Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)

My Lords, I welcome this report, particularly its focus on local areas, and also strongly agree with a number of previous speakers that Blackpool college, the Social Mobility Commission and Alun Francis are really inspirational. There are some important specific recommendations, but I would like to offer a couple of more general—and perhaps somewhat partly downbeat—comments. There is a sizeable academic literature which traces social mobility using very much the same approach as this report, looking at whether someone’s adult occupation and finances are closely related to and predicted by their family of origin. In deciding whether this link is strong or weak, there are two key forces. The first, bluntly, is how well or badly better-off parents are able to protect their children from downward mobility. In a static society, that is critical, because when things are static, if somebody goes up, somebody else is going down. Fortunately, in a dynamic society—or less fortunately, in a collapsing society—what really matters is the whole structure of the labour market. In the last century and a half in this country, it has been the structure of the labour market and therefore the class structure that have been the really important drivers. They have been wonderful. The greatest UK expert on this is Oxford University’s John Goldthorpe, who has done a magisterial analysis of social mobility and education in this country over the last century and a bit. The contrast is quite dramatic. For example, among men born between 1938 and 1947, two-fifths of them were upwardly mobile compared with their families, and only a 10th downward. But in the last 30 to 40 years, this has plummeted. Upward mobility has become less frequent, and downward mobility has become more frequent. This is very much because of the flattening of the labour market structure. What I really want to say in this context is that we must not expect of education what it cannot provide. Of course, all these things are important—they are what I have worked on all my life—but what ultimately will transform social mobility is economic growth, and we have to be realistic about that and to think about that in every local area. I want to say one more thing. I am a little concerned at the tendency—which was visible a bit in this report—to feel that if a 16 year-old is struggling with English and maths, we should just forget it. I know that is hugely oversimplistic, but there is something of that in some of the witnesses’ evidence. The new qualifications coming in for 16 to 18 year-olds, which are pre GCSE, will be important. But the most important vocational skills by miles in a modern economy are maths and English. If you doubt this, you can look at the sterling work done by DfE statisticians, which is also pretty magisterial.