Thursday 6 October, 7.00pm until 8.30pm, Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London WC1H 9BD
Tickets: £7.50 (£5 concessions) per person. Tickets are available from the Academy of Ideas website.
On becoming Britain’s prime minister in 1868, despite his unlikely background, Benjamin Disraeli was warmly congratulated by his friends. ‘Yes,’ he is said to have declared proudly, ‘I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole.’ Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg recently admitted his ascent to power had been rather less of a struggle. At the launch of the government’s social mobility strategy Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers, he revealed that early in his career, family friend Lord Carrington had arranged for him to take up a position at the European Commission. ‘I’m not the slightest bit ashamed of saying that we all inhabited a system which was wrong,’ he said. Subsequently the coalition has divided over its plans for ‘fairer’ internships, but it remains united in the conviction that social mobility in the UK is unacceptably low, and that education is both a cause of and a solution to the problem. Education secretary Michael Gove chides those who see deprivation as destiny, and promises ‘urgent, focused, radical action’. Schools, he argues, should become ‘engines of social mobility’. The Opening Doors strategy suggests what happens to pupils in their school years will ‘to a great extent, determine their future life chances’. It concludes that social mobility could be improved by raising educational standards, providing extra funding for the disadvantaged, and ensuring better careers advice.
Certainly, the OECD rates the UK very poorly for social mobility compared with other developed countries. But some argue social mobility is just one aspect of a broader problem of inequality or disadvantage, and that a narrow focus on individual opportunities is a distraction from bigger issues, such as the lack of good jobs and general economic dynamism. So should we be focusing on creating better opportunities for all rather than bickering over who gets the few cushy jobs? Or is it a matter of principle that every child should have an equal chance of advancing in any given career?
Initiatives such as the English Baccalaureate, which will encourage state schools to teach traditional high status subjects, are designed to level the playing field. But will positioning schools as ‘engines of social mobility’ just give them yet another set of distracting political objectives that they are ill-equipped to address? Is social mobility the right issue to focus on, or does it offer little more than escape route for the lucky few, leaving wider social inequality untouched?
Christine Blower general secretary, National Union of Teachers | |
Professor Stephen Gorard director, College of Social Sciences Think Tank, University of Birmingham | |
Siôn Humphreys policy advisor, National Association of Headteachers | |
Sally Millard co-founder, IoI Parents Forum | |
David Skelton deputy director and head of research, Policy Exchange | |
Chair: | |
Toby Marshall
A Level Film Studies Teacher; PhD researcher in sociology of education, UCL Institute of Education |
Whilst sociologists and statisticians have continued to argue over the facts of social mobility, a political consensus has emerged as to the solutions.
Toby Marshall, Independent, 5 October 2011If the new academies aren’t permitted to select pupils then they will fail the most able.
Christopher Ray, Daily Telegraph, 20 September 2011The government's record on social mobility is poor, says Mike Baker, but it could do better if it took the controversial step of reserving places for students from less privileged backgrounds
Mike Baker, Guardian, 18 July 2011Fairness is a fundamental value of the Coalition Government. A fair society is an open society. A society in which everyone is free to flourish and rise. Where birth is never destiny. In Britain today, life chances are narrowed for too many by the circumstances of their birth: the home they’re born into, the neighbourhood they grow up in or the jobs their parents do. Patterns of inequality are imprinted from one generation to the next. The true test of fairness is the distribution of opportunities.
HM Government, April 2011State education has consistently encouraged working-class children to accept their lot in life.
James Heartfield, spiked, 2 March 2011Getting on in the world is a priority for many. But is social mobility good? As the BBC researches the class system, philosopher Mark Vernon says thinkers like Kant have mulled over such questions for centuries.
Mark Vernon, BBC News, 26 January 2011