What The Government Can and Should Be Doing PDF

www.ascl.org.
uk
What the government
can and should be doing
Professor Becky Francis, Kings College, London
Promoting
social mobility:
PROMOTING SOCIAL MOBILITY: WHAT THE GOVERNMENT CAN AND SHOULD BE DOING
2 www.ascl.org.uk
There is broad consensus that social mobility
is a major issue for the UK, in terms of ensuring
long-term economic prosperity and creating
a more just and equal society, which is a
hallmark of a successful democracy.
There is no doubt that schools and colleges have
a major role to play in narrowing the achievement
gap and that it is incumbent on their leaders
to drive forward this agenda. However they
cannot be expected to achieve this on their own.
There must be a recognition of the social and
economic factors that also contribute and of the
need for all relevant agencies and government
departments to share this responsibility.
That is not to make excuses for underperformance
or to abdicate responsibility. Teachers and school
and college leaders should have the same
high expectations for every child regardless
of their background. Every child can succeed.
However it must be recognised that some young
people have more obstacles to overcome and
will need more support and encouragement
along the way to reach their goals.
Improving social mobility is a huge challenge
and we do not underestimate the scale of the
task. We know there are no easy solutions and
we applaud the fact the coalition government
has committed to creating a more just society by
making social mobility the principal goal of its
social policy. However we do have concerns that
some of the current policies and strategies are
unlikely to be eective and may in the worst cases
even be counterproductive. This conclusion has
not been based on a hunch but by an extensive
review of the literature on social mobility.
For these reasons ASCL has embarked on this
project to look at the issue of improving social
mobility from the unique perspective of school
and college leaders in order to position ourselves
to tackle this challenge. The document you
have here is based on extensive review of the
information available and draws together a
framework for school and college leaders to use
to shape their eorts to narrow the achievement
gap. The other document that makes up this
research project is a review, again from the
perspective of school and college leaders, what
the government can and should be doing to
support schools in their eorts. It is available from
www.ascl.org.uk/promotingsocialmobility
We are indebted to Education Consultant
Robert Hill and Professor Becky Francis for
the time, eort, insights and expertise they
have brought to this project and we hope
that the end result in some way makes a
dierence to the lives of young people.
Brian Lightman
ASCL General Secretary
ASCL General Secretary, Brian Lightman
www.ascl.org.uk 3
All three main political parties are committed
to addressing Britains poor record for social
mobility. The education system is often
seen as a key facilitator of social mobility
and many schools are working hard to close
socio-economic gaps in attainment.
However, despite cases of exemplary practice,
deep-seated structural challenges mean
that the school system overall is currently
perpetuating rather than challenging patterns
of social inequality. ASCL is aware of this, and
is working with its members to ensure that
eective practice in supporting disadvantaged
students to realise their potential is scaled up
more widely. In March 2013 ASCL produced
a guidance document, written by Robert Hill,
outlining what schools can do to narrow the
socio-economic gap for educational achievement.
ASCL is, however, also aware that schools and
colleges do not operate in a void: numerous
other factors also impede mobility. Schools and
colleges must not use these as an excuse to
reduce expectations: the educational enterprise
must always be that schools can make a dierence
and that the system is open to improvement.
But it is important that these other issues are
simultaneously addressed to ensure the social
mobility so vital for our society. So what should
the government be doing to facilitate mobility?
This pamphlet draws on the research evidence
to make recommendations to government
as to the most eective measures to increase
social mobility. It also assesses the governments
current approach against these key areas.
The interventions, along with specic policy
recommendations to support them, are as follows:
Executive summary
4 www.ascl.org.uk
Interventions to increase social mobility
Intervention 1: Early years Address the
inequalities children face from the outset
1 The government should restate its
commitment to end child poverty
by 2020, and set out ambitious,
realistic plans to achieve this.
2 Funding spent by dierent government
departments on related initiatives
should be corralled to target resources
on poor families, to secure better
early environments for children.
3 The government should initiate education
vouchers to provide targeted disposable
income to disadvantaged families, allowing
them to choose how to spend the money
from a wide list geared to securing a
positive home learning environment.
1

Intervention 2: Early years Expand
and improve early years provision,
ensuring excellent facilities and
encouraging social mixing
4 The government should continue to improve
quality in the early years workforce through
encouraging more qualied practitioners in
every setting; securing higher qualication
standards in the early years workforce; and
introducing an equivalent of the National
Challenge in early years education, where
institutions work together to develop
professionalism and best practice.
5 A badging scheme for Early Years Champions
should be introduced to encourage well-
qualied parents to be involved in early
years on a voluntary basis as helpers and/
or advocates, hence increasing capacity.
6 The government should facilitate better
and more accessible information about
quality early years provision, and should take
further steps to ensure that disadvantaged
families access good quality provision.
2
Intervention 3: Education system
Improve school quality
7 Building on the success of the London
and City Challenge,
3
the government
should create a framework in each
area for developing and coordinating
school-to-school support.
8 All schools should be expected to
be part of an eective local school
improvement partnership such as a
federation, a teaching school alliance, an
academy group or other partnership that
has been recognised or accredited to
provide school improvement support.
9 The government should monitor the
comparative performance of academy
sponsors, and act to terminate funding
agreements where necessary.
10 The government should incentivise
good teachers and middle and senior
leaders to teach in schools and colleges
in more challenging circumstances, for
example, through awards and/or middle
leadership development schemes.
Intervention 4: Education
system Reduce segregation
between and within schools
11 The government should empower
and resource the O ce of the Schools
Adjudicator to carry out random checks
and enforcement of schools admissions
procedures to incentivise compliance
with the Schools Admissions Code and, in
particular, the provisions relating to inclusion.
12 The government should ensure that the
school performance tables balance and
emphasise pupil progress as well as pupil
achievement in order to minimise the
perverse incentives on schools to adopt
covertly selective admissions practices.
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www.ascl.org.uk 5
Interventions to increase social mobility
13 Policy levers should continue to be used to
encourage independent schools to join the
state sector via adoption of academy status.
14 Policy makers should publicly recognise the
potentially negative impact on the least
educationally advantaged in the practices
of setting and streaming by ability group.
Where setting is used, schools should
be encouraged to ensure that pupils in
dierent groupings have equal access
to high-quality teaching and learning.
system Provide a broader and
better integrated curriculum
15 Eorts to improve provision and outcomes
at primary school level should continue,
with the key objective to ensure core skills
in literacy and numeracy for all young
people by the end of Key Stage 2.
4
16 All young people should be to be entitled
to a curriculum that has quality and
breadth, that facilitates progression, that
is relevant to 21st century society, that
engages young people in their learning
and that has clear pathways into future
learning and employment. This balanced
provision should be maintained for as long
as possible in a young persons education.
17 There should be an integrated curriculum,
qualications and assessment system
that encompasses the above aspects.
18 The government should more clearly
map out and communicate the options
for quality vocational qualications,
apprenticeships and other employment-
based routes at Level 3, and consider
provision within specialist institutions
5

