Policy paper

Foreword and executive summary

Published 11 September 2024

Foreword

Alun Francis OBE, Chair of the Social Mobility Commission

Our aim at the Social Mobility Commission is to improve opportunities for all, but particularly for those whose opportunities are most limited.

At this moment of change in the country, we believe it is important to set out the main challenges for social mobility and the steps needed to address these. Decisive and bold action is needed in key areas such as addressing regional inequalities and supporting the most vulnerable. But we believe traditional approaches to social mobility have not always worked, and we want to make sure that initiatives are targeted at the right people and based on evidence-based practice.

There are now 4 overlapping challenges in the UK which frame our social mobility problem: low public confidence; a younger generation doing less well than their parents, particularly in terms of pay, progression and housing; insufficient attention to regional disparities and ‘left behind’ people and places; and the need for more successful and cost effective interventions. Each of these is critical and each needs urgent attention. 

Over the past 3 years, the Social Mobility Commission (SMC) has fulfilled its duty to report to Parliament by setting out and implementing a long-term vision for monitoring social mobility outcomes in our annual report. In 2022, we developed and published a new Social Mobility Index for measuring mobility in the UK systematically over time. We reported a range of robust social mobility measures, looking at people’s life outcomes in comparison with their parents’ outcomes. In 2023, we took this a step further, with breakdowns by protected characteristics such as ethnicity, sex and disability, to reveal a more nuanced picture. And we emphasised the important role of geography in shaping opportunity, by publishing our Data Explorer. 

In this year’s State of the Nation report, we have taken the analysis a step further, extending our geographic breakdown of the UK, so that we are now looking at 203 Upper Tier Local Authority (LA) areas, instead of 41 regions (as last year). We have done this using 4 summative measures, or composite indices: ‘Promising Prospects’, which covers intermediate outcomes (early-life mobility outcomes); and ‘Conditions of Childhood’, ‘Labour Market Opportunities for Young People’, and ‘Innovation and Growth’, which cover the drivers (or enablers) of social mobility. This is a huge step forward in terms of providing a comprehensive evidence base – a set of measures and targets – that can support place-based approaches to social mobility. 

Our previous reports have shown that much of what people say about social mobility in our country can be simplistic and misleading. It’s not true that social mobility is getting worse on all counts, nor does our country compare badly with others. In reality, the picture is complex. But we don’t need a crisis to recognise that opportunity can be improved; the key is how to approach this.

The evidence suggests that a one-size-fits-all national strategy for social mobility is too broad brush to make any real difference. We are keen to see place-based approaches, and a recognition of the close interplay between innovative economies, better opportunities and strong social mobility, rather than exclusively focussing on education in isolation from the need to solve fundamental economic problems. 

Our State of the Nation report for 2024 brings this possibility a step nearer. The new composite indices demonstrate how each upper-tier local authority performs on key social mobility indicators. They show the areas which are outliers, either because they perform especially well or particularly poorly. And they support our aim, which is to champion a wider variety of opportunities for a wider variety of people in a wider variety of places. 

We hope we can now work with a whole range of stakeholders, including central government, employers, educators and local leaders to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to thrive irrespective of their background or the place they grew up in.

Executive summary

Chapter 1

A person experiences social mobility when they have different life outcomes from their parents, for example, in income, occupation, housing, education or wealth.

Our long-term vision is to report a consistent set of social-mobility statistics over time – our Social Mobility Index. In line with this, we have created a new website to host it, and we have also updated most of the statistics reported there since last year’s report. 

We have made further improvements to our geographical reporting by creating a composite index of intermediate (early-life) outcomes at the upper-tier local authority (LA) level.^{[footnote 1]} This has allowed us to split the UK into 203 geographical areas, instead of 41, as we had last year. 

Chapter 2

The attainment gap between pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) and those not eligible remains largely unchanged from last year. For example, at age 5 years, there is a consistent gap of around 20 percentage points in the attainment of a ‘good level of development.’ However, in some cases it has widened, such as key stage 4 (KS4).

