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Government claims that social mobility may finally be increasing across the UK's communities may be premature, an expert has claimed. Paul Gregg, a leading academic on social mobility, said it would be ‘years before the evidence is clear'. For years, the Labour Government has accepted social mobility has stagnated since it came to power. But Cabinet Office minister, Liam Byrne, announced on 3 November ‘things look like they're starting to improve'. Mr Byrne spoke following the publication of research, entitled Getting on, getting ahead, which indicated that, after 30 years of stagnant mobility, Whitehall and local authorities might finally have kick-started improvements. According to Mr Byrne, the green shoots of revival can be seen across the education sector, where the family background of GCSE students appears to have become less directly linked to attainment. Education is proven to have a key effect on life chances. Ministers feel that central and local support programmes such as Sure Start, and child tax credits, have also injected momentum in recent years. Last week, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published research showing low-income families were now more able to work their way out of poverty. But Mr Gregg, a professor of economics at Bristol University and former Treasury adviser, warned: ‘GCSEs are only the beginning of the story of life chances and earnings.' He argued GCSE attainment could become less indicative of a pupil's life chances as results soared and employers focused increasingly on A-level and degree-level attainment in selecting people for high-paid jobs. Chris Grayling, Conservative spokesman for work and pensions, said the Government's figures indicated a ‘fractional' improvement, at best.

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WHITEHALL

Social mobility claims premature says expert

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