at Levels 4 and 5. Proposals in the Richard
Review to improve apprenticeships
should be implemented.
Intervention 6: Post-16 Provide better
information to disadvantaged families
19 The government should promote and
resource an embedded curriculum
programme of careers education, beginning
in primary school. This should broaden
horizons by providing information
about ranges of jobs and the impact
of subject choice on future options.
20 The government should explore
potential development of systems for
access to kitemarked local education
data and information, and face-to-face
information provision, with providers
that have expertise in providing products
and services to less a uent families.
21 The government should promote
and enact strong messages as to
the value of education and high
aspirations for everyone to achieve.
22 The government should provide the
means for all young people to have
high-quality, impartial, face-to-face
careers guidance from age 14.
Intervention 7: Post 16
Ensure fair access to HE
23 Policy levers should be used to incentivise
higher education institutions to accept
even greater responsibility for preparing
disadvantaged young people for university.
They should collaborate more extensively
and systematically with schools and
young people, starting in Year 7, to
prepare them for higher education.
24 Higher education institutions should
take more seriously the additional
preparation that some students
benefit from in approaching the HE
application process, and review their
admissions methods accordingly.
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6 www.ascl.org.uk
25 OFFA should be given a stronger statutory
mandate to ensure that widening
participation initiatives are meaningfully
extended, including the expectation that
universities adopt as standard practice the
use of information on a students school and
socio-economic background in deciding
between otherwise equal candidates.
Intervention 8: Business and work
Expand opportunities at the top
26 Key professions and employers should be
incentivised to hire negotiated quotas of
less a uent young people through high-
potential schemes. For example, employers
might be given tax breaks for the creation
of highly skilled jobs that are then lled by
those from less privileged backgrounds.
27 Schemes should be devised to encourage
greater investment from industry, for
example, employer tuition fee bursaries
to undergraduates from low socio-
economic status (SES) backgrounds and
high-quality work experience programmes
for disadvantaged young people.
Intervention 9: Economic policy
Take steps to reduce wealth inequality
28 The remit of the O ce of Budget
Responsibility (OBR) should be extended
to include reporting on the extent and
likelihood of wealth inequalities relating to
the tax and benet system, alongside the
Chancellor of the Exchequers annual budget
statement. The OBR should also be given a
duty to report independently to Parliament
on the likely impact of any proposed
changes in the tax and benets system.
29 Policy levers should be used to encourage
more employers to adopt the living wage.
30 A bolder, means-tested version of the
Child Trust Fund should be created
to be exclusively spent on education
and training once young people from
low income backgrounds reach 18.
31 All families with total incomes, including
benets, below 16,190 should be eligible
for free school meals, so that pupils in those
families benet from the Pupil Premium
and school meal funding that FSM attracts.
This report briey sets out the context
and explains why social im/mobility
remains such a concern, and how social
im/mobility, socio-economic gaps
for educational attainment and social
inequality are inextricably interlinked.
Then, drawing from a review of the
research literature, it provides a prcis
of the evidence behind the various
recommendations and assessments.
www.ascl.org.uk 7
Setting the scene
What is social mobility?
The theoretical concept of social mobility
assumes that social inequality exists, but that
this inequality should be related to merit/ability:
citizens can move up and down social strata
depending on their achievements.
6
As such,
society as a whole benets from a meritocratic
system wherein individuals are matched to
employment based on their achievement
and potential (including those most talented
taking the most highly skilled and/or powerful
jobs). This meritocracy ensures economic
productivity, as well as reecting the equality of
opportunity essential to a democratic society.
However, in England social inequality has grown,
and social mobility never strong has stalled. A
key explanation is Britains history of entrenched
social inequality, which means that the starting
blocks in the meritocratic race are set very
dierently for dierent children, and that therefore
the race is not a fair one. Britain has greater social
inequality and social segregation than most
other Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) countries, and gaps
have increasingly widened since the 1970s.
7

Education has an important bearing on social
im/mobility: it is the education system which
is intended to prepare young people with
the knowledge and skills they need to secure
successful futures as workers and citizens, and
to delineate merit via the award of education
credentials. For these reasons, education is
often seen as a driver of social mobility. There
are many examples of great practice, where
schools are supporting high achievement
for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.
However, the evidence shows that in the UK,
overall the education system is not mitigating,
and at worst exacerbates, existing inequality.
Statistics highlight that British childrens
educational attainment is overwhelmingly
linked to parental occupation, income, and
qualications
8
. Moreover, rather than
the socio-economic gap for achievement
shrinking as young people progress through
the education system, the gap widens.
The socio-economic gap for educational
achievement is particularly wide in the United
Kingdom (OECD, 2010;
9
Knowles & Evans,
2012), comprising a block to meritocracy
and social mobility.
10
Lindley and Machins
(2012) recent work shows that, as educational
opportunities have grown, so has inequality.
Current statistics
A total of 36.3 per cent of young people
on free school meals (FSM) achieve 5
A*-C including maths and English at GCSE,
compared to 62.6 per cent not taking FSM.
11

