The lost generation

For seasoned social mobility observers the latest OECD international comparisons fill in one of the missing chapters in our national story of declining opportunity.

The Sutton Trust’s seminal study in 2005 by top economists at the LSE catapulted the problem of low and declining social mobility in Britain into a major public and political debate that continues to this day. It found that mobility was lower for the generation born in 1970 compared with that born in 1958. Children who grew up in poorer homes in the 1970s were even more likely than the previous generation to end up poor as adults. And when compared with other developed nations, the UK alongside the US were bottom of the mobility rankings. We had become a less mobile society.

Margaret Thatcher’s decision to cut the national cohort studies in the 1980s and 1990s deprived us of what happened next. We just don’t have the data. We have had to fast forward to study the early outcomes of children born in 2000 as part of the Millennium cohort.

But a new light has been shone on social science’s dark decades by the major survey of numeracy and literacy skills in adults in 24 countries published this week by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. For a good report on the main findings and the worrying implications for the country’s future economic health, read Robert Peston’s summary.

What is striking about the OECD’s research, despite using altogether different measures and methods, is that it seems to confirm the picture of low and declining mobility in modern Britain highlighted by the cohort studies. Not only this: the least mobile nations, most noteably the UK and US, by OECD’s reckoning are the same countries that languish at the bottom of international tables in the Sutton Trust social mobility study.‎

The OECD report concludes that England and Northern Ireland (Wales and Scotland did not take part) “show one of the strongest associations between socio-economic background and literacy skills among the population of 16-65 year-olds”. Across all countries, adults whose parents had low levels of education were five times more likely to have poor literacy skills than adults whose parents had higher levels of education. In England and Northern Ireland, the probability was eight times greater.

A stand-out feature of England and Northern Ireland is that for young adults born in the late 1980s and 1990s, the association between parental background and literacy skills is stronger than for older adults. Social mobility is lower among those aged 16 to 24. Today’s young adults appear to be suffering the further decline in opportunity identified for 43 year olds (born in 1970) by the Sutton Trust research in 2005.

Predictably the latest findings have prompted a blame game‎ reminiscent of the national soul searching that follows England’s football team’s latest defeat: lots of talk, but little action.

So what can be done? A no-brainer is to continue the study of numeracy and literacy post 16, something the Sutton Trust has repeatedly called for.  Meanwhile the goal of our sister foundation, the Education Endowment Foundation, is to find ways to improve the attainment of our poorest school pupils.

Our teenagers deserve a credible apprenticeship route – the focus of a major report to be published by the Trust. It is also surely no coincidence that the nations who perform well in the OECD study are those who have prioritised the professional development of teachers.

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Trust, often likens the Trust’s work to pushing water uphill.‎ I thought of this when ‎Andreas Schleicher, the lead author of the OECD study, spoke at a recent Sutton Trust ‎seminar. ‎The most devastating slide he presented concerned teenagers not in education, employment, or training (NEETs). Their skill levels were shown to decline rapidly so that within 5 years they are unemployable. To improve mobility we will need to reverse this downward trend.