Social mobility after Milburn

I've blogged at the Sutton Trust on the aftermath of Alan Milburn's weekend resignation as Social Mobility tsar

Anyone who thought Alan Milburn would go quietly underestimated the doughty champion of social mobility who first gained the ‘tsar’ role through his political nemesis Gordon Brown. Milburn brought his characteristic energy to publicising the challenge under Brown, and was appointed to head the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission in 2012 by the coalition. Last weekend he showed the same energy and determination in the manner of his going.

But despite the fanfare of last week’s State of the Nation report – where the Commission again adapted a model developed by the Sutton Trust in our pioneering Mobility Map – the truth is that the Commission has faced a gradual emasculation since the 2015 election.

It first lost its child poverty role. Then the Scots bailed out. Commissioners who left weren’t replaced so that by last weekend, there were only four left to resign. And them, as Fraser Nelson noted at the Spectator, Milburn was effectively sidelined. His term came to an end in the summer and he wasn’t reappointed but three was no agreement on who should replace him. With characteristic chutzpah, Milburn delivered his final State of the Nation and persuaded his deputy, Gillian Shephard and the other remaining commissioners to resign with great fanfare through the Sunday papers.

Clearly Downing Street was caught off guard by the weekend’s events. But that didn’t stop some of its supporters getting their revenge across three pages of Monday’s Daily Mail ridiculing the need for social mobility and attacking the former tsar personally. However, whatever the process issues that preceded Milburn’s departure, it still raises critical questions about the future of social mobility policy under the current government.

As education secretary, Justine Greening is an undoubted true believer in the power of social mobility. Like an increasing number of her colleagues she comes from a modest comprehensive educated background and regularly reminds audiences of how the opportunities that are essential to social mobility helped her to succeed – as well as the inherent challenges in the process. We were also eagerly awaiting a social mobility plan from her department which will surely have been given extra scrutiny by No 10 after the weekend’s maelstrom.

Theresa May chose social mobility as her signature domestic issue in her first statement as Prime Minister outside no. 10 and she gave it policy flesh in her first speech on the issue. Unfortunately, the only policy for which the speech will be remembered was an attempt to extend grammar schools – a policy backed by very limited evidence that it could effect significant change. The speech also promised fewer restrictions on faith schools, threatened sanctions on private schools if they didn’t offer more help to state schools or poorer pupils, and sought to get more universities involved in the day to day running of schools.

This year’s general election – after which May no longer commanded a Commons majority – put paid to much of that agenda. Voluntary independent state school partnerships and a willingness by grammar schools more actively to recruit disadvantaged pupils may be a small but welcome legacy. But the conclusion many observers made after the weekend is that the all-consuming demands of Brexit have made it impossible to make serious progress on social mobility.

That is not entirely fair. Greening’s Opportunity Areas are a serious attempt to bring coordinated action to the areas identified by the Social Mobility Commission as having particularly poor social mobility, including places beyond the traditional inner city focus of such programmes. There have of course been many such place-based initiatives in the past – education action zones, Excellence in Cities, London Challenge (and other less successful challenge programmes) – and only the London Challenge delivered (or, some academics would say, coincided with) significant improvement.

The pupil premium remains an important support for schools working with disadvantaged pupils and the Education Endowment Foundation continues to test evidence on an endowment originally provided by Michael Gove. There have also been moves in the cabinet office to encourage firms to do more for social mobility.

However, what is missing – and Milburn highlighted this weekend – is a coherent approach across government. Theresa May rightly saw lack of opportunity as the cri de coeur of many who supported Brexit – and the mobility maps link closely to their votes. That insight needs to be reaffirmed even as the negotiations continue with Brussels.

The weekend events should there be seen an opportunity. It is a chance to revitalise the Social Mobility Commission and get it working effectively with those – like the Sutton Trust – already championing this cause through programmes and research. But it is also the chance to have a truly radical social mobility plan that takes on vested interests to prioritise policies that can make a real difference – it remains to be seen whether the much anticipated action plan from the DFE fits the bill.

Properly resourced nursery education for disadvantaged children (not an add on to a childcare strategy). The best teachers in schools where poorer pupils go. Fair admissions to all secondary schools. Effective use of the pupil premium, with proper support for disadvantaged pupils including high attainers and support for enrichment and activities that improve life skills. Fairer access to university with much better outreach and contextual admissions. A choice of good apprenticeships, especially at advanced and higher level for young people. And a fairer labour market, including the end to unpaid internships.

That’s the sort of radical but practical programme that could start to shift the dial on social mobility. But it requires real passion and commitment to the issue from the whole government and wider society to make it happen.

Breaking the class ceiling

I wrote this for the Sutton Trust blog....

Education Secretary Justine Greening recalled yesterday how she’s missed out on a banking job because she hadn’t taken a gap year. “I was too embarrassed to admit that I simply couldn’t afford one,” she told an event organised jointly by the Sutton Trust and PriceWaterhouseCoopers on Wednesday.

Outlining her vision for social mobility, she admitted that she was fortunate to get a job at PWC and to progress to become an MP and a cabinet minister despite her modest beginnings. And she was perhaps fortunate to face that particular mobility barrier as the guilty bank was Barings.