Young people from the richest fth of families
are nearly three times more likely to go to
university than the poorest fth (Anders, 2012).
Only 7 per cent of children attend private
schools, but 17 per cent of Russell Group
university entrants and 34 per cent of Oxbridge
entrants have been privately educated.
The highest-performing 15 year-olds from poor
backgrounds are, on average, two years behind
the highest-performing pupils from privileged
backgrounds in reading skills (Jerrim, 2012)
Figure 1: Proportion of pupils achieving
the expected level of attainment at
each stage in the education system
and progressing to higher education
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8 www.ascl.org.uk
Two key elements contributing to social and
educational inequality are material capital and
social capital. By material capital we mean
nancial resources (for example, being able
to pay for private schooling, tuition, school
trips, educational resources/experiences and/
or a home in the catchment area of a high-
attaining educational establishment) as well
as the provision of a home environment
and facilities conducive to learning.
By social capital we mean the networks,
understandings and experiences that can
support social progress. For middle class parents
this often includes, for example, experience of
university-level education, understanding of the
education system and the condence to negotiate
it, connections to others with expertise and
information, and connections to those who can
oer high-quality support (such as professional
work experience placements and internships).
Of course social capital is not the exclusive
preserve of the a uent, however in terms of
educational social capital a raft of research
demonstrates the advantage held by the
middle classes on a range of fronts. In relation
to education, the possession or absence of
these two kinds of capital mean that children
start in very dierent places in terms of the
competition that social mobility presupposes.
Vignette 1: Implications of a lack
of nancial and social capital
Josh lives in a council at with his parents
and three siblings. His parents have
low-paid jobs, and struggle to make
ends meet. Facilities are cramped and
there is no money to spare for books
and resources. When Josh arrives in
Reception at the local primary school
he has limited vocabulary compared
to many of his peers, and is behind in
relation to understandings of number.
School feels culturally alien for Josh, and
its hard for him to adjust. In Year 1 Josh
struggles to keep up, and he and his
peers are placed on dierent tables for
literacy and numeracy. Like his friends,
Josh quickly understands that this has
separated the clever kids from the slow
ones, and that he is on the slow table.
He begins to see himself as not much
good at schoolwork and not clever.
His parents, keen to protect Josh from
painful feelings they remember from
their own school days, try to alleviate
his distress by pointing out they didnt
do well at education either, and not
to worry. Josh lowers his expectations
of his own educational outcomes
accordingly, and gradually starts to invest
instead in behaviours that give him
value via credibility with his peers, rather
than teachers disruptive classroom
behaviours, and his skill at football.
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www.ascl.org.uk 9
Vignette 2: Implications of
the possession of nancial
and social capital
James lives in an owner-occupied,
detached four-bedroom house with his
parents and sister. His mother is a well-
paid professional, and his artist father
works from home. James parents invest
substantial time and money researching
and securing the best books, early
gifted packages, educational tools and
trips. James does not attend the closest
school as his parents research showed
that this had been graded good he
attends an outstanding school a little
further away (luckily his fathers exible
working arrangements enable him to
drive James to school and collect him
too). When James arrives in Reception
he has a highly developed vocabulary,
and the school feels like a home-from-
home. In Year 1 James and his peers are
placed on dierent tables for literacy and
numeracy. Like his friends, James quickly
understands that this has separated the
clever kids from the slow ones. He is on
the slow table for numeracy. However,
when his parents discover this from
their questioning of the class teacher
at parents evening, they immediately
secure a home tutor, and James mum
spends 15 minutes every evening working
with James on his numeracy. His parents
discuss dyscalculia as well as potential
misallocation by the school, but these
discussions swiftly become irrelevant as
James rapid improvement, monitored
by his parents in close discussion with
his class teacher, mean that he is soon
allocated to a higher-ability table. None
of this impacts James expectations
of doing well educationally and
following in his mothers footsteps.
While we recognise that the challenges to
increasing social mobility are signicant due to
the scale, depth and complexity of the issues
at stake, we can and must take steps to ensure
that all young people are enabled to realise
their potential and have equality of access to
the educational means by which to do so.
What should the government be doing?
The education system is only one of a number
of dierent factors impacting social im/mobility,
and is unlikely to be able to secure mobility in
isolation. Hence, there needs to be a broader,
holistic set of government policies that address
equality of opportunity in dierent aspects of a
young persons life. These need to be based on
the following principles, developed via analysis
of research evidence (see Francis & Wong, 2013).
As well as acting to support mobility,
policies must militate against the forces of
immobility. The many positive and helpful
interventions driven by well-intentioned
policy work are insu cient to do more than
protect the poor against further inequality
without more radical support and/or
action against the forces of immobility.
Social im/mobility strategies should go
beyond the indicator of free school meals
(FSM).
12
The overwhelming emphasis on
FSM focuses on hard-to-reach families,
missing the point that socio-economic
inequality is much broader than this. There
is a consistent correlation between socio-
economic group and educational attainment
whereby the more a uent their family,
the better children achieve. Hence the
needs of the broader group of blue-collar/
working-class families also need to be
addressed. Exclusive focus on the very poor/
out of work without addressing broader
inequalities will have limited impact.
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10 www.ascl.org.uk
Social mixing is generally benecial.
The positive impact of social mixing
in education at all levels is proven. Yet
our education system is highly socially
segregated. This tendency needs to
be acted against, at a system level,
and within and between schools, via
incentives in the accountability system.
Schooling can narrow social inequality
gaps and facilitate mobility, but is only one
among several aspects that can impact
im/mobility. Income, the home learning
environment, housing and so on remain
powerful inuences, requiring joined-up
policies to combat social exclusion.
Social inequality needs to be reduced
to facilitate mobility. Meritocracy
is unachievable when the starting
blocks are too dierently positioned;
hence more unequal societies tend
to have less social mobility.
13

The government has taken a series of measures,
in education and beyond, to facilitate social
mobility (many of which are discussed later in this
paper). Government interventions usually seek
to provide complementary or remedial help to
contribute to a levelling of the playing eld. The
current focus in policy circles has been exclusively
on aiding the disadvantaged to upward social
mobility (see, for example, Hinds e| o|. 2012).
However, the evidence shows that on its own
this is unlikely, for two reasons, to be eective.
First, there is the matter of the co|e of the
problem. The depth of social inequality in the
United Kingdom means a more signicant gap
in young peoples start in life than in other
countries, with the consequent number of factors
that can impact young peoples progress, and
their relative signicance, impacting unequal
outcomes (Cabinet O ce, 2011). This means that
the level of investment required to undertake
the levelling of the playing eld necessary to
realise social mobility (by signicantly increasing
the prospects of the disadvantaged) would
need to be huge.
14
However, constraints
on public spending make such an approach
unlikely in the current economic environment.
Second, forces of immobility that is, the
monopolisation of education quality and quantity
by the socially advantaged will in any case act
to undermine the benecial outcomes of such
investment. In other words, a uent families are
able to put their nancial and social capital to work
to ensure advantage for their children via access
to quality of provision.
15
The government has
initiated some important rst steps in this regard,
such as ensuring that government internships
are advertised and paid (to prevent advantaging
those with access to powerful networks, or those
who can aord to work for free). But evidently far
more needs to be done. In the face of exacerbated
inequality of investment and outcomes,
initiatives such as Sure Start can only mitigate
further inequalities, rather than level playing
elds. A mark of success will be a more even
distribution of those from a uent backgrounds
across social strata in the next generation.
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www.ascl.org.uk 11
Recommended interventions
With these points in mind, there are four
potentially eective ways forward, which
have informed the list of recommended
interventions. These are:
targeting of resources on those areas where
intervention is likely to be most fruitful
low-cost interventions and incentives
to drive quality oers towards the
groups that need it most
expansion of opportunity at the top
determined actions to ensure fairness,
including while balancing this against
individual freedoms comprising the basis
of an open society disincentivising
the purchasing of advantage by those
already socially and nancially advantaged,
which impacts detrimentally on the
opportunities for others in society
The following section explains why each
recommended intervention is appropriate
and the basis for the appraisal of current
government action in these areas.
Intervention 1: Early years Address the
inequalities children face from the outset
Research evidence shows that:
dis/advantage impacts childrens
development even in the early years
consequent inequality in preparedness for
school impacts future educational progress
the home learning environment and early
years provision impact development
and preparedness for school
These findings mean that intervention to
support the home learning environment
for disadvantaged children and to improve
the quality of early years provision are
of fundamental importance.
16

