Powerpoint presentation by Peter Saunders to the Head Masters' Conference annual conference at the Europa Hotel, Belfast, 2 October 2012

1. PETER SAUNDERS
(www.petersaunders.org.uk)
Presentation to Head Masters’ Conference, Belfast, 1 October 2012
Based on Peter Saunders, Social Mobility Myths (Civitas, 2010)
and Social Mobility Delusions (Civitas, 2012)

2. Growing preoccupation with social mobility
• Cabinet Office, Getting On, Getting Ahead, 2008
social mobility has failed to improve , need to improve opportunities
Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, Unleashing Aspiration, 2009
‘birth, not worth, has become more a determinant of people’s life chances’
Britain is ‘a closed shop society’
National Equality Panel , An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK,
2010
mobility is ‘low’ and inequality hinders opportunity

3. Growing preoccupation with social mobility (cont)
Opening Doors and Breaking Barriers (Coalition’s Social Mobility Strategy,
launched by Nick Clegg, headed by Alan Milburn) 2011 , updated 2012
‘evidence on social mobility is not encouraging... Tragically, we can predict the
likely fortunes of too many children, because of the clear influence of social
background’ (Clegg)
All-party parliamentary group Interim Report, 7 Key Truths
About Social Mobility (May 2012)
‘UK mobility is low relative to other OECD countries’
‘today’s 40-somethings have less mobility than their elders’
Fair Access to Professional Career May 2012 (Alan Milburn’s 1st progress report
since appointment as government’s ‘Independent Reviewer on Social Mobility’)
‘professions close their doors to a wider social spectrum of talent instead of
opening them’

4. The 4 social mobility myths
• UK has a serious social mobility problem
• This problem is getting worse, and
opportunities for working class children are
deteriorating
• Intelligence is basically irrelevant – the problem
is social barriers to advancement
• Social mobility must be increased by (yet more)
education reform

5. Myth 1: Do we really have a mobility problem?
Dividing the population into • 2005 General Household
3 social classes: Survey:
• Professional-managerial • 32% men born to routine
• Intermediate and semi-routine class
• Routine & semi-routine parents reached
professional-managerial
class
Goldthorpe’s classic study
found: • 30% born to professional
parents were downwardly
More than half of us are in mobile
a different class than the
one we were born into

6. Myth 1: Do we really have a mobility problem?
Dividing the population 2005 General Household
into 3 social classes: Survey:
• Professional-managerial • 32% men born to routine
• Intermediate and semi-routine class
• Routine & semi-routine parents reached
professional-managerial
class
More than half of us are
in a different class than • 30% men born to
the one we were born into professional parents were
downwardly mobile

7. Myth 1: Do we really have a mobility problem?
1958 cohort (National Child
Development Study):
45% of men and 39% women
upwardly mobile by age 33
27% of men and 37% of women
downwardly mobile by 33
1970 (British Cohort Study):
42% of men and 41% women
upwardly mobile by age 30
30% of men and 35% of women
downwardly mobile by 30
John Goldthorpe and Michelle Jackson, ‘Intergenerational
class mobility in contemporary Britain’ BJS vol 58, 2007

8. Myth 1: Do we really have a mobility problem?
Even those born into the poorest
households have excellent prospects
of improving themselves... Eighty-one per cent of
British men who grew
... despite ‘mobility Tsar’ Alan Milburn’
trying to convince them that they up in families below
don’t the poverty line end up
Milburn on BBC Radio 4 Today
in adulthood with
programme (5th April 2011): incomes above the
poverty line
“We still live in a country
where, invariably, if Jo Blanden and Steve Gibbons, The
persistence of poverty across generations,
you're born poor, you die Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2006, Table
2
poor”