As the first comprehensive educated Conservative education secretary, Justine Greening has shown an admirable determination to place social mobility at the top of her political agenda. Yesterday she announced funding for new research schools in her flagship social mobility programme of Opportunity Areas. The new schools will be run by the Education Endowment Foundation with the York-based Institute for Effective Education and will help transmit evidence on what works across other schools in their locality to address educational inequalities.

Today’s GCSE results show some signs that disadvantaged students are doing better in school – more are doing the EBacc than before and English and Maths results are improving. But the gap in attainment in the core subjects remains stubbornly high and the new Progress 8 measure underlines just how far behind many disadvantaged students are even allowing for where they started. Those gaps are still much more pronounced outside London.

The extent of the challenge was laid bare on Tuesday in a new report, Class Ceiling, from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility. The APPG, for which the Sutton Trust acts as the secretariat, took as its starting point the Leading People 2016 report last year which showed how across most major professions over half of all the top jobs are taken by those who went to private schools, and many were also Oxbridge graduates.

A lot of the coverage on the APPG focused on the call for a ban on unpaid internships, something the Trust has also called for in the past linked to research on the cost working without pay. Justine Greening was instinctively against a ban when questioned about this yesterday. But unless firms that hire people for months unpaid start to pay at least the minimum wage these opportunities will remain beyond those unable to access the Bank of Mum and Dad or with a family home near their workplace.

The APPG’s recommendations, based on evidence from a host of professions over the last six months, also urged fairer and more transparent recruitment practices by employers, including contextual practices that place attainment and successes achieved in the context of disadvantage, including underperforming schools and less advantaged neighbourhoods.

They argued that employers should be conscious of the impact of recruiting from a narrow pool of universities in the graduate ‘milk round’, and the social mix of institutions, building on the work already being done in some elite professions.

This is not without controversy, as some rather excitable Daily Mail coverage showed, wrongly suggesting that employers should ignore qualifications and ban all internships. In fact, as with similar programmes in universities, this is about recognising that an able young person who went to a tough school and got good results will have had to show far more grit and resilience than a pupil who went to a fee paying school.

However, this doesn’t mean that they necessarily have the same social skills. And this remains a challenge. Our research has also shown that not only do privately educated graduates earn more than those with similar degrees who went to state schools. It underlines the importance of developing those skills and school and university, particularly for those the Education Secretary likes to call ‘rough diamonds’.

It is great that social mobility is now so high up the government’s agenda. And there are clearly lots of things schools need to do to improve opportunities for disadvantaged young people, not least for those whose ability shines at eleven but isn’t properly harnessed through secondary school.

But this is not just an agenda for schools. It is about what business and universities do to foster and develop talent – and to remove the financial and social barriers that prevent success

Brexit's mobility challenge

I blogged at the Sutton Trust on the implications of Brexit for education and social mobility.

It is not as simple as saying – as many do – that we are heading out of the European Union thanks to the disaffected poor who felt their needs were overlooked by the distant metropolitan elite.

As YouGov’s final polling showed, there was a huge age divide too – 71% of 18-24 year-olds were for remain versus 64% of the over-65s backing leave – and a marked difference between those with different levels of education – those with few formal qualifications voted Leave in as great a proportion as graduates voted remain.

There is undoubtedly a strong degree of disaffection among older poorer voters. And this underlines more than ever the importance of ensuring that educational and employment opportunities are available for their children. In a sense, intergenerational poverty could breed intergenerational disaffection if whoever emerges as our political leadership in the months ahead doesn’t address the social mobility issue head on.

We need to start young. The gaps in school readiness at age 5 – the bottom 10% are 19 months behind the richest 10% – continue through the education system. While the pupil premium and other education reforms have reduced the gaps at age 11, on traditional measures little has changed at GCSE and there are still eight-fold access gaps to our leading universities.

As I have argued before, there is a danger that those gaps will perpetuate in the new accountability regime – though there is also growing evidence that such gaps are far from universal – so it is increasingly important that rhetorical choices between apprenticeships, college and university are made a reality in ways that really make a difference to young people’s life chances.

This matters at several levels. The Sutton Trust has long championed the importance of changing the elites – and the referendum has arguably thrown that into sharp relief – where our research earlier this year found that the privately educated continue to dominate in the professions. Even in politics, half of the current cabinet went to private school, and that’s a lower proportion than the coalition cabinet.

Politics needs to become more representative – something the social mobility APPG will be discussing later this month – but so does the leadership of all those institutions that affect our lives.

But change needs to come at every level. We have seen a welcome embrace of transparency in school-level data over the last 25 years, with the chance now to compare schools on a like for like basis as never before. That has spurred real improvement, and with the pupil premium has placed the attainment of disadvantaged pupils centre stage.

Yet there still remains a real challenge narrowing the gap between London and other parts of the country, in part because of different attitudes to reform, but equally the result of differential access to good teachers and demographic differences. It may be no accident that the strongest Brexit votes came in coastal areas and North East cities where students end up with fewest qualifications. The urgency of addressing those inequities has never been greater.

Equally, there is a real challenge assessing the value of post-school opportunities. Colleges have been measured on ‘success rates’ for too long, rather than student outcomes. There are welcome moves to change this, though the danger is that the data is presented in ways that are not easily understood – a real danger too with the new GCSE rankings (replacing A-E with 1-9). The best colleges transform lives, but it is vital that in communities where colleges are the only source of post-16 education that the current patchwork of performance is transformed for the better.