Crucially, recent research has demonstrated
the importance of the home learning
environment | oJJ|||o to external years
provision (EPPSE, 2012) the latter cannot be
assumed to compensate for the former.
The UK faces very high levels of child poverty,
17

and while there was a downward trend in the
number of children living in poverty in the early
years of the century, this trend has reversed.
18

Poverty has a direct impact on the home learning
environment in disadvantaged families, meaning
that British children tend to have very dierent
starts to life depending on their background.
The government remains committed to ending
child poverty by 2020, and is trying to address
the levels of disadvantage that children in these
families face through a range of initiatives.
These include, in addition to its interventions
for early years provision, increasing the health
visitor workforce to sure up the Healthy Child
Programme, and support for parents in the
form of a digital information service and the
trialling of free parenting classes and relationship
support in dierent areas of the country.
19

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However, current tax arrangements are not set
to narrow inequality (Cribb, Joyce and Phillips,
2012), and reductions to public spending have
the greatest impact on the vulnerable. The
government needs to take urgent steps to address
the rise in child poverty. To this end, it should look
especially at means to support the working poor,
for example, by actively encouraging employer
application of the living wage (Whitham, 2012).
Currently, there are a range of disparate initiatives
targeting resources on disadvantaged children,
but these are often not joined up, and some
appear relatively ineective. Moreover, as
Allen (2011) observes, the benets of targeting
resources on the early years are clear. There is
an opportunity to draw these monies together
to provide a much more targeted resource to
families that empowers them to take ownership
of their childrens developmental/educational
opportunities (within boundaries set by the
evidence for benet). This approach would drive
resources towards the home learning environment
that research shows to be so important in
giving children the right start, but would also
stimulate parental agency and engagement
with their childrens learning. It is therefore
recommended that resources should be corralled
and targeted to secure better early environments
for disadvantaged children. A voucher system
may enable families to choose how to spend
the money from a wide list geared to securing a
positive home learning environment from books
and educational resources, to childcare, healthy
eating, or even environmental improvement.
Mid-term report
Intervention 1: Early years
Address the inequalities
children face from the outset
The government recognises the
importance of every child having a
strong and economically secure home
learning environment, but is not yet
taking the range and depth of measures
necessary to address this challenge.
Intervention 1: recommendations
1 The government should restate its
commitment to end child poverty
by 2020, and set out ambitious,
realistic plans to achieve this.
2 Funding spent by dierent government
departments on related initiatives
should be corralled to target resources
on poor families, to secure better
early environments for children.
3 The government should initiate education
vouchers to provide targeted disposable
income to disadvantaged families, allowing
them to choose how to spend the money
from a wide list geared to securing a
positive home learning environment.
20
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www.ascl.org.uk 13
Intervention 2: Early years Expand
and improve early years provision,
ensuring excellent facilities and
The governments performance on improving
the range and quality of early years provision has
been better. The extension of free early years
education places for up to 40 per cent of two
year-olds by 2014
21
is to be strongly applauded,
although the rolling of Sure Start funding into
the Early Intervention Grant with removal of the
ring fence does represent a risk to provision in a
period of cutbacks for local authorities (LAs).
22

However, given the evidence of the key impact of
early years provision, and the comparative paucity
of UK provision in comparison with many of our
OECD counterparts, there remains much work to
be done especially to secure oo|||, in provision.
The quality of provision has been demonstrated as
the key factor in the impact or otherwise of early
years provision on later outcomes for children
(EPPE, 2004; Sylva et al., 2010; Melhuish e| o|., 2010).
The government has reformed the Early Years
Foundation Stage from September 2012, and
there is now a specic focus on disadvantage
in the Early Years Professional Status (EYPS)
programme. The Nutbrown Review (2012)
highlighted that the professional entry to the Early
Years sector remains too low to ensure standards.
Although early years group settings must be
managed by someone with at least a relevant
Level 3 qualication, Nutbrown maintains that
many of the qualications on oer are insu cient
in standard and content. The review also maintains
that Level 2 qualications are insu cient to
equip early years practitioners, and that all
practitioners ought to be expected to have grade
C or above at GCSE for maths and English.
23
The
government has accepted the majority of the
Nutbrown Review recommendations, with the
aim of improving the status and quality of the
early years workforce;
24
including that Early Years
Educators will train at Level 3 and be required
to have at least a grade C in GCSE English and
maths. It is also encouraging voluntary and
charity sector involvement to increase quality
of specic early years oers, and the Ofsted
framework has been amended to encourage
improvement for poorer-quality provision.
25

However, there should be a more concerted focus
on ensuring disadvantaged childrens access to
excellent childcare facilities, and on encouraging
social mixing. The expansion of quality provision,
as intended by the government, does not ensure
that disadvantaged families have access to it.
To this end, further steps should be taken to
ensure that better information is provided to
parents about the quality of early years provision,
and to ensure that disadvantaged children have
access to quality provision. This is especially
important if further investment is to be committed
to enable access to early years provision. The Early
Intervention Foundation,
26
if established, may be
well placed to oversee strategic development here.
Mid-term report
Intervention 2: Early years
Expand and improve early
years provision, ensuring
excellent facilities and
The record of successive governments
in building up a good entitlement
to early years education for three to
ve year-olds and disadvantaged two
year-olds is to be applauded, as is the
governments new commitment to
improvements in quality. The priority now
is to ensure that the range and exibility
of the oer to parents is matched by
the quality of provision for all children.
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4 The government should continue to improve
quality in the early years workforce to
improve pedagogy through encouraging
more qualied practitioners in every
setting; securing higher qualication
standards in the early years workforce; and
introducing an equivalent of the National
Challenge in early years education, where
institutions work together to develop
professionalism and best practice.
5 A badging scheme for Early Years
Champions should be introduced
to encourage well-qualied parents
to be involved in early years on a
voluntary basis as helpers and/or
advocates, hence increasing capacity.
6 The government should facilitate
better and more accessible information
about quality early years provision,
and should take further steps to
ensure that disadvantaged families
access good-quality provision.
27
Improve school quality
Evidence shows the benets to improving
teaching and learning, and improving poorer-
quality schools (given that disadvantaged
children are over-represented in these schools).
The governments emphasis on driving up
standards in Initial Teacher Education (ITE),
including the instigation of a second class
degree as a minimum standard for the post-
graduate route, and incentives for key subject
shortage areas, represent changes designed to
support quality.
28
Ofsteds new measures with
regard to schools requiring improvement are
also intended to help raise school quality.
However, evidence from both other countries
and from the UK shows that school improvement
is most likely to be most eective when
it is organised strategically, resources are
deployed systematically and school leaders
are empowered to lead improvement. The
government is supporting a range of school
improvement programmes including the
growth of academy chains, the transfer of poorly
performing schools to academy sponsors, high-
performing converter academies supporting
weaker schools, the development of Teaching
School alliances, a doubling in the number
of National Leaders of Education and the
creation of Specialist Leaders of Education.
These programmes all have their value but
arrangements for co-ordinating and gaining
the greatest impact from them are fragmented
and some schools are falling between the gaps.
Analysis also shows that although there are
inspirational exemplars of school improvement
among sponsor academies and chains,
sponsorship outcomes are currently mixed.
29

