Social mobility "on the rise"

3 November 2008

Reuters, Kylie MacLellan, 3 November 2008

Social mobility in Britain is improving for the first time in 30 years, according to a government report on Monday.

The report, which draws on academic research, said while social mobility was stagnant between 1970 and 2000, "positive changes" started to occur around 2000.

Since coming to power in 1997, Labour has introduced a series of initiatives aimed at boosting the educational opportunities of the least well-off, such as the creation of academies in deprived inner-city areas.

The report, "Getting On, Getting Ahead," says the social background of today's teenagers is less important in determining their success at school than it was for those born in 1970, according to GCSE results from 2006.

It says: "Family background will have less of an impact on the income of these children when they reach adulthood... they are likely to experience higher social mobility."

But Chris Grayling, shadow work and pensions secretary, dismissed the report, saying the opportunity to make a real social leap today is far less than in past generations.

"The truth is that Britain today is a country where poverty is getting worse, where there are 20 percent more young people not in education or employment than a decade ago," he said in the text of speech to the Reform think tank.

A report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development last month said the UK was less socially mobile than countries such as Canada, Australia and Denmark, with what a person's parents earned when they were a child having much more effect on their own earnings.