More worrying, perhaps, is the emphasis on quantity over quality in the apprenticeships programme. Apprenticeships are back in vogue, which is a good thing. But for young people, it is not good enough that only 40% of them lead to a qualification at level 3 – A level equivalent – or above. Too few teachers will recommend apprenticeships, but until the government is clear that every young person starting a level 2 apprenticeship will progress to a level 3 without having to change course – as is the way in what are still (for now) our European partners – that won’t change.

And finally we need to shake the university sector out of its complacency and open it up to a transparency that has been alien to them for far too long. It is good that they are judged on impact in the research excellence framework, and that the teaching excellent framework will force them to think more about how they impart knowledge to those paying them £9000 a year in fees.

But it is quite appalling that universities can refuse to co-operate in publishing the data on earnings by course linked to tax data from HMRC, something that Anna Vignoles worked with IFS to show recently at an aggregate level. We will be working with MPs to get that changed in the higher education bill. Students have a right to know the worth of their courses, not least when our data has shown that on average higher apprenticeships may be an option as good – or even better – financially.

So if we are to ensure that the disillusionment that led to Brexit among their grandparents – and many of their parents – is not translated through the generations, we need to make sure not only that opportunity is available to young people across Britain, but that it is provided in a way that is open and honest about the strengths and shortcomings of different pathways. Brexit may have its long term economic downsides, but politicians of all parties need to find ways to ensure that the young who voted overwhelmingly to remain have the chance to use their talents to the full.

Mapping mobility

I've written this new blog post for the Sutton Trust website to coincide with a new index of social mobility across England's 533 constituencies.

The outcome of the general election on May 7^th may be up for grabs. But one thing is certain – it will usher in a whole new cadre of MPs. We looked in February at the backgrounds of some of these candidates, and will look at the House of Commons in the future. But, what of the constituencies they represent? How well do advance social mobility?

That’s the background to today’s new social mobility index. The index looks at all 533 English constituencies – data is much better in England than in the other UK nations - and highlights the big differences that exist across the country in the chances of young people getting ahead in life.  With an interactive map, you can see how each constituency ranks on key measures.

It also points the way to some of the policies that those candidates who get elected in May should embrace if we are to enhance those limited life chances.

For example, the proportion of poorer children whose development is seen as good varies from 72% in Lewisham to 19% in Kenilworth and Southam. This is a big issue: our earlier research has shown a 19 month gap nationally in school readiness between the richest and poorest five year olds. Last year’s Sound Foundations report highlighted the importance of having well qualified staff to provide the sort of vocabulary and stimulus too often missing in deprived homes. More recently, we showed a link between good nursery education and taking the right A-levels.

Of course, these inequalities persist through primary school and unusually by international standards they continue through secondary school. And our index confirms that the London effect is making a difference, with 30 of the top 50 constituencies for mobility being in the capital. We’ve seen lots of explanations for why London schools, once falling behind, are now ahead of the national average, including the way schools worked together in the London Challenge programme, stronger improvements in literacy and numeracy at primary schools and the wider ethnic mix that has brought greater aspiration into the capital’s classrooms.

But underlying all this we need to improve the quality of teaching in schools. Sutton Trust research has shown that poorer pupils gain 18 months’ worth of learning with very effective teachers over a school year, compared with six months with poorly performing teachers. In other words, a great teacher can produce a whole year’s extra learning. Professional development is not a sexy subject for politicians, but getting it right with a strong entitlement for all England’s 450,000 teachers could make a massive difference to school standards.

Attending good universities is important for the top jobs, and changing mobility at the top of our professions, politics and the City. Our index finds big differences between areas when it comes to sending young people from the poorest neighbourhoods to the third of most selective universities, including the Russell Group and Oxbridge.

Students nationally are nearly seven times more likely to go to a top-tier university if they live in the richest fifth of neighbourhoods compared to the poorest fifth, and the gap is even wider for Oxford, Cambridge and other elite institutions. The index shows big variations between constituencies on this measure.

But getting to a good university is not enough. Research has shown that state school pupils can outperform their private school counterparts if they get admitted, though those from disadvantaged areas may need extra support to succeed while there. But they then need a level playing field in internships and work experience, if they are to get on. In our index, we looked at the success of less advantaged graduates in getting professional jobs, finding Harrogate and Knaresborough had the best record and Stoke-on-Trent North the poorest.

However, the important test of success today is getting a good job after school or university. For some young people that should mean apprenticeships, and our polling shows that parents and teachers share our view that there should be more available at A-level and degree standard. For others it will be doing the right degree at the right university.

Those choices should be known by every student, yet our research has shown that while good careers advice has a positive impact on results and choices, far too much of it is below par. We need a big improvement in the specialist advice on subjects like elite university admissions and the availability of apprenticeships for schools to guide their pupils in the right direction.

Social mobility has stalled in Britain, though we have seen progress in recent years – including improvements in primary test scores and access to higher education. But whatever combination of parties is in power after May still has a major job if they want to ensure young people can succeed regardless of their background.

Mobility in the manifestos

My latest Sutton Trust blog highlights the importance of social mobility in the 2015 party manifestos.

