Social mobility’s killer facts

Teach First’s CEO, Brett Wigdortz, has always been a big fan of the Sutton Trust’s research findings. These ‘killer facts’ encapsulate in a few words and numbers the UK’s challenge of low social mobility and the gaping divide in opportunities between the educational haves and have-nots. ‘Please tell me if you have any more I can use,’ Brett asked me recently.

Prompted by this, I thought I would list my top ten favourite social mobility stats. And not just for Brett. They will hopefully provide helpful ammunition for all those working to address what the Government has said is its most important social policy challenge.

Most, of course, are classics from the Sutton Trust vaults. I’ve also included two major research findings from elsewhere. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

What makes an impactful research finding? It has to be succinct, highly memorable and, importantly, robust. The ones I’ve selected below have also all stood the test of time. I’ve organised them in broad chronological order: from birth to schooling to graduation and beyond.

1.  The UK alongside the US has lower social mobility than other advanced countries for which we have comparable data

We must begin with this agenda-setting finding from LSE economists in 2005 that catapulted the UK’s social mobility problem onto the national political stage. Many studies have subsequently confirmed the relatively poor chances of climbing the social ladder for those born in poorer homes in the UK (more on this in a future blog).  Its impact can’t be over-stated, underpinning the Trust’s raison d’etre, and inspiring a spate of Government white papers and policies, and even a Social Mobility Commission.

2.     Children in the poorest fifth of families are already nearly a year behind children from middle income families when they start school at age 5

Four years on, this finding is still regularly quoted. It highlights so clearly the development gap (using vocabulary tests) that already exists when children first turn up to school, emphasising the need for effective early years support for children from less privileged homes, and the uphill battle faced by teachers from Day One. More recently the Trust highlighted a 19 month school readiness gap between the richest and poorest four and five year-olds. This year the Trust argued that the key challenge is to improve the qualifications and training of early years workers.

3.  The brightest 22-month-old working-class children are overtaken in test scores by the lowest scoring children of professional parents by the age of about seven

Never has a graph had such an impact on social policy as Leon Feinstein’s famous cross-over trajectories of the test scores of children during their first decade. Legend has it that this simple graph helped to convince Labour Ministers to launch the billion pound Sure Start programme. Not bad for a PhD thesis.

Ten years on, other economists have questioned whether the tests taken by children at 22 months are robust enough to signal a genuine decline in later years. But Feinstein’s legacy remains.

4. The Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit

Ok, this is not one key headline finding, but a summary of 10,000 studies. But I couldn’t produce any list like this without the beloved toolkit, which enshrined many of the Trust’s principles to ensure that findings are accessible to practitioners and policy-makers. Importantly it debunks many of the received wisdoms in the classroom. Originally commissioned by the Trust in response to the Government’s Pupil Premium for disadvantaged pupils, it now underpins the work of the Education Endowment Foundation and has been digested by over a third of all school heads.

5. The proportion of pupils on free school meals in the country’s top performing comprehensive schools is half the proportion of FSM children in their local areas and across the nation as a whole

Over the years the Trust has published several studies scrutinising the admissions of high performing state schools. The latest report, in 2013, found that on average 7.6% of children at the top performing 500 comprehensives (based on GCSE results) were eligible for free school meals. Sadly not much had changed since the 2006 report we published on the same issue. The Trust continues to advocate a fairer school admissions system.

6.  3,000 state educated pupils each year who achieve the A level grades necessary to enter the country’s most selective universities, but who, for a variety of reasons, do not end up there

The Missing 3000 study, produced almost by accident by the Trust when it analysed university admission figures, has vexed the academic elite ever since it first emerged in 2004. The Sutton Trust summer school programme now supports 2000 students each year, the majority of whom end up at leading universities.

Later research by the Trust found that the ‘missing’ numbers could even be higher once FE colleges were factored in (and A-level subjects were included). The main problem is that students don’t put themselves forward to apply to the universities in the first place.

7.  Four private schools and one elite college sent more students to Oxbridge over three years than 2,000 schools and colleges across the UK

A Michael Gove favourite, this stark statistic highlighted the chasm in chances of getting a place at Oxford and Cambridge: the culmination of educational inequalities that begin before birth and widen there-after. And yes: Westminster School, Eton College and St Pauls School were all among the four schools used to produce the finding.

The report argued that schools should be measured by the destinations of pupils and not just their A-level results. The Government has subsequently introduced its own destination tables for state schools.

8. State school pupils are more likely to get a 2.1 or first class degree at university than their private school counterparts with the same A-levels (in similar subjects)

It’s hit the headlines before, but this finding released by HEFCE last month, once again provoked heated debate. Be aware of some important caveats to this overall finding; it doesn’t hold for pupils with three As at A-level for example. The research also highlighted the ‘Big fish little pond effect’: a pupil with three Bs at A-level at a school with an average of three Cs gets a better degree than a similar pupil with three Bs at a school with an average of three As. (For more on the BFLP effect at primary school see here.

What is equally interesting are the studies of student outcomes for individual universities, at Oxford and Bristol for example.

9. Every English Prime Minister since the war who attended university was educated at one institution – Oxford

When David Cameron became Prime Minister he re-established an academic dynasty at Number 10 that stretches back to before the start of World War 2. With the exception of his immediate predecessor, Gordon Brown, every Prime Minister since 1937 who attended

university had attended Oxford. Before that it was a Cambridge educated man.

See here the full list of Oxbridge educated PMs. The Trust’s surveys of a range of professions meanwhile have consistently found over half of leaders are from private schools, which make up only 7% of schools.

10. Failing to improve low levels of social mobility will cost the UK economy up to £140 billion a year by 2050

Low social mobility is damaging economically as well as socially. This calculation by The Boston Consulting Group in 2010 quantified the cost of continuing immobility in the UK over future decades. Even by conservative estimates, the economy would see cumulative losses of up to £1.3 trillion in Gross Domestic Product over the next 40 years if we fail to bring the educational outcomes of children from poorer homes up to the UK average. This is a finding often quoted by the Deputy Prime Minister.  Chancellors should take note!​