Responding to the TUC’s report Dismantling the Barriers to Social Mobility Dr Lee Elliot Major, Director of Development and Policy at the Sutton Trust said:

“We welcome the TUC research, and share their concerns about the links between inequality and social mobility in this country. However, policy to address mobility must go beyond income distribution.

“It requires a fairer education system, with access for low and middle income families to the best comprehensives, grammars and independent schools, with more places open to them at top universities and in the professions. Improving social mobility is about widening access as much as it is about narrowing income gaps.”

NOTES TO EDITORS

The Sutton Trust is a foundation set up in 1997, dedicated to improving social mobility through education. It has published over 140 research studies and funded and evaluated programmes that have helped hundreds of thousands of young people of all ages, from early years through to access to the professions.