In June 2017, the Social Mobility Commission published a report, ‘Time for change’, assessing the impact of successive government policies to improve social mobility over a 20-year period, from 1997 to 2017. The report looks at what progress has been made through four ‘life stages’: Early Years, Schools, Young People (in training or further/higher education) and Working Lives. The analysis uses a traffic light system, awarding each area red, amber or green, depending on how successful policies have been across the two decades.
While targeted efforts and extra resources were successful in reducing child poverty and parental unemployment in the first decade, the economic recession and the subsequent austerity programmes reversed some of this progress, and levels of child poverty have increased since 2011. The gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children only recently began to shrink, and disadvantaged children are still 17.3% less likely than their peers to reach ‘school readiness’ at age 5. At current rates, it will take 40 years before the attainment gap between poor 5-year olds and their better-off peers will be closed.
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