Social mobility is a peculiarly British preoccupation, while in the US aspiration is associated with economic opportunity, social class has been defined by occupation. Mobility is about not being tied to the class of your birth, i.e. your father’s, but being able to have control over your occupational outcome, relative to the opportunities of others. Grammar schools are often cited as offering the life chances which a fair society should offer, which the state education system is not seen to be delivering, that working class children with ability could attain middle class roles.
There are several anachronistic factors in the foregoing: the gendered pattern of employment status; the hierarchical structure of occupational classifications; the singularly upward interpretation of social mobility; and the idea that grammar schools support the working class. Our society has changed over decades to be more middle class and less industrial, with women aspiring to similar status as men, families where both parents work in high status roles and are concerned their children consolidate their social status.
Grammar schools were conceived in a social structure where most people had working backgrounds, and there were predicted to be shortages of educated people to take up highly educated, scientific, professional and supervisory roles. Few people went to university at all and there was greater expansion planned meaning that there was plenty of space for upward mobility without many people coming the reverse direction. People from working class backgrounds could attribute their success to the life chances offered by a grammar school education which they felt fortunate to have offered.
Selection into the grammar stream by a test at age 11 is obviously related to how well prepared a child is for the test, which research and experience shows depended on their social background. While progress builds on prior attainment, this obviously neglects potential of some children to transcend their one off performance, and narrowly describes potential in a certain type of cognition. Of course for the purposes of social selection this may be an advantage, but it hardly promotes social mobility so much as conformity to an ideal.
The changes in the structure of society mean that ‘white collar’ roles can be routine service sector jobs in call centres, and that professions are oversubscribed. While the issue of access to elite professional roles has been scrutinised for discrimination and targeted to improve diversity, there is an obvious tension that their size is limited. This ascription identifies social mobility into professional roles is much less than into other expanding areas where social selection plays a smaller part than competence.
Recent research on social mobility has shown that those in the middle classes are strongly active against downward mobility for their own children (Goldthorpe 2015). In a more stable economic structure, a lack of people moving down the social hierarchy means a lack of space for people to move up. Indeed grammar schools would likely play this role if reintroduced generally, safeguarding the social status of the middle classes rather than assisting anyone less well off.
The whole concept of social status based on an occupational hierarchy warrants some consideration: while the Great British Class Survey finds an elite at the top and a precariat at the bottom, between these two it is more complex (Savage 2015). They consider economic, social and cultural capital, identifying an established middle class group, including professionals such as doctors, but this is very much an older generation. There is also a technical middle class, a younger group who have more scientific occupations and eschew elite culture in favour of technological and emerging cultural activities.
While access to the elite may follow a familiar, if out of reach, route, middle class professional aspirations are becoming more difficult to sustain, while technocratic opportunities are much more available. Some have considered this to show a hollowing out of the middle class, but the economic and societal success of computing entrepreneurs recently, and data entrepreneurs now suggests that opportunities are different. So, social mobility might be better achieved by careers advice to show opportunities in the future, not historic economy, and facilitating access to the elite.
Another change apparent is that mobility towards the elite is not achieved by staying education beyond 16 but may require postgraduate study, e.g. clinical training, legal practice, civil service etc. Thus selecting into an academic track at age 11 makes no sense, and a system already exists for academic selection at age 18, at university entrance. Fairness in access to universities has been the subject of intense scrutiny but is mostly based on the A level grades of applicants, leaving many universities able to do little more than encourage a more diverse cohort to apply.
While our government has intentions of achieving this by creating new types of schools like studio schools and university technology colleges, they are tinkering at the edges of the problem. Apprenticeships might more logically address the issue, by allowing routes into new and emerging careers and industries, but current practice sees apprentices used for low level roles, not aspirational opportunities. As the House of Lords Select Committee reported, the route to A levels to university is still seen as the main aim, but it leaves nearly half of young people forgotten, without identifying why going to university at 18 is an end in itself.
Grammar schools were phased out because they had outlived their utility of rationing a good education, but we still have selection by social background as evidenced by research on progress for children claiming free school meals. Greater diversity among the elite would be worthwhile, but beyond that there needs to be much better understanding of the opportunities available to young people for their future, and the trajectories which will take them there.
John H Goldthorpe (2015) Sociology as a population science, Cambridge: CUP.
Select Committee on Social Mobility at the Transition from School to Work (2016) Overlooked and left behind: improving the transition from school to work for the majority of young people, HL Paper 120, London: TSO.
Mike Savage (2015) Social class in the 21st century, London: Pelican.