Among disadvantaged children, girls still do better than boys. For example, at age 11 years, 47% of disadvantaged girls reach the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, compared with 41% of boys. 

FSM-eligible children from some ethnic backgrounds achieve very well. For example, FSM children of Chinese background perform better than the national average for non-FSM children at KS2 and KS4 (11 and 16 years). At age 11 years, 71% of FSM-eligible children of Chinese background reach the required standards.

All the areas of London continue to do well in terms of educational attainment for FSM-eligible pupils at 5, 11 and 16 years. 

The percentage of children living in relative poverty in the UK (after accounting for housing costs) has risen since 2012 and is at about 30%. It is still below the levels reached in the 1990s (when the percentage was closer to the mid-30s), but is much higher than historical levels from the 1960s and 70s.

The availability of high-quality education in the UK remains good. The UK has performed at or above the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for mathematics, reading and science, but 2022 scores show decreases across the world.

We see that unemployment levels among young people are now the lowest they have been since 2014, at 11% in 2022. This means that far fewer young people are suffering the negative effects of unemployment. 

However, for those young people who are unemployed, finding a job could be more difficult, as job vacancy rates have fallen from 0.9 to 0.7 vacancies for every unemployed person between 2022 to 2023.

There appears to be a narrowing of the socio-economic background (SEB) gap in university enrolment between 2014 and 2022. In 2014, young people from higher professional backgrounds were 3.9 times more likely to be studying for a degree than those from lower working-class backgrounds. In 2022 they were only 2.2 times more likely. Data from the Department for Education (DfE), which goes back to 2006, suggests that this is an even longer-term trend.

Young people with low qualifications may have closed the earnings gap with their more qualified peers. For example, there has been a 16% increase in real hourly earnings for people with lower-level qualifications between 2014 to 2016, and 2020 to 2022. This is higher than the increases for all groups with higher-level qualifications.

Civic engagement – participating in democratic processes, such as signing a petition or attending a public rally – has decreased from 40% to 34%.

The percentage of premises with gigabit internet availability has increased sharply across the UK since 2020, potentially fostering better technical infrastructure for innovation and growth.

We have not included a full range of breakdowns by protected characteristics in this document. These breakdowns are instead published in full on our website, social-mobility.data.gov.uk.

Chapter 3

We have developed new composite indices of intermediate outcomes (mobility outcomes earlier in life), and drivers (the enablers of mobility), at the local authority (LA) level. 

We now have a single index for intermediate outcomes at the upper-tier LA level. This gives us 203 geographical regions across the UK, instead of the 41 regions that we had last year. This index, called Promising Prospects, covers highest qualifications, hourly earnings, and also professional and working-class occupations of young people. 

In common with other work on the topic, we have found that most LAs have similar levels of mobility, with a few at the top and bottom ends. The most favourable areas tend to be either in London or in the adjoining Home Counties. 

Similarly, we have developed 3 new composite indices of drivers (the background conditions that help or hinder mobility) at upper-tier LA level, giving the same 203 geographical regions. 

The first index based on drivers is called Conditions of Childhood. This covers childhood poverty, parental education, parental working-class occupation and parental professional occupation. The most favourable conditions of childhood tend to be found in affluent areas, mainly Greater London and the Home Counties but also parts of the North and Scotland.

The second composite index based on drivers is Labour Market Opportunities for young people. This covers youth unemployment, youth professional employment, and youth working-class employment. Results are similar, although the LAs with the less favourable opportunities for young people tend to be in the North East and North West, as well as older industrial and port areas.

We have retained our composite index that looks at research and development (R&D), but improved it so that it also gives us 203 regions. This index is now called Innovation and Growth. The most favourable areas are clustered around London, mainly in the South of England, but a few other areas score well on this index.

1. In some areas of the UK, local government is divided between a county council (upper-tier LA) and a district council (lower-tier LA), which are responsible for different services. In other areas, there is a single-tier (or ‘unitary’) LA instead. ↩