Justine Greening, the development secretary, remembered her days working at Morrison’s, and warned that her party needed to do more to improve social mobility, in last week’s Spectator. Frances O’Grady, the TUC general secretary, spoke this week of a ‘Downton Abbey-style society’ that ‘bears down on working class people’s voice and aspirations.’ The new children’s minister Sam Gyimah recalled a period of undergraduate penury while at Oxford in an interview in the  Independent .

And, as Lee Elliot Major noted in his recent blog, Alan Milburn’s latest report catalogued once again the extent to which our elites are dominated by those who are privately and Oxbridge-educated, drawing heavily on Trust research.

All these public figures know what they are talking about. They have gone from modest beginnings to become senior figures in British public life. Their pronouncements have the greater credibility because of that life experience. But the overall message is the same: we’re not doing nearly enough in Britain to improve social mobility.

That’s why today’s Mobility Manifesto matters so much. The problem is illustrated starkly by two statistics that highlight the entrenched nature of these inequalities. At age five, there is already a 19 month gap in school readiness between the richest and poorest children.  A young person from the richest fifth of neighbourhoods is ten times more likely to go to a Russell Group university than a child from the poorest fifth.

As the manifesto points out, these disparities continue into adulthood and, despite good higher education access, as the OECD’s Andreas Schleicher pointed out this week, too much of how well you do in later life is still determined by your parents' income.

The manifesto offers ideas across the educational spectrum, from early years through to better apprenticeships and fairer university access. Some proposals many not make any party pledge card, such as improved career guidance, but are no less important for that, and should feature in every party’s overall education policy. Some ideas go with the grain of political consensus – sharpening the pupil premium, backed by more evidence-based policy or a professional development guarantee for teachers. Others like an enrichment voucher for less advantaged parents extend its logic.

Others are clearly more controversial, such as our Open Access proposals to open up the 100 leading independent day schools, yet those who criticise the idea don’t offer any serious alternatives or the idea that comprehensive schools should have fairer admissions.

For the manifesto, we asked YouGov to test public reaction to one perennial issue on which political hand-wringing is often most pronounced: school admissions. Most schools use distance from the school as the main criterion for admissions to their school. They have to prioritise children in care, and often prioritise brothers and sisters of existing pupils too. But in ‘comprehensive schools’, distance rules.

Last year, we showed again the consequences of this approach. The 500 comprehensives – maintained schools and academies – with the best GCSE results took half as many disadvantaged pupils as the national average. Only one in ten of the top 500 bucked that trend. A few weeks ago, Lloyds Bank calculated that the average premium in house prices in the catchment area of top schools is £22,000, and it is often much more.

Of course, in rural areas and market towns, a neighbourhood admissions policy is probably the only practical solution. But that’s not true in the cities. We showed earlier this year that a small but growing number of academies is using random allocation (ballots) or ability banding (across the range of abilities) to achieve a fairer intake. These tend to be oversubscribed schools where a catchment area is a moveable measure and increasingly arbitrary as a result.

We’ve said that we want to see ballots for school admissions for some time, but what do parents think? Given the scenario of a popular comprehensive academy with 100 places and 400 applicants, the poll of 1169 parents across Britain (obtained from an overall general sample of British respondents) showed that 28% of parents thought all the places should be allocated by a ballot or randomly, 41% thought places should go to those living nearest the academy and 19% thought that half the places should be allocated by ballot and half by distance. In total 47% believed that ballots should play a part in the oversubscribed school’s admissions. Equally, by a margin of 41% to 29%, parents believed that that all children should have the opportunity to go to private school, regardless of family income, at the Government or taxpayer’s expense.

What this suggests is that when presented with a realistic scenario – and the best urban comprehensives are heavily oversubscribed – the public recognises that things might need to be done differently to be fairer. We’re hoping the political parties are open about the challenges, and that they will be brave and ambitious in their plans to tackle social mobility for the 2015 general election.

We’ll be taking this message to the three main party conferences over the next month, where leading figures from each party will debate different proposals from our manifesto. Whatever the result of next Thursday’s Scottish referendum, the problem of poor social mobility will still be with us. That’s why our manifesto ideas should have prominence in their manifestos for 2015.

Parent Power for all

In my latest Sutton Trust blog, I look at the new Parent Power? report published today.

A spate of reports in recent weeks has told differing stories about England’s education system. PISA’s international survey showed a school system that is standing still, with no improvement in our test scores or in our middling position in the ranks of the OECD.

However, the chief inspector’s annual report and the primary league tables last week suggested a more nuanced picture: inner London boroughs improving rapidly and narrowing the attainment gap, leaving many shires and coastal authorities languishing behind.

But while Sir Michael Wilshaw’s view of the ‘unlucky child’ being a victim of geography is backed by the recent improvements in the capital, there is undoubtedly also a case that ‘unlucky’ children lose out on access to many of the most successful schools because they are born into low or middle income households.

That is something confirmed by today’s remarkable new Sutton Trust report, Parent Power?,  by Professor Becky Francis, of King’s College London and Professor Merryn Hutchings, of London Metropolitan University. Drawing on YouGov interviews with 1,173 parents of school-age children, the report shows the extent to which parents’ ability to pick a good school is dependent on ability to pay.

Some of the report’s findings on the prevalence of private tuition or parents’ willingness to pay for private education if they can afford it echo earlier polling for the Sutton Trust and other organisations, including the Independent Schools Council.

