“Social mobility” is an odd beast. It seems straightforward - people having the chance to do what they want with their lives and moving seamlessly between social contexts.
But, of course, the very term itself identifies the problem - you only need to be mobile if there is a distance to travel. And that travel is often phrased as one-way - as people getting “better”.
“Social mobility” posits an ideal life phrased in terms of increased earning power or status. It pretends to have universality, even though, evidently, we can’t all be upwardly mobile. And it can facilitate the ways in which our society fails to value those who stay “at the bottom”.
In schools, it seems simpler. In schools, we just want all children to do well. In schools, if we can just get them that good grade, if we get them to that point of opportunity no matter what their background, then we’ve done our job, and the rest should be fine.
At least, that’s how it seems.
But the idea of social mobility in schools is also problematic. The most visible inequality in education is the disadvantage gap - the shockingly persistent difference between the achievement and progress of those who are in poverty and those who are not.
For three years, from 2018 to 2021, I was a member of the Social Mobility Commission - and during my tenure, the problem of how to fix this nagged away at me.
Social mobility and the pupil premium
I ended up commissioning a report, Against the Odds, which looked at schools around the country that had been successful in closing the gap and tried to extrapolate from this the best approaches to spending the pupil premium.
Unfortunately, the number of schools that had successfully closed that gap was smaller than I expected.
There were 11.
Only 11 schools had a consistent trend of a positive Progress 8 gap over three years. And of those 11, six were grammar schools with vanishingly small pupil premium numbers, three others were former grammar or independent schools, and one was investigated in 2017 for high levels of off-rolling.
There were lessons from the report: there were examples of good practice from other schools that, even if they hadn’t closed the gap, had at least narrowed it.
Background matters
But there was also a key lesson for me personally: whatever we do in a school to improve outcomes for all, it will have a differential impact according to relative levels of privilege.
When the grades of the pupil premium students rise, those of the non-pupil premium students rise by more.
And if you specifically target those on pupil premium, it will be those whose presence on that list is nominal - those with short-term disadvantage, or poor but stable and loving homes - who improve more than those who have experienced the most intransigent and deep-seated disadvantage.
Because there are many different types of pupil premium child.
If your experience of poverty involves high levels of stress, neglect and trauma for most of your life, it is simply not practical to expect this to have no impact on your GCSE results - or for that impact to be negated by some extra maths on a morning or, indeed, a knowledge-rich curriculum delivered by direct instruction.
That’s not to say it won’t help, but it will not return you to a state of undamaged grace.
Going back over familiar ground
So what did I think of the recent announcement about the new Social Mobility Commission’s focus on finding what teaching methods might help those on pupil premium?
Well, I had a familiar sense of internal conflict.
I am deeply impressed by Katharine Birbalsingh, the current chair of the commission. Her achievement at Michaela Community School is astonishing - and I was gobsmacked by its recent Progress 8. I don’t know how you could fail to be.
I’ve visited the school, and it isn’t a prison. It’s exactly what it says on the tin: a strict, high-achieving school, with happy children (as happy as teenagers normally are, at any rate).
And what it does for pupil premium students is fantastic, setting them up with outstanding grades so they have every opportunity for success in the future.
There is a line of reasoning that flows from this that says: “Look at this success - look at the social mobility here - if we do the same, we can promote social mobility elsewhere.”
But this reasoning is false.
The persistent disadvantage gap
Not only has our research already shown how diverse the pupil premium population is, and how difficult it is to extrapolate a simple “what works” from such a cohort, but even where it works at its best, gaps still exist.
For example, at Michaela there is still a gap of -0.31 between pupil premium and non-pupil premium students.
This is no criticism. It doesn’t even matter to the students - because the worst performing at the school are still doing far better than their peers elsewhere. But if we all did what Michaela does, and the impact were just as dramatic, there would still be a gap nationally.
And if the social contract in our society remains as it is - with a high penalty for those who don’t “make it”, a hoarding of opportunity, a devaluing of those doing low-status jobs - then all the educational success in the world will make no difference to the underlying inequalities we are wrestling with.
None of which means “don’t learn from high-performing schools”. When, after visiting Michaela, I returned to my own school, I put in place several things I had seen.
Just don’t expect that doing more of the same, only better, is going to change structural problems.
So, my message to my successors on the commission? Keep up the good work. You’re saying some brilliant things: in particular, the focus on the role of the home environment is spot on because that’s where we can tackle some of the root causes of inequality by supporting families and improving the social safety net.
But this particular line of enquiry? I’m always interested in finding out the best teaching techniques for the sake of all students but let’s not kid ourselves it’s going to fix social mobility.
Sammy Wright is a school leader and a former Social Mobility Commission commissioner. He tweets @samuelwright78