9. Myth 1: Do we really have a mobility problem?
Even those born into the poorest
households have excellent prospects
of improving themselves... Eighty-one per cent of
British men who grew
... despite ‘mobility Tsar’ Alan Milburn’
trying to convince them that they up in families below
don’t the poverty line end up
Milburn on BBC Radio 4 Today
in adulthood with
programme (5th April 2011): incomes above the
poverty line
“We still live in a country
where, invariably, if Jo Blanden and Steve Gibbons, The
persistence of poverty across generations,
you're born poor, you die Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2006, Table
2
poor”

10. Myth 1: Do we really have a mobility problem?
Claims that UK mobility ranks But evidence puts UK about
worse than other countries average
May 2012, Michael Gove: Breen (Social Mobility in Europe,
‘Those who are born poor are more likely to 2004) placed Britain in the
stay poor and those who inherit privilege are middle of the international
more likely to pass on privilege in England than
in any comparable country. For those of us rankings, ahead of Germany
who believe in social justice, this stratification and Denmark, but behind
and segregation are morally indefensible.’ Sweden and the USA
2011 Opening Doors report : OECD (Intergenerational
‘We are less socially mobile than other Transmission of Disadvantage
countries.’
2007) puts UK around the
middle between Sweden,
2012 Damien Hinds MP (chair, 7 Key Truths... Canada and Norway (more
report):
fluid) and Germany, Ireland,
‘There are plenty of other countries that have Italy and France (more rigid)
much more mobility than us... the UK is always
almost in the worst position.

11. Myth 1: Do we really have a mobility problem?
Claims that UK mobility ranks But evidence on occupational
worse than other countries mobility puts UK about average
May 2012, Michael Gove: Breen (Social Mobility in Europe,
‘Those who are born poor are more likely to 2004) placed Britain in the
stay poor and those who inherit privilege are middle of the international
more likely to pass on privilege in England than
in any comparable country. For those of us rankings, ahead of Germany
who believe in social justice, this stratification and Denmark, but behind
and segregation are morally indefensible.’ Sweden and the USA
2011 Opening Doors report : OECD (Intergenerational
‘We are less socially mobile than other Transmission of Disadvantage
countries.’
2007) puts UK around the
middle between Sweden,
2012 Damien Hinds MP (chair, 7 Key Truths... Canada and Norway (more
report):
fluid) and Germany, Ireland,
‘There are plenty of other countries that have Italy and France (more rigid)
much more mobility than us... the UK is always
almost in the worst position.

12. Myth 1: Do we really have a mobility problem?
Q: So why do politicians think our mobility rate is so
poor?
A: Sutton Trust research on income mobility in different
countries which puts UK behind Italy, France,
Norway, Australia, Germany, Sweden, Canada,
Finland & Denmark.
Jo Blanden, ‘How much can we learn from international comparisons of social mobility? Centre for
the Economics of Education Departmental Paper no.111, November 2009, London School of
Economics
But many problems with this research...

13. Myth 1: Do we really have a mobility problem?
• Parental incomes in many countries estimated, not known;
• One parent or both?/How old are children when measured?
Stephen Gorard, ‘A reconsideration of rates of social mobility in Britain’ British Journal of Sociology of
Education vol.29, 2008
• Rankings are misleading: Blanden admits:
‘Large standard errors on the Australian, French, British and US estimates
make it unclear how these countries should be ranked’ (p.15)
OECD warns:
‘These comparisons can be invalid because different studies use different
variable definitions, samples, estimation methods and time periods’
‘Intergenerational mobility in OECD countries’ 2010, p.9
Blanden herself accepts:
‘There is a great deal of uncertainty about comparisons made on the basis
of income mobility’ (p.37)

14. Myth 1: Do we really have a mobility problem?
Blanden claims measures of education mobility back up Sutton Trust claim
that UK performs worse than other countries – but not so...
2010 OECD mobility report ranks Britain:
• 9th out of 30 on how far children’s educational attainment is independent
of their parents’ socio-economic status;
• 2nd out of 17 on the extent to which years of schooling of parents and
children differ
• in the middle of the rankings on the probability of a child attending
university if their parents are not graduates
• 5th out of 14 on the risk of early school leaving, comparing parents and
children.
Recent UK Dept for Education review concludes:
‘Student attainment is no more closely related to socio-economic
background than on average across the OECD’ (DfE Research Report
No.206, April 2012, p.2