The report puts figures on a phenomenon we all know happens, but which has not been properly documented previously, one which contributes to the social segregation and inequality of our education system: the extent to which parents have moved house or used even more unorthodox methods, such as faking piety or accessing an accommodating address in a desirable catchment temporarily in order to cheat the system.

Perhaps unsurprisingly it is the middle classes who have the money and drive to make the move: almost a third of professional parents in social groups A and B has moved to an area which they thought had good schools, and 18% have moved to live in the catchment area of a specific school. A minority of parents with children at state schools also admitted to cheating the system:
·         2% of parents admitted to buying a second home and using that address so that their children could gain access to a specific school, including 5% of the upper middle classes
·         3% admitted using a relative’s address for that purpose, including 6% of the upper middle classes
·         6% admitted attending church services when they didn’t previously so their child could go to a church school, including 10% in the upper middle classes.

However, buying advantage is about more than getting into a desirable home. It is also about extending that advantage through enrichment activities while the child is still at school. And while some enrichment is free to all – open access to museums, galleries or parks, for example – other activities cost money and are disproportionately available to those who can pay for them.

Our report todays shows  that professional parents were also more likely to pay for weekly music, drama or sporting lessons and activities outside school, with more than two-thirds (68%) of professionals doing so compared with 47% of working class parents and 31% of the lowest income parents. The gap was narrower for free cultural activities such as a visit to a museum or gallery than for paid cultural activities like attending a play or a concert.

Addressing such inequalities of access requires action. Of course, councils should do more to tackle outright fraud, but more radical change is needed. The Sutton Trust has long argued that school admissions in urban schools should use ballots (or random allocation) or banding to achieve a fairer intake. Of course, no politician wants to see a revolt by parents who can’t get their children into the school next door, so a pragmatic approach would be to mix places allocated by proximity with those allocated by ballots or banding, as Haberdashers Askes Academies in South London have done.

But opening up such schools is not enough on its own. That’s why, when I worked for Tony Blair, I helped introduce a new right of access – clauses 95 and 96 of the guidance – for pupils eligible for free school meals to free travel to a choice of three schools rather than the one designated by the local authority. These rights are very poorly publicised at the moment. It is also crucial that schools reach out to less advantaged parents, ensuring they are well informed about their options, particularly if they embrace more comprehensive admissions policies.

The enrichment shortfall demands action too. Successive governments have given schools extra money for their poorer pupils, and this Government has codified it and increased the sums available through the pupil premium, worth £900 a pupil this year and £1300 in primaries next year.

The enrichment shortfall demands action too. Successive governments have given schools extra money for their poorer pupils, and this Government has codified it and increased the sums available through the pupil premium, worth £900 a pupil this year and £1300 in primaries next year.

One sometimes forgotten aspect of the London Challenge – the programme that was key to the differential improvement  in London schools – was the London Student Pledge where pupils at the capital’s schools not only benefited from improved teaching and leadership, but they were also promised the chance to go to an artistic or sporting event at a major London venue and the chance to take part in a play and in a public event, all by age 16. Enrichment was part of the package and should be part of the pupil premium deal too.

Parent power has supposedly been around since league tables and Ofsted reports gave parents the right to pick a preferred school. But it has benefited some more than others. True parent power must be about providing fair access to good schools and to the enrichment activities that help to create successful adults.

This post also appears on the Public Finance website.

Here's the proof: Labour DID improve social mobility

One of the more persistent myths perpetrated by the government and its media friends is that, for all its good intentions in education, the Labour government achieved little beyond building some shiny new schools and paying teachers better. Anyone who has visited schools before and after the Labour years knows this to be palpable nonsense. And there has been lots of data to show it to be so: from the primary school improvements, particularly from 1996-2001 and the huge reductions in schools below floor targets at GCSE.

But evidence of the benefits to poorer children on a national scale has been more elusive: the achievements of academies, the turnaround of London schools, the outsourcing of local authority education functions or the vast improvements in literacy and numeracy in boroughs like Tower Hamlets are all treated as beside the point, or the result of dodgy vocational qualifications (even though the results excluding these qualifications have shown substantial improvements and were published in the education statistics).

So, we should be grateful to the Financial Times, and its education editor Chris Cook, for a rarity in journalism today: an analysis informed by the facts. Cook and the FT have looke solely at the sort of subjects that Michael Gove thinks children should learn - sciences, modern languages, maths, English, history and geography - and concluded that

Between 2006 and 2010, after stripping out the effects of grade inflation, the bottom of the distribution shifted upwards: the gap closed by one sixth of a grade in every one of these GCSE subjects.

This is a remarkably important finding, as such gaps may narrow quickly in individual schools, but can take a lot to shift systemically. Less surprisingly, perhaps, the FT finds that

If vocational subjects are included, the fall is more pronounced. On that measure, the expected gap between two children from neighbourhoods ten deprivation percentiles apart closed from 2.8 to only 1.8 percentiles.

Equally fascinating is the extent to which Islington has narrowed the gap far faster than neighbouring Camden, a change the FT attributes to the borough's outsourced Cambridge Education, but which surely owes much too to the impact of London Challenge and the new academies in the area.

But despite the rhetoric, the truth is that coalition ministers know that Labour's key policies were working. That's why they have expanded sponsor-led academies and taken key aspects of the London Challenge - especially the National Leaders of Education - and increased them. Still, it is good to have the evidence.

