Blog by Sonia Blandford
In a speech at the Sutton Trust’s Social Mobility Summit 2017, the Secretary of State for Education, Justine Greening, spoke of a ‘social mobility emergency’ and the need to focus on ‘cold spot’ areas of Britain and ‘the most entrenched forms of disadvantage’. She asked, ‘Why should living in one area, growing up in one area, disadvantage you, when compared to another? It shouldn’t, but in this country it still does.’ She spoke of the need for an effort across education, businesses and communities. And she told business leaders that the country can only rise to the challenge of developing the skills and talents of our young people if Government and business work together.
As I travel around the UK with my work it is increasingly apparent to me that there are whole communities where there is little or no aspiration or hope. Bleak places where people don’t seem to have space to breathe and where children are disadvantaged before they are born.
The issue here is intergenerational and the need to break the cycle is self-evident. Families are desperate for change, desperate for a solution. They want an effective alternative way, where businesses, charities and political leaders join together to engage in new thinking and action. They need leaders with a clear moral purpose who are prepared to invest time and resources, creating authentic partnerships that can develop aspiration and hope – a sense of ‘can do’.
Social mobility involves changing the way people think, act and engage. To understand that there is an alternative way to live, that everyone can succeed. We need to act fast; we need to galvanise society to act against what is ultimately the social injustice of our time.
The business of education is clearly crucial to change. But education cannot be considered in isolation if we – as a society that believes in social justice – are going to do anything about this. It’s clear that unless we start thinking in a joined-up way, we will not be able to move forward as fast and as effectively as we need to.
What does this joined-up thinking mean? It means conserving the interdependence of housing, education, the judicial and prison systems and policies relating to school exclusions and young people not in employment, education and training (NEET) and the impact of that on family life.