‘Unfair education system’ is a barrier to social mobility, report warns

Britain’s ‘unfair education system’ is acting as a barrier to social mobility, according to a new report from the Social Mobility Commission.

The State of the Nation report advises that, despite a ‘welcome focus on improving attainment in schools’, the link between social demography and educational destiny has ‘not been broken’.

Figures show that just five per cent of children eligible for free school meals gain five A grades at GCSE, while a child living in one of England’s most disadvantaged areas is 27 times more likely to go to an inadequate school than a child living in one of the least disadvantaged.

The Commission has called on the government to rethink its plans for grammar schools and more academies, cautioning that there is no evidence either works to improve social mobility.

The report reads: “There is no evidence that reforming school structures, either by continuing the roll out of the academies programme or by introducing new grammar schools, by itself will provide an answer to England’s entrenched social mobility problem.

"Worse still, more selection in state schools could make the situation worse, not better.”

Instead, the report recommends a ten-year programme of social reform, which it believes should have the key objective of narrowing the attainment gap at GCSE between poorer children and their better-off classmates by two-thirds.

In order to achieve this, the Commission suggests the government should mandate all schools in the ten lowest performing local authorities to take part in area-wide programmes, as well as reform the training and distribution of teachers across the country and create new incentives – including better starting pay – to get more of the highest-quality teachers into the schools that need them most.

Additionally, it also suggests independent schools and universities should be required to provide high-quality careers advice, offer support with university applications and share their business networks with state schools.