Ed's confident performance: but will his rhetoric make good policy?

One thing can be said about Ed Miliband's speech at the Labour conference this afternoon. He has shown thar he is capable of delivering a speech confidently, even if the power companies cut live TV coverage for a few minutes, and that included a decent self-deprecating joke or two. He gave some strong messages on fiscal responsibility, echoing Ed Balls, towards the start of his speech, where were necessary and will need repetition.There was also the making of a strong populist argument in the speech  This is that he is on the side of the ordinary hard-working person or the more productive businessperson. He will cut through the elites that have let people so badly down over the last few years, not least the bankers.

In one sense, this theme has the potential to resonate in these tough times. The 'producers or predators' line comes across well in the bulletins. People do feel let down by the powers that be, and it makes sense to put himself against the vested interests at the moment. There is a strong theme too in focusing on those who work on moderate incomes and this a theme that the coalition too often fails to recognise: talk of narrowing gaps often focuses just on the very poorest, yet it is important that those on relatively low and modest working incomes don't feel that work doesn't pay. Narrowing gaps must be about more than those who are helped off welfare: in government, Labour delivered more for the deciles just above the lowest group in areas like education, and those are the people who will decide most whether the party is in government again. Talking to them is good politics.

The danger is that without the detail, the ambitions fail to connect with delivery. Certainly, he makes a strong case for social mobility: but more will be needed than cut-price fees where the loan repayment levels remain the same. Equally, the talk of differential business tax rates need more clarity - frontbenchers challenged to defend it on TV can tell him that - as does the proposal to give hard workers preference with social housing.However, after this speech, Ed Miliband has moved out of the shadows of the last Labour government, but he will need to guard against the instincts of some in the party whose interest is more in a quiet life of Tory-bashing than the inconvenience of winning three elections. Today allowed Ed Miliband to set out his vision: now he must put flesh on the bones, all the while ensuring that his argument maintains the hard edge that could provide the makings of a winning manifesto.

Gove's schools 'revolution' needs to be more than a rhetorical numbers game

Last week the Government unveiled its new Admissions Code with further fanfare about its supposedly revolutionary potential. There are a few useful changes, and the odd perverse one. It makes sense to combine a permissive attitude to the expansion of good schools with the opportunity for academies and free schools to prioritise pupils on free school meals (though why voluntary-aided church schools are excluded is not explained). The Schools Adjudicator may not be able to investigate concerns off his own bat, but will now cover Academies and must respond to complaints from anybody, not just other admissions authorities. Oddly, area-wide lotteries are banned, though banding stays and schools may run their own independently-supervised lotteries; again, a change lacking logic but seemingly based on one study of the Brighton experience, which was in reality as much about addressing middle class grievances as reducing social segregation. Parents have a bit longer to appeal against admissions offers and teaching staff can be prioritised in school admissions policies even where there are no shortages.

What is remarkable about the code, besides the admirable sub-editing job performed on its overlong predecessors, is how much it retains of that which Labour introduced. In reality, most school admissions will continue to place priority on distance and siblings, while new selection is still outlawed, and the coalition must hope that enough free schools are established and that the improvements of the last decade continue apace so that dissatisfaction in urban areas with admissions is reduced. But of more importance to their stated priorities is the extent to which the new Code linked with the pupil premium, school structural reforms and changes to accountability combine to improve social mobility.

And, on that, the jury is still out. The rhetoric has certainly been bracing, and the Government's media cheerleaders have become over-excited at the pace of academy conversions. But there are a number of important issues that need to be addressed if the rhetoric is to affect reality on the ground.

First, the pupil premium is too low this year at £430 per pupil to make much difference, especially as schools are coming to terms with other budget cuts. The premium should reach £1600 by 2014-15 and may then have a bigger impact, but a lot will depend on how schools are held accountable for its results. The league tables may include measures of achievement and progress for poorer pupils, but it will be the value attached to such measures in the Ofsted inspection framework that matter most: the new league table measures will not greatly affect parental choices in themselves.

Second, the structural reforms are certainly a victory for advocates of greater independence and diversity - I would certainly count myself as one. But with a few admirable exceptions, most of the 40 planned free schools will do little for the poorest students, however much they satisfy middle class or religious parental aspirations. And most converter academies are converting so for financial reasons. There is little sign that the DFE is using Michael Gove's initial commitment to ensuring strong system leadership from the new academies, within funding agreements for example. Meanwhile, the Government has diverted time and effort to the legal process of academy conversion from the far tougher job of turning around failing schools, even though the £25,000 grant available to converters should cover their legal costs. It insults the intelligence to pretend that the hard grind needed to turn around or replace failing schools is comparable to the fairly simple, financially persuasive and legal process required for successful schools, and without the same drive that Andrew Adonis brought to sponsor-led reform, there will not be the gains that were made by Tony Blair's Academies. Liz Sidwell is making a good start as Schools Commissioner, but the DFE effort as a whole needs to focus on the hard rather than the easy wins. Inputs are not the same as outcomes.

And finally, the changes to the Admissions Code are, understandably, permissive. But the pupil premium offers a chance to use some leverage. Prioritising poorer pupils in successful schools could be one of a menu of possibilities linked to a higher premium in the future. As could becoming a National Leader of Education, or successful curriculum innovation. But without some conditionality, the pupil premium is in danger of being a damp squib. Unless it does so, the Treasury will start to question the value for money in continuing to raise the level of the premium at a time of austerity.