15. Myth 2: Has mobility really been falling?
Absolute mobility is falling as the middle class becomes
saturated.
100 years ago, ¾ were working class, ¼ middle class; today
this has almost reversed
– expansion of professions in last 100 years benefited all
strata equally... but it cannot continue
But what drives the social mobility agenda is concern with
relative mobility – the chances of working class children
relative to chances of middle class children
- slowdown in growth of middle class has no necessary
implications for relative mobility chances

16. Myth 2: Has mobility really been falling?
Politicians insist relative mobility getting worse:
• 2011 Opening Doors report: ‘social mobility for children born in Great
Britain in 1970 got slightly worse than for children born in 1958.’
• 2012 7 Truths report: ‘Today’s 40-somethings have shown less mobility
than their elders.’
Media pick up on this and exaggerate it:
“soul-sapping immobility” (New Statesman)
“sad death of opportunity in an increasingly class-bound Britain” (Daily
Mail)
Belief that things getting worse reflects Sutton Trust research...

17. Myth 2: Has mobility really been falling?
Sutton Trust looks at father 1958 (NCDS)
-son income correlations in • 35% of kids from top income
1958 and 1970 birth cohorts. quartile got to top quartile
• 17% fell to bottom quartile
Find apparent fall in fluidity in
later cohort. 1970 (BCS)
• 42% of kids from top income
Huge media and political quartile got to top quartile
attention paid to these • 11% fell to bottom quartile
findings!
‘coefficient of elasticity’ rose
from 0.21 for the 1958 cohort
to 0.29 for 1970 cohort

18. Myth 2: Has mobility really been falling?
BUT...
• No difference in class mobility between 1958 and 1970 cohorts: ‘The
pattern of fluidity is very much the same’ (Goldthorpe and Jackson, Br Jnl
Soc, 2007)
• No difference in income mobility for cohorts born in this period when look
at British Household Panel Study: ‘There are no strong changes in
intergenerational mobility across cohorts from 1950 to 1972’ (Ermisch &
Nicoletti ISER WP 2005)
• Li & Devine compare 1991 British Household Panel Survey and 2005
General Household Survey: find ‘a slight but significant increase in fluidity’
in the years Sutton Trust claims things getting worse (Sociological Research
Online vol.16, 2011)

19. Myth 2: Has mobility really been falling?
Goldthorpe thinks Sutton Trust finding due to high variance in parental
incomes in 1958 study producing artificially low correlations
‘It seems widely believed that in recent decades intergenerational
mobility has declined. This prevailing view is simply mistaken’
(Goldthorpe and Mills. Nat Instit Ec Rev 2008)
Even if the finding is valid, it is the only study reporting a mobility fall
‘This slender analysis has had more influence on public policy
debate than any academic paper of the last 20 years. The lazy
consensus which has decreed the end of social mobility is both
wrong and damaging’ (David Goodhart, Prospect, 2008)

20. Myth 3: Does class really trump ability?
Nearly all recent official reports ignore cognitive ability
This is reflected in Government’s 2012 social mobility
targets:
‘Those with parents in managerial or professional occupations are almost
twice as likely as others to end up in those occupations as adults. This is
one of the indicators that we will use to measure progress’
But how many middle class children should we
expect to end up in middle class jobs?

21. Myth 3: Does class really trump ability?
• Implicit assumption that there should STEP 1: Bright youngsters do
well at school and get top jobs
be no association between class
origin and class destination
• but this assumes equal distribution of STEP 2: They meet
talent across every class bright partners
• In a meritocracy, talented people will
be recruited to the higher classes... STEP 3: They have children of
above average ability
• ...where they can be expected to
produce more talented children
(parent-child IQ correlation = 0.5). STEP 4: Their children in
turn do well at school and
get top jobs
• Thus (unlike race) we should expect
average ability levels to vary between
children in different social classes.