The government needs to monitor academy
sponsors records in school improvement, and
to intervene where this is not being achieved.
In addition the school improvement
measures co-exist alongside an accountability
framework that incentivises schools to focus on
maximising their individual performance. The
organisation of school improvement needs to
be reformed to address these shortcomings.
Building on the evidence of the key import of
the quality of teaching on pupil outcomes, the
government must also take active steps to
encourage the best teachers and leaders to take
up posts in schools in challenging circumstances.
The raising of the oor standard on GCSE results
and the mounting pressure to improve results
in a short space of time is leading to increasing
vulnerability of senior leaders, which also acts as
a disincentive for teachers and leaders to work
in challenging schools. An ASCL survey of 884
school leaders in autumn of 2012 found that
reducing the vulnerability of post holders and
having an agreed and funded support package
agreed on appointment were the strategies that
were most likely to incentivise them to take up
positions in the most challenging schools.
30

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www.ascl.org.uk 15
Mid-term report
system Improve school quality
The government is promoting a range of
eective school improvement approaches
but there is a lack of local coherence in
orchestrating expertise and resources and
ensuring that all schools are part of an
eective school improvement network.
7 Building on the success of the London
and City Challenge,
31
the government
should create a framework in each
area for developing and coordinating
school-to-school support.
8 All schools should be expected to
be part of an eective local school
improvement partnership such as a
federation, a teaching school alliance, an
academy group or other partnership that
has been recognised or accredited to
provide school improvement support.
9 The government should monitor the
comparative performance of academy
sponsors, and act to terminate funding
agreements where necessary.
10 The government should incentivise
good teachers and middle and senior
leaders to teach in schools and colleges
in more challenging circumstances, for
example, through awards and/or middle
leadership development schemes.
Reduce segregation between
and within schools
There is much that schools can do to assist
social mobility by supporting the educational
attainment and enrichment of young people
from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the
ASCL guidance written by Robert Hill provides
information to school leaders as to how best
to go about this. However, there is no doubt
that within a highly inequitable and segregated
schooling system, some schools face an uphill
struggle to buck the trend. OECD data shows
that less-segregated school systems tend to be
more successful overall, and that less-segregated
systems also have narrower achievement gaps for
socio-economic background (OECD, 2001; Douglas
Willms, 2006). Thus to drive social mobility we
must address these wider issues. The aim must be
to make every school a good school, so that social
segregation is disincentivised. However, the scale
of this task is signicant. There are many aspects
that perpetuate inequality in the schooling system,
but the key factors can be listed as follows:
Disadvantaged pupils are often
concentrated in poorer-quality schools.
Disadvantaged pupils are under-represented
in high-attaining schools (including
grammar schools, and high-achieving
private and non-selective state schools).
Disadvantaged pupils are concentrated
in lower streams and sets, which tend
to be subject to poorer pedagogy.
32
Disadvantaged pupils may be
disengaged from schooling.
Disadvantaged pupils are less likely to
pursue subjects that enable progression
routes to high-status careers.
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16 www.ascl.org.uk
Many of these factors are consequences of
Englands highly socially segregated school
system.
33
Our private school sector is signicantly
larger than that of most of our international
comparators, we maintain fully or partially
selective schools in many parts of the country,
and research has shown processes of covert
selection via admissions in faith schools, and
indeed over-subscribed maintained schools
(West, Barham and Hind, 2009). Middle-class
social and nancial capital enables more
advantaged parents to nd ways to access the
best schools
34
and, as a result, disadvantaged
pupils are under-represented at selective
schools (and other good schools) (Cook, 2012).
Englands accountability arrangements do not
incentivise balanced intakes, as schools may view
disadvantaged pupils as higher risk in terms of a
schools energies and its performance measures.
But also, within individual schools, the prevalent
adoption of setting and/or streaming (even in Key
Stage 1) has been shown to further disadvantage
pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds (Boaler,
Wiliam and Brown, 2000). These pupils tend to be
concentrated in lower sets, a model that research
shows to be detrimental to their attainment.
Part of the reason for this is that low sets tend
to be subject to poorer quality pedagogy.
One way to tackle this is to improve teacher
quality across the board (and the government
has taken steps to drive this via changes to the
admission criteria and nature of ITE). However,
teacher quality will never be completely even, and
performance data and oor targets may continue
to comprise perverse incentives to place the best
teachers with those pupils with greatest potential
to positively impact performance tables. For this
reason ASCL welcomes the governments current
review of performance tables and explorations
of alternative ways to present achievement data.
The Pupil Premium provides extra funding
to schools where young people on FSM
are concentrated, and this is to be strongly
welcomed. However, there are concerns that:
a) this level of funding currently is insu cient
to achieve the desired improvement for
disadvantaged pupils (Sibieta, 2009)
35
b) this money may not reach the pupils
concerned, or may be not spent
eectively (The Sutton Trust, 2012)
c) the money is insu cient to incentivise the
best schools to take additional FSM pupils,
given the high-stakes nature of league
tables and other performance indicators
Ofsted will now have a remit to focus on schools use
of Pupil Premium funding, providing a measure of
accountability concerning its spending; although this
does not address the question of funding being at a
su cient level given the accountability framework
to incentivise schools to change their admissions
policies and actively seek to recruit pupils on FSM.
It is, therefore, necessary to take measures to
decrease social and institutional segregation
in the education system. It is also important
that recent structural innovations such as free
schools, university technical colleges (UTCs) and
studio schools are carefully reviewed and their
intakes monitored to ensure that these models
do not facilitate further social class segregation.
Mid-term report
system Reduce segregation
between and within schools
The contribution of the education system
to enhancing social mobility will always
be limited while school admissions in
England operate in such a segregated way.
The government needs to revitalise moral
purpose across the system and take decisive
steps to realise the benets of social mixing.
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www.ascl.org.uk 17
11 The government should empower
and resource the Office of the
Schools Adjudicator to carry out
random checks and enforcement of
schools admissions procedures to
incentivise compliance with the Schools
Admissions Code and, in particular,
the provisions relating to inclusion.
12 The government should ensure that the
school performance tables balance and
emphasise pupil progress as well as pupil
achievement in order to minimise the
perverse incentives on schools to adopt
covertly selective admissions practices.
13 Policy levers should continue to be used to
encourage independent schools to join the
state sector via adoption of academy status.
14 Policy makers should publicly recognise the
potentially negative impact on the least
educationally advantaged in the practices
of setting and streaming by ability group.
Where setting is used, schools should
be encouraged to ensure that pupils in
dierent groupings have equal access
to high-quality teaching and learning.
Provide a broader and better
