment, with more help for low attainers from average income families as well as helping low-income children to succeed in making it to the top, not just getting off the bottom;
- Urging the Government to better resource careers advice and provide extra incentives for teachers to teach in the worst schools, with colleges in future being paid by the results they achieve for their students in the labour market and not by the numbers they recruit.
The proposals stress the need to ensure that all parts of the country benefit from a balanced economic recovery and that a “fairer intergenerational share of the fiscal consolidation pain” is achieved through the reallocation of public resources from the old to the young.
The overriding feature of the report’s chapter on schools is the scale and impact of the regional variations in school quality and student outcomes across the UK.
Echoing many other recent reports, the Commission highlights the success of London, particularly in relation to the performance of disadvantaged students. The authors counter the perception that London’s improved performance can be explained by the high attainment of particular ethnic groups concentrated in the capital, arguing that the ‘London effect’ is still observed when looking at the attainment of white pupils alone. The Commission suggests that targeted approaches are needed to narrow the gap in attainment and that area-based approaches can be particularly effective.
Recognising the central importance of high quality teaching, the Commission raises concerns over the variations in teaching quality by area and the concentration of poorer quality teaching in more deprived communities, using the North East as the example. The Commission sets out their belief that concerted action is needed to “stop the geographical and socio-economic divide in higher attainment from widening” and calls for a “clear localised failure and improvement regime, which includes increased collaboration between schools”.
The Commission raises concerns as to the inequality in school admissions and the risk to fair access from the greater autonomy now offered to high performing schools.
They welcome the changes to school performance tables that make “closing the gap a core objective of schools” but call for a greater strengthening of accountability in this area. The Commission also recommends that schools should be allowed greater flexibility as to how they use Pupil Premium funding to enable them to address the needs of low attainers who do not meet the eligibility criteria for Free School Meals.
Again, reflecting the findings of other recent major reports, the Commission identifies the quality of careers advice and guidance as a barrier to improved social mobility and suggests that disadvantaged pupils are missing out on the “information and networks they need to make the right choices”. They call on the Government to provide additional resources to schools to provide high quality careers services, whilst schools should ensure that they build long-term relationships with businesses and improve work experience opportunities.
As well as schools, this extensive report also includes chapters on “moving from school to work”, “access to the professions”, and “early years”. You can download the full report here.
