Scene from the Class Sketch, featured in The Frost Report, with John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett

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In: Admissions and access, Diversity & inclusion, Fair access, Opportunity, Social mobility, Uncategorized
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To promote social mobility, we need to measure it. To measure it, we need to define it. We need to identify markers of socio-economic background. To put it crudely, we need to work out what makes someone working, middle or upper class. Over the years, I’ve been directly or indirectly involved in many attempts to come up with a simple, but accurate way to define socio-economic background (SEB) for a variety of social mobility and inclusion initiatives.  Most obviously for me, this has been about university access, wider participation and career opportunities. For many years, the Office of Fair Access & Participation (now part ofRead More →

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In: Admissions and access, Careers education, information, advice & guidance, Education, Employability, Fair access, Opportunity, Social mobility, Student choice
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I don’t think I agree with the idea of university as a ‘failsafe’, although I’m still not sure I understand what you intend by the word. So I’m going to use Matt Pinkett’s line: ‘Aim for whatever you want to do, and if you don’t get it, well, at least you can go to university.’ That assumes that whatever you want to do won’t be best achieved by going to uni. Obviously, university is not the best route for everything or for everyone, but for the vast majority of the best paid and most secure jobs, it is – if not a prerequisite – at least aRead More →

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In: Admissions and access, Careers education, information, advice & guidance, Education, Fair access, Opportunity, Social mobility, Student choice, Student information
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There is plenty of research showing a significant earnings premium on average for graduates regardless of background. Probably the most comprehensive work is the paper by the IFS ‘How English domiciled graduate earnings vary with gender, institution attended, subject and socio-economic background’. The Sutton Trust has also done many excellent studies on different aspects of this question which is actually a lot more complex than it sounds.

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In: Fair access, Opportunity, Social mobility
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Widening participation: Who gains? This is the text of a presentation I gave recently at a roundtable outlining the case for employers to get involved in the promotion of wider access to higher education. Why should employers care about widening participation in higher education? The answer depends on how we see the role of HE in society. Among other things, it is a training ground for the workforce, many of whom work within the private sector. Even if they don’t end up as private sector employees, having a larger supply of graduates is a cultural and economic resource that drives regional, national and global prosperityRead More →