integrated curriculum
Such practices of social segregation in the
education system are also a key explanation
for disengagement from schooling among
many disadvantaged pupils. Pupils understand
hierarchies underpinning segregation between
and within schools
36
that some institutions
and sets are seen as better or more able
than others. Placement in low sets and/or
poor schools can result in such pupils being
made to feel that education is not for them
(Reay & Wiliam, 1999; Reay & Lucey, 2003).
However, there are other reasons for such
disengagement, including cultural identities
and related interests. For example, some
disadvantaged families may invest in vocational
rather than academic learning, and/or may not
see the relevance of some academic curriculum
material for their lives. This is important, as a
culture of learning being valued by families
and by society at large is shown to be
fundamental to achievement (Kielstra, 2012).
To facilitate wider access to the high-status
knowledge and qualications that provide clear
routes to higher education, the government has
introduced the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) a
nominal credential referring to a specied cluster
of key subject topics at GCSE. However, there
are other moves needed for development of
a curriculum that supports social mobility.
First, it is important that future curriculum and career
pathways are maintained as open for as long as
possible. At the same time, young people need a
clear understanding of the progression routes that
are available to them and the various outcomes they
lead to, whether it be higher education, higher level
apprenticeships or entry into skilled professions.
It also needs to be recognised that not all pupils will
nd EBacc subjects appealing or easy. They need to
be shown the relevance of their learning. Ensuring
that a proportion of curriculum time is devoted
to subjects that young people have an especial
passion and/or air for may secure engagement
with learning and the broader curriculum.
The curriculum, qualications and assessment
system need to encompass application, as well
as acquisition of knowledge. And as the OECD
has proposed, it is also vital that, in addition to
academic knowledge, young people are supplied
with the capabilities they need for their future
civic, working and personal lives (see Schleicher,
2012). It is important that powerful knowledge
and skills and the capabilities for application
of both are not seen as discrete, but rather as
vital for a holistic curriculum accessible to all.
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18 www.ascl.org.uk
Students also need from early on in their
secondary schooling an understanding of
which subjects and combinations of subjects
pathways or progression routes relate
to particular careers or studying particular
subjects at university, without forcing them
into making premature and xed choices.
Young people should have access to a
curriculum model that develops the capabilities
they need for life and work in contemporary
society, facilitates their engagement and keeps
their progression options open for as long
as possible. The subjects involved whether
academic or technical need clear routes of
progression at post-16 from Levels 35 and
into employment. And the curriculum model
should facilitate the ability for students to
switch from one progression route to another.
This in turn means that it is vital to move beyond
the historic and present negativity around
vocational education and the unfortunate binary
divide between academic and vocational
subjects. Vocational subjects remain important
and they should not be associated with one
particular social class and devalued accordingly.
The Wolf Review (2011) and subsequent
government actions were right to address
quality in this eld, and the value of qualications,
but quality vocational provision needs to
be reinstated as an option for o|| pupils. Not
everyone or all jobs are driven by academic
routes;
37
and excellence evidently needs
to be secure in vocational routes too.
The government has invested heavily in
apprenticeships as one option and the Richard
Review (2012) set out a series of recommendations
to help ensure that all apprenticeships are
of a consistently high quality and that they
equip young people with the transferable
skills needed for the world of work.
As a further option, it may be that university
degree oers in applied, vocational subjects
such as quantity surveying, construction
engineering, architectural design and technical
support need to be extended to the sort of
specialist vocational provision previously secured
by polytechnics, in order to ensure clarity and
excellence in routes to Level 5 in these areas.
Progression routes and outcomes need to be
clearly mapped out and communicated to
students from Year 7 onwards, including both
academic and vocational routes that lead to
high-quality outcomes post-16. This requires
access to high-quality, impartial careers advice
and guidance from qualied professionals.
However, the government cuts to the national
careers advice funding hampers such access.
Likewise, the Wolf reports (2011) focus on
ensuring basic skills is also important. Provision
here needs investment and improvement
(Wilshaw, 2012). While the government is right
that those young people who fail to gain GCSE C
at maths and English should continue to pursue
these subjects post-16, the cost of (currently
likely) continued failure are signicant both for
the state and emotionally for the student.
One option may be for one GCSE re-take at
post-16, with the oer of support to secure
foundation qualications in maths and/or English
should a student still fail to secure GCSE C.
A quality secondary and post-16 curriculum
cannot, however, be accessed without good
preparation, including high levels of literacy and
numeracy. To this end, there remains an urgent
need to ensure that all children have access to
excellent primary provision, and the targeting
of resources to ensure that young people leave
primary education equipped with the core
skills that they need. There also needs to be a
greater focus on ensuring that any additional
provision in the foundation stage is maintained
through primary schooling and beyond, to
ensure that this momentum is not lost.
38
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www.ascl.org.uk 19
Mid-term report
system Provide a broader and
better integrated curriculum
Curriculum reforms are being
implemented on a piecemeal basis:
The governments strategy lacks
an overall vision for how reforms
will support integrated and exible
pathways to 21st-century learning and
employment for all groups of pupils.
15 Eorts to improve provision and outcomes
at primary school level should continue,
with the key objective to ensure core skills
in literacy and numeracy for all young
people by the end of Key Stage 2.
39
16 All young people should be to be entitled
to a curriculum that has quality and
breadth, that facilitates progression, that
is relevant to 21st century society, that
engages young people in their learning
and that has clear pathways into future
learning and employment. This balanced
provision should be maintained for as long
as possible in a young persons education.
17 There should be an integrated curriculum,
qualications and assessment system
that encompasses the above aspects.
18 The government should more clearly map
out and communicate the options for quality
vocational qualications, apprenticeships
and other employment-based routes at
Level 3, and consider provision within
specialist institutions
40
at Levels 4 and 5.
Proposals in the Richard Review to improve
apprenticeships should be implemented.
Intervention 6: Post-16 Provide better
information to disadvantaged families
There is an urgent need for initiatives to ensure
that disadvantaged families have awareness
of, and access to, accessible information to
facilitate their support for their childrens
education. This relies on excellent independent
advice and guidance (IAG) around curriculum
options and careers, directly focused on social
mobility agendas. IAG provision has never
been satisfactory, but the recent decision to
hand responsibility for this service to schools
and colleges but with no funding following
this move must be a retrograde step.
The recent Education Select Committee report
in this area identies a worrying deterioration
in the level of provision for young people, and
raises concerns about the quality, availability and
impartiality of careers guidance in schools.
41