22. Myth 3: Does class really trump ability?
What happens to mobility chances when we control for IQ?
(NCDS data, age 33)
High ability children rarely fail irrespective of their class of origin:
• 65% of top IQ quartile get to professional-managerial class
• Only 5% of top IQ quartile end up in semi- or unskilled manual jobs
But low ability middle class children sometimes succeed when they ‘shouldn’t’:
• 41% of middle class children in the lowest IQ quartile end up in professional-managerial class
• 21% of working class children in the lowest IQ quartile end up in professional-managerial class
So the ‘problem’ is not bright working class kids who don’t succeed,
but dull middle class kids who don’t fail enough (hence the attack
on internships, private schools, etc)

23. Myth 3: Does class really trump ability?

24. Myth 3: Does class really trump ability?
CATEGORY PROPORTION OF VARIANCE EXPLAINED = 35% of which...
Social advantages/disadvantages:
Parents class 3%
Housing conditions <1%
Independent school <1%
Parents’ behaviour and attitudes:
Aspirations for child 1%
Interest in child’s education 3%
Individual characteristics:
Academic ability 17%
Ambition and hard work 5%
Qualifications 6%
TOTAL VARIANCE EXPLAINED 35%

25. Myth 3: Does class really trump ability?
But doesn’t IQ itself reflect social advantages?
Widely reported evidence from 1970 cohort that bright
working class kids fall behind dull middle class kids by 10:
‘Social inequalities appear to dominate the apparent early positive signs of
academic ability for most of those low SES children who do well early on.’
(Feinstein, Centre for Economic Performance Paper No.146, June 2003)

26. Myth 3: Does class really trump ability?
Hugely influential ammunition in mobility agenda:
• Reproduced twice in 2011 Opening Doors... Report: ‘Gaps in
development between children from different backgrounds can be
detected even at birth and widen rapidly during the first few years
of life’
• Clegg 2011: ‘By the age of five, bright children from poorer
backgrounds have been overtaken by less bright children from
richer ones – and from this point on, the gaps tend to widen even
further.’
• Gove 2010: “In effect, rich thick kids do better than poor clever
children when they arrive at school and the situation as they go
through gets worse”

27. Myth 3: Does class really trump ability?
But Jerrim and Vignoles show the apparent cross-over of
bright lower class children and dull higher class
children is generated entirely by regression to the
mean. It is a statistical artefact
Department of Quantitative Social Science Working Paper no.11-01, April 2011, Institute of Education
Can correct for this by using different tests to:
• Assign children to high/low ability at outset
• Measure their changing ability scores over time
They do this using data from 2000 Millenium cohort
where 2 different ability tests were used...

28. Myth 3: Does class really trump ability?

29. Myth 3: Does class really trump ability?
Jerrim and Vignoles:
‘There is currently an overwhelming view amongst academics and
policymakers that highly able children from poor homes get
overtaken by their affluent (but less able) peers before the end of
primary school. Although this empirical finding is treated as a
stylised fact, the methodology used to reach this conclusion is
seriously flawed. After attempting to correct for the
aforementioned problem, we find little evidence that this is actually
the case in current data.’
This research has been completely ignored by politicians.
Smeared by left-wing media:
“Poor children's life chances face a new assault from the right” (The
Guardian)

30. Myth 4: The social mobility strategy is the wrong
answer to the wrong problem
We do have a mobility problem - with children of underclass
Millennium cohort, age 5:
• only 1/3rd of the poorest children living with both biological
parents, compared with 88% in the middle income group.
• 1 in 5 poorest kids been born to teenage mothers
• over 1/3rd had parents with no good GCSE between them
• 11 month gap between average verbal test scores of children from
low and middle income families - 40% of it due to home
environment and parental factors
Waldfogel & Washbrook, Low income and early cognitive development in the UK Sutton Trust Research Report, February
2010
Bad parenting the key issue for these children

