Over the last five years, policy debates about post-16 education in Wales and across the UK have predominantly focused on the funding of provision. Important though this funding debate clearly is, this discussion paper, which has been prepared for ColegauCymru, seeks to contribute to a broader policy debate about whether current educational provision supports social mobility and adequately enables young people to secure a life of ‘well-being’. Although the focus of this paper is post-16 education, it also considers educational provision more generally and draws on wider comparative experiences to inform the discussion. The central question it seeks to consider is: whether current education provision supports social progression and socioeconomic resilience for young people from deprived communities and disadvantaged personal backgrounds. In addressing this question, the paper stops short of offering particular solutions, which will be the subject of further work, but it begins to develop a narrative and conceptual framework to address the question.
The educational progression of young people with disadvantaged backgrounds and from deprived communities is a particularly salient issue in Wales and the UK more generally, as skills inequality is now higher, and social mobility lower in the UK than in any other developed country (Janmaat and Green, 2013). Furthermore, economic and social inequality in the UK is now at unprecedented levels (Oxfam, 2016).
The Social Mobility Commission (2019) commented that ‘…social mobility has stagnated over the last four years at virtually all stages from birth to work’, moreover being born disadvantaged ‘…means that you will have to overcome a series of barriers to ensure that you and your children are not stuck in the same trap’.
The recent Augar (2019) report suggested a longer term trend exists, where there has been ‘…no improvement in social mobility in Britain over half a century: increases in wealth and changes in the overall structure of the job market have had no impact on the relative chances of people born into less advantaged groups’.
These issues are not confined to the UK, and a recent OECD (2018) report found that social mobility has frozen or is declining in many countries. Nevertheless, the UK is particularly badly affected, and the OECD estimates that, on current trends, it would take five generations for a low income UK family to reach the average UK family income. The report also observes that those born between 1945-75 had much greater chances of social mobility than those born afterwards. These inequalities are set against the background of growing uncertainties about the future of working patterns. Automation and artificial intelligence is already having a massively detrimental impact on traditional forms of employment and these are predicted to increase significantly over the coming decades (Buchanan, 2018). Moreover, new forms of ‘disruptive capitalism’ are undermining traditional notions of wealth creation, and there is growing urgency in the need for environmental rebalance that asks fundamental questions about what forms of economic activity national and local governments can permit and should support.
Given these global concerns, there appears to be a surprising shortage of comprehensive data sources that provide reliable and recent information on education and social mobility in Wales. The Centre for Research on Learning and Life Chances (LLAKES) have previously used data from the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) to assess educational and other determinants of adult skills inequalities. By comparing data for selected countries on skills distributions among 28-31 year olds in 2013 (from PIAAC), with data on distributions of skills amongst 15 year olds in 2000-03 (from PISA), LLAKES was able to assess the durability of skills inequality and the effect that post-compulsory and adult learning have in increasing or mitigating such inequality. Unfortunately, this data was not available for Wales. Furthermore, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) formerly published figures on how many people from working class backgrounds – as defined by the official NS-SEC classifications – went to university, but production of this data ceased in 2015 (Worrall, 2017).
The ONS UK Labour Force Survey is, perhaps, the best available source of data, particularly as it captures information on educational attainment on entry to the workforce, as well as asking questions on parental occupation. Henehan’s (2019) analysis of this data, which is referenced at points in this discussion paper, is limited to the 22-64 year old age group as the default working age.
The Annual Population Survey, which appears to be used by Welsh Government to identify attainment levels, can be used to identify absolute levels of educational attainment by local authority areas and a variety of other factors.
This discussion paper is structured around various perspectives, or ‘lenses’, through which an answer may be subsequently postulated. These lenses include: economic, social, delivery and spatial, as well as a concluding evaluative lens.
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Can you get there from here?
Post-16 education, social progression and socio-economic resilience
Dr Mark Lang
February 2020