The coalition has made a lot of noise about social mobility. It has ostensibly put some money where its mouth is, with the pupil premium. But it has not - as yet - joined the dots of its various policies to ensure that it makes the impact it says it wants to see in the results achieved by the poorest pupils. It must start to do so.

A brave and sensible move on admissions

Today's Daily Telegraph reports that Michael Gove is planning to give academies and free schools the right to prioritise pupils entitled to free school meals for admissions, where it can help give them a more balanced intake. I'm not sure why a school wishing to achieve this would do so rather than going for banding or random allocation, but it is nevertheless a brave and sensible move that could help social mobility particularly if the pupil premium becomes anything more than a few hundred quid of sticking plaster for the cuts.

The Telegraph, needless to say, regards the whole thing as 'social engineering', which one supposes is not the same as buying a house in the catchment of a good school in order to gain admittance. I remember when Tony Blair was considering extending the Admissions Code to allow more banding, as well as extending choice for those entitled to free transport and the introduction of choice advisers, the Telegraph was equally sniffy. But those changes were right and necessary, especially as academies expanded, and many do use banding or lotteries. Ironically, it was a Times report on banding - where pupils are tested so they can be placed in different ability bands to achieve a comprehensive intake - that caused some very senior Labour figures to imagine that the 2005 White Paper was about increased selection. It didn't help that the Times placed an 11-plus paper on their front page to illustrate the news.

The simple fact is that good schools need objective measures to avoid becoming socially selective. It is extraordinary that some so-called comprehensive campaigners equate easy access to one's nearest school with fair admissions. With a heavily oversubscribed school, it is nothing of the sort, though it is sensible to have a balance between a neighbourhood catchment and one that is wider and more accessible. Equally, it is not enough to open school admissions up in this way. Choice advisers need to be developed in the way they were originally intended, as advocates from communities where people are reluctant to travel to good schools rather than local authority employees (though some of the latter do some good work, to be fair). Parents need active encouragement to apply.

The Telegraph report suggests that the new measure will be permissive, which is also probably sensible, though schools are required to prioritise children in care in their admissions policies. However, it is to be hoped that there is a degree of positive encouragement to good schools in urban areas in particular either to adopt this preference or to use banding or random allocation for at least a proportion of their intake. With some academies having 11 applicants for every place, it is the only fair way to ensure a more equal intake. That is not about social engineering. It is about enabling genuine opportunities for social mobility.

Educational inequality has reduced with Labour

As if Lord Ashcroft's millions and the greatly inflated Short money were not enough, one sometimes thinks listening to the radio each morning that the Government feels it needs to do more to assist the Conservative election campaign, with today's inequalities report the latest contribution to the self-flagellating narrative of Labour 'failure'.

To be fair, the Harman/Hills report does acknowledge that some Labour programmes have had an effect, like tax credits and early years' policy. But little is said upfront about the impact of education programmes like the academies, excellence in cities and the national challenge. And the strongest evidence that Labour has narrowed the gap in GCSE achievement between social classes (though it does acknowledge changes with ethnic minorities) is buried on page 266 of the report and draws on information in the 2007 Youth Cohort Study.

Figure 10.3 shows trends in this level of achievement by parental occupational social class for children in England and Wales, between 1989 and 1998 using one classification, and from 2000 to 2006 using the classification we used in the last sixchapters (National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC)). In the first period, the gap between children with unskilled manual and with managerial/ professional parents widened from 40 to 49 percentage points, but in the second the gap between children with parents in routine and in higher professional occupations narrowed from 48 to 39 percentage points. So while this gap remains very wide (and we discuss in Chapter 6 how it develops over the school years), there are signs that it has narrowed a little in recent years.

Translated into plain English, what this means is that the poorest social group saw their GCSE results improve by 14 percentage points between 1999 and 2006 whereas the best off group saw only a six point rise. Indeed, the increase for lower professionals was 11 points and for lower supervisory groups twelve points. More recent figures - including last year's GCSE results allowing for free school meal take-up - suggest the gap has narrowed a bit further. By contrast, under the Tories there was a substantial widening of the gap in the years after the GCSE was introduced, with those in 'unskilled manual' groups seeing improvements less than half those of managerial/professional children. Hardly a sign of Labour failure, then.

Getting on

Alan Milburn has produced a characteristically sharp and focused report on social mobility. His commission builds on a lot of excellent work over the years by the Sutton Trust, which had started to identify the 'closed shop' that had grown in many professions. As the report makes clear, this is not about dumbing down, the charge wearily made by some newspapers at any effort to provide a level playing field.

Increasing fair access to professional careers is not about ‘dumbing down’ any more than it isabout allowing young people who would otherwise not be bright enough to become doctors or lawyers. It is about making current access routes fairer and ensuring that those young people who succeed in gaining a top job do so on the basis of talent and merit alone.

What's interesting about the report is its recognition that this is about more than just attainment or having more good schools, desirable though both clearly are. The advantage that many children of professionals enjoy include less tangible factors such as contacts, access to internships and confidence. It is vital that those skills are developed in state schools, and there has been a considerable growth in the number of specialist schools and academies that place great emphasis on them in recent years.