31. Myth 4: The social mobility strategy is the wrong
answer to the wrong problem
But this is not Milburn’s priority for Social Mobility and Child Poverty
Commission.
“Milburn *says+ today in a major speech... he will make fair access
to universities his first priority” ‘Universities must do more to end
middle class bias says Alan Milburn’ The Guardian 25 January 2011
Financial penalties on universities which fail to achieve ‘fair access’
targets
But no evidence of class bias in university recruitment:
IFS finds social class differences in university enrolments
entirely explained by gaps in applicants’ prior educational
attainments (reported in ‘7 Key Truths...’)
So govt social mobility strategy will make a meritocratic system
anti-meritocratic!

32. Myth 4: The social mobility strategy is the wrong
answer to the wrong problem
But this is not Milburn’s priority for Social Mobility and Child Poverty
Commission.
“Milburn *says+ today in a major speech... he will make fair access
to universities his first priority” ‘Universities must do more to end
middle class bias says Alan Milburn’ The Guardian 25 January 2011
Financial penalties on universities which fail to achieve ‘fair access’
targets
But no evidence of class bias in university recruitment:
IFS finds social class differences in university enrolments
entirely explained by gaps in applicants’ prior educational
attainments (reported in ‘7 Key Truths...’)
So govt social mobility strategy will make a meritocratic system
anti-meritocratic!

33. Myth 4: The social mobility strategy is the wrong
answer to the wrong problem
50 years of policies designed to tap into ‘pools of wasted working class talent’
• Education Priority Areas
• End 11+ and replace grammar schools with comprehensives
• End academic streaming
• Raise school leaving age to 16 (and soon 18)
• Abolition of direct grant schools
• ‘Progressive’ teaching methods and reading schemes
• Move to an all-graduate teaching profession
• Amalgamation of universities and polytechnics
• Introduction of the core curriculum
• Doubling of schools expenditure by Blair and new build programme
• Huge expansion of higher education – 50% target for 18 year-olds
• Extension of free pre-schooling to the under-five
• Inflation of GCSE and A-level grades
• Introduction of academies
• Replacement of school catchment areas by ballots and other contrivances
• Now ‘fair access’ rules imposed on universities.
Yet throughout this period, relative social mobility rates have hardly shifted.

34. Myth 4: The social mobility strategy is the wrong
answer to the wrong problem
Why are politicians so determined to believe we
have a problem that doesn’t exist?
• Evidence very technical
• Reputations invested in the myth
• Ability differences politically embarrassing
• The national myth of a class-ridden society
• Fits with old Labour class prejudice and Tory
‘modernising’
• Disproportionate influence of Sutton Trust

35. Conclusion
UK is not a ‘closed shop society’
• More than ½ population moves between 3 classes
• Class mobility no worse in UK than elsewhere
• Comparative income mobility data unreliable; education data look quite favourable
Social mobility is not declining
• Fluidity (relative rates) rose slightly 1991-2005
• No change in class mobility in 1958-1970 cohorts
• No change in income mobility in BHPS
Individual characteristics mainly determine outcomes
• Ability & hard work much more important than class origins
• Half variance in occupational outcomes explained by IQ alone
• Not true that ‘rich thick kids’ overtake poor clever ones
Attacking elite universities and independent schools is tackling the wrong problem
• Underclass parenting is the key problem
• University recruitment is wholly meritocratic

36. Conclusion
Britain is not a ‘perfect meritocracy’
• downward mobility by dull middle
class children is a bit sticky
• underclass children damaged by poor
parenting
But for most UK children, if you are bright and
work hard, you will almost certainly succeed.