Young people especially those from
disadvantaged backgrounds need face-to-
face guidance on their subject choice for Key
Stage 4, the potential impacts of their choices
on the future pathways that they could pursue
and the range and nature of career options.
Better information being supplied to
disadvantaged families cannot fully
address inequalities in social capital in
families negotiation of the education
system concerning provision of contacts,
professional work experience and the like.
Nevertheless, more accessible and targeted
information in areas such as school/college/
university quality, curriculum subjects
needed to pursue different career routes and
modes of progression to different careers
would make an important contribution.
Eorts should be made to engage and
inform parents, as well as young people. Such
careers education and targeted information
needs to be contextualised by an eort to
promote greater understanding of the value of
education, and of embedding high expectations
for everyone to achieve (Kielstra, 2012).
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20 www.ascl.org.uk
However, research shows that disadvantaged
families tend to have high aspirations for their
childrens education and future work, but are
aware that they lack the information required to
support them accordingly.
42
The government
should explore the development of systems for
access to kitemarked local and national education
data and information, with providers that have
expertise in providing products and services to
less a uent families (this may, for example, include
retailers and service providers, and/or charities).
Second, an embedded curriculum programme
of careers education should be introduced.
This should comprise a concrete, high-quality
programme of information and work experience,
beginning in primary schools, about ranges
of jobs, impact of subject choice on future
options, preparation (including interview
skills) and encouraging engagement and
experience. The programme also needs to
include expert advice concerning higher
education (HE) oers, and access to HE.
Mid-term report
Intervention 6: Post-16
Provide better information
to disadvantaged families
The governments reforms to information,
advice and guidance services fail to
address and, potentially, may exacerbate
variations in the quality of provision.
This in turn leaves many disadvantaged
pupils and families at a further
disadvantage in understanding and
negotiating pathways to employment
and further and higher education.
19 The government should promote and
resource an embedded curriculum
programme of careers education, beginning
in primary school. This should broaden
horizons by providing information
about ranges of jobs and the impact
of subject choice on future options.
20 The government should explore
potential development of systems for
access to kitemarked local education
data and information, and face-to-face
information provision, with providers
that have expertise in providing products
and services to less a uent families.
21 The government should promote
and enact strong messages as to
the value of education and high
aspirations for everyone to achieve.
22 The government should provide the
means for all young people to have
high-quality, impartial, face-to-face
careers guidance from age 14.
Intervention 7:
Post 16 Ensure fair access to HE
Higher education (HE) remains vital for
access to those occupations that bear most
status, power and remuneration. The socio-
economic data on HE uptake indicates that
the HE sector is still not doing enough to
encourage and support access for young
people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
University Access Agreements are designed to
address the under-representation of students
from disadvantaged backgrounds across the
sector.
43
Nevertheless, such students remain
dramatically under-represented, especially in the
most prestigious universities. Private school pupils
remain signicantly over-represented in higher
education, especially in Russell Group universities.
44
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www.ascl.org.uk 21
Once at university, state school students
slightly out-perform their counter-parts from
private schools, suggesting that this imbalance
does not simply reect merit.
45
The Russell
Group has taken some steps to increase clarity
over preferences in university admissions that
previously may not have been transparent to all.
46

Nevertheless, certain university admissions
practices
47
remain opaque to inexperienced
outsiders, and it is not be realistic to expect that
all state schools and their pupils can direct so
much resource to preparing for such practices
as their private school counterparts. It is not
good enough to simply blame the state school
system for failing to provide quality applicants.
Universities should be better targeting their
access funding to ensure that they represent
talent from across society rather than simply
the best prepared and that they work more
proactively with disadvantaged primary and
secondary schools to prepare pupils for university
progression. OFFA needs to be supported by a
tougher remit around enforcement and stronger
sanctions in order to lever improvement.
The use of contextual data to decide
between students in cases where they have
the same credentials should be extended
as accepted practice. This approach, which
takes a young persons background into
account in assessment of their Level 4
outcomes, is supported by the ndings that
students from comprehensive schools tend
to achieve higher class degrees at university
(including at highly selective universities) than
independent and grammar school students
with similar A levels and GCSE results.
48
Mid-term report
Intervention 7:
Post 16 Ensure fair access to HE
Disadvantaged students continue to be
under-represented in higher education
in general and in the most prestigious
universities in particular, despite the
best intentions and policy initiatives
of successive governments. Given the
signicance of higher education as a
stepping stone to social mobility the
government should consider testing
more radical ideas and actions.
23 Policy levers should be used to incentivise
higher education institutions to accept
even greater responsibility for preparing
disadvantaged young people for university.
They should collaborate more extensively
and systematically with schools and
young people, starting in Year 7, to
prepare them for higher education.
24 Higher education institutions should take
more seriously the additional preparation
that some students benet from in
approaching the HE application process, and
review their admissions methods accordingly.
25 OFFA should be given a stronger statutory
mandate to ensure that widening
participation initiatives are meaningfully
extended, including the expectation that
universities adopt as standard practice the
use of information on a students school and
socio-economic background in deciding
between otherwise equal candidates.
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22 www.ascl.org.uk
Despite the high levels of graduate unemployment
witnessed at present, the demand for highly skilled
jobs is growing (Milburn, 2012; Sissons, 2011). And
one way to facilitate social mobility is to increase
the room at the top although given established
trends in monopolisation of opportunities by the
a uent, any deliberate expansion would need to
be demarcated by quotas. Such negotiated quotas
may be agreed with key professions and signicant
employers to create high-potential schemes for
graduates from disadvantaged backgrounds, in
return for tax breaks or similar incentives.
49