The debate on the curriculum has got bogged down into an unhelpful split between 'knowledge' - traditional subjects - and 'skills' which can include these social and communication skills, but also embrace everything from health education to citizenship. Clearly students need both, as the Milburn report makes clear. And there are plenty of practical proposals on everything from mentoring to flexible degree courses.

But we also need a sea-change in attitudes among the professions (there is evidence of some improvement in the law, but none in medicine). The predictable guff about this being still a problem after 12 years of Labour misses the point - indeed Alan Milburn points out that a long decline in social mobility has bottomed out under this government. State schools have improved considerably. More state pupils go on to university, and more do so from poorer areas. But without the sort of social skills that the professional classes effortlessly pass on to their offspring, we will never narrow the gap. And without a greater sense of ambition in young people themselves, they won't take up the opportunities on offer, which is something that families and teachers can instill.

In the end, we need a cultural revolution as much as government action. With predictions of seven million more professional jobs over the next ten years, nothing less will do.

Is social mobility really stagnant?

The Government's new social mobility paper clearly has some good ideas attached to it. Golden handcuffs for staying in inner city schools may make a difference to recruitment (though with the recession, there should be no shortage of teaching candidates). And the appointment of Alan Milburn to head a taskforce on the problem should ensure a livelier set of future proposals. Today's report comes after a LibDem think tank yesterday presented their own critique (pdf). Needless to say the party rejected the only proposal on education likely to make a serious difference - admissions ballots for secondary schools. With ballots or banding, popular urban schools could achieve a mixed intake. Without them, they often become too socially selective.

But while there is still clearly a big gap between the achievements of the best off pupils and the poorest, it is not the case that there has been no change as a result of the government's education policies. Martin Narey said in the Lib Dem report yesterday:

The present Government came into office with a commitment to tackle this social exclusion and it needs to be acknowledged that many of the policies implemented since 1998 have contributed to positive change and the long- term return on others, such as Sure Start have yet to be realised.

However, even that is not the whole story. In fact, not only are GCSE results improving, they are improving disproportionately more for those from poorer households. Mobility is not just about those who are in workless households; a Labour government has always been as much if not more about the interests of those in work with modest incomes. The evidence of improvements can be found in a twice yearly survey that the Government doesn't do enough to publicise known as the Youth Cohort Study.

The 2007 publication shows that between 1999 and 2006, the proportion of higher professional children gaining five good GCSEs rose six points from 75 to 81%, an increase of six percentage points. At the same time, there was a ten point increase among pupils from lower professional families and intermediate occupations, a twelve point increase in those from lower supervisory grades and a 14 point increase from 26 to 42% in families with routine occupations. There have also been disproportionately large improvements among Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupils. But, at the same time, there does seem to have been less improvement among white boys on free school meals (only 14% of pupils are eligible for FSM).

None of this suggests a problem solved, and the mobility taskforce has its work cut out for it. The children of professionals are still twice as likely as those from families with routine occupations to gain five good GCSEs. But it does suggest that the more extreme comparisons, based on data such as free school meals, are not telling the whole story. Comparisons with earlier years were done -as is the wont of our brilliant statisticians - using a different scale, which means we don't have continuity. But given that these changes happened within a particular policy framework targeted at urban school improvement, including the birth of academies, the London Challenge and Excellence in Cities, might there not be some connection between the improvements and Labour education policy? And shouldn't our ministers remind us it is so?

Opening up the professions

It is good to see Alan Milburn back working on social mobility. There is clearly a real job to do opening up professions like the law, medicine, army leadership and the national media to a wider social mix. In part, this is about young people being given the opportunities to study the right subjects in the sixth form and encouraged to take up places in elite universities. Government must be more open about this: the Sutton Trust has done some excellent working showing where this is not just about standards in state schools, as the Sunday Telegraph claims today. It requires students to apply for the right courses at the right universities.

But it is also about social connections. A good degree is often not enough. One reason why so many places are taken by a self-perpetuating elite is because of family connections and the ability to survive while taking up unpaid internships. If Alan Milburn can get to grips with those issues, he will widen the pool of talent available to leading professions. The idea - as the Tories have it - that this can only be done through "class war" is a sad reflection of the narrowness of experience of the old Etonians who want to run the country again.

Improving social mobility

Like David Aaronovitch, I have always been a bit puzzled by the way the social mobility debate has been conducted in recent years, largely reliant on data about a generation educated under the Conservatives. I have seen the impact of the extra investment in nursery education and schools, and the effect on outcomes, including national test results and GCSEs, particularly through the Youth Cohort Study. So, yesterday's characteristically comprehensive report from the Downing Street Strategy Unit, pointing to signs that social mobility has been improving since 2000, was no great surprise.

But it is vital that the government understands that these improvements are about more than mere investment, important though that is. Nursery education spending has been accompanied by controversial but vital (if excessive) outcome measures. GCSE improvement has been greatest in academies and in schools where accountability has led to individual goals and higher expectations. In other words, this is the product of investment, accountability and reform. If social mobility is to continue to improve, it is crucial that ministers recognise the importance of continuing with this approach without needless distraction.

Why we should not confine early learning to the middle classes (2)

The annual whinge about the Government's goals for nursery education took place recently. Here's another good reason why we cannot afford to confine early learning to the middle classes.