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Employment Key to Social Mobility evidence BRIEFING SOCIAL MOBILITY - SKILLS AND EMPLOYMENT Employment key to social mobility Research demonstrates a negative relationship • Apprenticeships used to offer not just skill between worklessness and outcomes for acquisition but also five years of structured, children over and above what would be disciplined relationships with adults. For many expected due to other factors, such as young people who have not experienced this at material deprivation and low income. This home, the apprenticeship system offers a chance of underlines the importance of supporting psychological growth and development. However, parents to move into the labour market. In demand from potential apprentices for training addition, the high number of young people not significantly outstrips the supply of places made in education, employment or training is a huge available by employers. risk to the skill development of the current • Targeted educational opportunities for mature cohort of young people. Other research women from ethnic minority groups are needed to assist ethnic minority women into the workplace, points to the pressing need for interventions, improve workplace culture and to progress in such as apprenticeships, that improve employment. employability combined with strategies to • Developing the evidence base on ‘what works’ in improve the quality, flexibility, sustainability and terms of intervention is vital. Robust field trials of progression routes of the jobs on offer. promising interventions should become a core part of the child poverty strategy, building an evidence base of action which is proven to work, cost-effective and capable of being scaled up to the Key findings required level. • Family background characteristics are still influencing • While inducing lone mothers to work could lift who gets the UK’s top jobs. Consistent with other some children out of poverty, encouraging young evidence on social mobility, this trend appears to mothers to take up any employment might also have worsened for many of the top professions impact negatively on their children, particularly in over time. the absence of good quality child care. Supporting • The extent to which our economy will be able to employment through the provision of good quality produce more and more ‘top jobs’ needs to be childcare is a priority. considered. Avoiding future poverty may for many • Undertaking interventions to improve social people be just as much a matter of being able to mobility at the very bottom of the skill or income make a ‘good life’ from lower paid, lower status distribution may be more difficult and more employment, and to find this worthwhile. expensive than interventions to improve the • The first few years of life are not totally decisive, social mobility of those nearer the middle of and interventions aimed at promoting mobility the distribution. throughout the rest of childhood, adolescence and • Understanding how to manage money requires into working life are also important. Interventions complex skills and those with poorer levels of that change students’ decisions at key points (eg, education can find financial decisions difficult, the decision about whether to stay in full-time particularly in terms of accessing appropriate advice, education beyond age 16) rather than influence products and services. their skills directly, could still have a positive impact on social mobility. evidence briefing SOCIAL MOBILITY - SKILLS AND EMPLOYMENT Who gets the best jobs? • job guarantee, which provides a guaranteed job or training scheme for young people who have been out Some of the top professions are increasingly being filled of work or education for a set period of time. by individuals who look less different to the average in terms of ability and more different to the average in In addition, apprenticeships used to offer skills acquisition terms of family income and five years of structured, disciplined relationships with adults. For many young people who have not experienced Family background characteristics are still influencing 1 this at home, the apprenticeship system offered a chance who gets the UK’s top jobs . Evidence suggests that of psychological growth and development so policy moves those who go on to become lawyers and doctors are towards increasing the numbers of apprenticeships may have from substantially richer families than those who go on additional beneficial consequences for health and well-being. to become engineers or nurses. Consistent with other evidence on social mobility, this trend appears to have A focus on policies to improve the non-cognitive attributes 2 worsened for many of the top professions over time. of poor children may also improve mobility . There is emerging evidence that later inventions may be more For those born in 1970 compared to those born in 1958, effective if they are targeted at skills ranging from, for the gaps in family income between top professions and the example, time management to teamwork and leadership sample average has increased. However, evidence on the skills, and from self-awareness to self-control. There is clear ability levels suggests that while those who became doctors evidence that such skills are highly valued by employers. and lawyers were of higher ability than the average, this trend has decreased over time. This would suggest that there Interventions that change students’ decisions at key is a widening social gap in entry to the top professions. points (eg, the decision about whether to stay in full-time education beyond age 16), rather than their skills directly, could have a positive impact on education outcomes and Interventions needed to hence social mobility. These will be most productive where promote mobility into they also increase subsequent educational attainment. working life The fact that early policiy interventions have the potential Investment in policies which target non-cognitive to be more productive than later investments does not skills specifically should be considered for preclude the need for later investment, nor does it suggest older individuals that well designed late interventions cannot be effective. In fact, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, early While the first few years of life are important in terms investments are most productive if they are followed up of later life outcomes, they are not totally decisive. with later investments3. Interventions aimed at promoting mobility throughout the The research evidence confirms that cognitive skills – rest of childhood, adolescence and into working life have including basic skills such as literacy and numeracy – potential benefits too. are highly valued in the labour market; indeed basic skills Evidence suggests that educational performance, higher have higher economic returns in the UK than in many education and post-compulsory education labour other countries. However, it is difficult at present to attachment are all crucial to social mobility. Specific policies pinpoint effective interventions in adulthood that improve likely to play an important role in increasing mobility include: cognitive skills. • the Academy School programme which has been shown to significantly improve the educational performance of schools that contain high proportions Apprenticeships fail to of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and are attract employers situated in poor communities; Nowhere near enough employers have yet proved • the Sure Start programme, which provides high- willing, of their own accord, to be involved in quality early-years education that was previously apprenticeship provision only accessible by children from more advantaged While politicians of all parties are attracted by the idea of backgrounds; apprenticeships, their enthusiasm has not yet been shared 1 Macmillan, L. (2009) Social Mobility and the professions, CMPO 2 Blanden, J., Gregg, P., and Macmillan, L. Accounting for intergenerational income persistence: Noncognitive skills, ability and education, The Economic Journal, 117, C43-C60. C43-C60 (2007) 3 Crawford, C., Johnson, P., and Vignoles, A. Pitfalls on the path to social mobility, Observations, IFS, (April 2011); www.ifs.org.uk/ publications/5541 evidence briefing SOCIAL MOBILITY - SKILLS AND EMPLOYMENT by employers to anything like the required degree, suggest Findings suggest that policy needs to consider ethnicity researchers from the ESRC-funded Centre on Skills, issues for this type of family, especially when they are Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE)4. low-income Successive governments have proposed ever more The child poverty strategy, ‘A New Approach to Child ambitious targets for apprenticeship numbers. Indeed, Poverty: Tackling the Causes of Disadvantage and while the Coalition government has abolished the targets Transforming Families’ Lives’, makes very little reference established by the Leitch Review of Skills for 500,000 to differences between ethnic groups. However, there are apprentices in learning by 2020 in the UK, it still has substantial differences between the proportion of mothers priorities including that at least one out of every five young working in different ethnic groups5. people will be undertaking an Apprenticeship programme A ‘couple family’ with one male earner is the family model by 2020. for some groups, particularly where the mother has no or SKOPE researchers have found that demand from potential low qualifications, Pakistani and Bangladeshi families, and a apprentices for training significantly outstrips the supply
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