Certainly, we need to encourage greater
investment from industry. Social mobility is crucial
in terms of our global competitiveness, yet most
employers do not actively support it (Milburn,
2012). For many years, many in the business
community have been publically critical of the
education system but their track record in working
with schools and supporting young peoples
education has been poor. However, this appears
to be changing, with initiatives like Speakers for
Schools and Inspiring the Future seeing hundreds
of businesses commit to encouraging their
employees to volunteer their time in schools.
Likewise the 2012 report from the Confederation
of British Industry (CBI) ||| |e ^ e. oooc|
|o oo c|oo| states that underperformance
is driven by narrow denitions of achievement
that encourage a focus on the average a kind
of cult of relativism that says it is OK for a certain
percentage of young people to fail. This must
be challenged. In the report, the CBI Director
General John Cridland states that the CBI intend
to make this document the basis of a bolder
business engagement with education issues
over coming years. This is to be welcomed:
Employer commitment to education and to
increasing social mobility should be expected.
The Social Mobility Business Compact scheme
is a good start, as is the Milburn Reports
suggestion for kitemarking best practice on
internships, but we need to go much further.
In addition to the targeted and ring-fenced
schemes to top jobs suggested above, other
potentially eective interventions may include
corporate sponsorship of schemes to pay the
tuition fees of high-potential students from
disadvantaged backgrounds. And for those at
the other end of the spectrum, the government
may consider re-instigating individual learning
accounts for those on bottom quartile
incomes, to enable them to re-train, improve
their qualications and gain new skills.
Mid-term report
The expanding market for skilled jobs
provides a great opportunity to facilitate
social mobility, but it requires positive
action by government, employers
and the professions to ensure that
young people from disadvantaged
background are able to reap the full
benets of this development.
26 Key professions and employers should be
incentivised to hire negotiated quotas of
less a uent young people through high-
potential schemes. For example, employers
might be given tax breaks for the creation
of highly skilled jobs that are then lled by
those from less privileged backgrounds.
27 Schemes should be devised to encourage
greater investment from industry, for
example, employer tuition fee bursaries
to undergraduates from low socio-
economic status (SES) backgrounds and
high-quality work experience programmes
for disadvantaged young people.
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www.ascl.org.uk 23
Intervention 9: Economic policy
Take steps to reduce wealth inequality
The inequalities reected in and perpetuated
by the dierent sectors and institutions covered
above in turn themselves reect and perpetuate
a highly unequal society. The extent of inequality
in the UK itself creates specic barriers to social
mobility. Wilkinson and Picket (2010) show the
international trend for countries with higher
inequality to have lower social mobility.
This is because those from low socio-economic
groups are so J|oJ.o|oeJ, and those from
high socio-economic groups are so oJ.o|oeJ,
from the outset. The higher socio-economic
groups have become adept at maintaining
advantage for their children, and are more
invested in doing so due to the greater
inequality gap (that is, the consequences
of downward mobility are more severe,
incentivising activities to guard against it).
As we have seen, unequal starting points in
access to the social and financial capital so
central to securing high-achieving school-
to-work journeys in the UK works against
both upwards and downwards mobility,
resulting in immobility. Fundamentally,
inherited wealth impedes the equal starting
points important for facilitating meritocratic
outcomes, by allowing the affluent to purchase
advantage in a variety of important ways.
The cross-party commitment to improving
social mobility is motivated by recognition
that a lack of mobility harms the nation both
economically and morally and ultimately
could promote social unrest. A society in which
the most challenging and responsible jobs are
distributed according to a uence/dynasty
rather than achievement is not economically
e cient, besides being socially unjust. Social
mobility strongly benets society as a whole.
For these reasons, we cannot afford not to
act: increasing social mobility is imperative
for our social and economic well-being. If
the government is serious about facilitating
meritocracy and social mobility, they will
need to mitigate the use of financial and
social capital to lever educational advantage.
Without doing so, all efforts are reduced to
tinkering, or to protecting the vulnerable from
the worst outcomes of inequality. Action, then,
will require the government to execute the
strategies recommended above to reduce
social segregation in the education system,
and provide better, accessible information to
disadvantaged families. But also, action requires
direct steps to reduce wealth inequality.
As one aspect of this we recommend a bolder,
means-tested version of the Child Trust Fund
model, to support the life-long learning of
young people from low income backgrounds
at post-18. Allocating monies when a child is
born and allowing it to accumulate for their use
when they are 18 comprises a relatively cheap
method for the government, and if funded
from an adjustment to inheritance tax would
provide an especially tting model to support
social mobility. Such an approach may help
to alleviate child poverty, which we identify
above as a vital step in facilitating mobility.
It is also important that low income families
where adults are in work receive equal
treatment to those where they are not.
Currently low income families are not eligible
for free school meal (FSM) classification and the
support it brings due to receipt of working tax
credits. This should be rectified so that all pupils
from families with total incomes, including
benefits, below 16,190 are classified as eligible
for FSM and receive the Pupil Premium and
school meal funding that FSM attracts.
Moreover, following Milburns recommendations
(2012), The Social Mobility and Child Poverty
Commission should annually review what
progress the government is making.

24 www.ascl.org.uk
Mid-term report
Intervention 9: Economic
policy Take steps to reduce
wealth inequality
The governments social mobility strategy
will be lacking in conviction and impact
until it recognises the extent to which
inequality creates specic barriers
to social mobility and until it takes
steps to reduce wealth inequalities.
28 The remit of the Office of Budget
Responsibility (OBR) should be extended
to include reporting on the extent and
likelihood of wealth inequalities relating
to the tax and benefit system, alongside
the Chancellor of the Exchequers
annual budget statement. The OBR
should also be given a duty to report
independently to Parliament on the
likely impact of any proposed changes
in the tax and benefits system.
29 Policy levers should be used to encourage
more employers to adopt the living wage.
30 A bolder, means-tested version of the
Child Trust Fund should be created
to be exclusively spent on education
and training once young people from
low income backgrounds reach 18.
31 All families with total incomes, including
benets, below 16,190 should be eligible
for free school meals, so that pupils in those
families benet from the Pupil Premium
and school meal funding that FSM attracts.
The Secretary of State for Education has made
it his personal mission to effect changes
in the education system to lever increased
social mobility, and has already taken some
radical steps in the right direction.
However, a strong body of evidence now exists
to show a) just how much work needs to be
done and b) what action needs to be taken in
order to facilitate the social mobility identied
as so necessary for the UKs economic and civic
future. It is hoped that this document makes
a positive contribution to that direction.
www.ascl.org.uk 25
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Author Note: Becky Francis extends
thanks to her colleague Billy Wong
for his help in reviewing the literature
underpinning this document, and
to Robert Hill for his advice.
www.ascl.org.uk 27
Notes
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March 2013 | 20.00

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