Social mobility and fair access

Whilst widening participation is mentioned in the 2011 policies, social mobility and fair access are the two key motifs, with social mobility taking the lead. To compensate for the lifting of the tuition fee cap, the White Paper asked institutions opting to charge the highest fee to meet ‘tougher conditions on widening participation and fair access’ (DBIS, 2011a, p. 15). The financial reforms,

policies on access-participation-mobility. Combined, these policies were affiliated directly with the Robbins Principle on Access, as demonstrated below:

Ultimately, the best way to widen participation is to ensure there are sufficient higher education places for those qualified. Subject to expenditure constraints we endorse the principle enunciated in the Robbins report that “courses of higher education should be available for all those who are qualified by ability and attainment to pursue them and wish to do so”. The number of unsuccessful applicants has risen sharply in recent years. However, despite the funding changes, each

undergraduate place has a substantial cost for taxpayers and we need a more cost-effective sector if we are to spread the

opportunity more widely (DBIS, 2011a, p. 7).

The representation of the Robbins Principle in 2011 was set against the broader concerns for the economy (following the financial crisis). At the same time, the principle of fair access was almost presented as a rationale for driving up efficiencies; the aim being to make the available opportunities go further, in the context of less financial input from the state. Indeed, Government framed its access policies primarily around the idea of redistributing opportunity, rather than general expansion for all. Considerable emphasis was, therefore, given in the White Paper to the patterns of uneven distribution by locality and socio-economic background:

There remain very significant differences in the chances of participating in higher education depending on where you live. Currently fewer than one in five young people from the most disadvantaged areas enter higher education compared to more than one in two for the most advantaged areas. The

participation rate of disadvantaged young people at institutions requiring higher entry tariffs remained almost flat over recent years at three per cent (DBIS, 2011a, p. 55).

As the above and following excerpts illustrate, the fair access and social mobility policies in 2011 were predominantly about students living in low participation areas and/or with lower income backgrounds entering the more elite universities (rather than increasing participation in higher education at its broadest):

The most disadvantaged young people are seven times less likely than the most advantaged to attend the most selective

academic potential should have a fair route into higher

education, and the most selective institutions in particular (DBIS, 2011a, pp. 6-7).

In this way, the 2011 White Paper was consistent with the messages expressed in the earlier schools White Paper (DfE, 2010), which drew attention to patterns of under-representation amongst disadvantaged students (from low income

backgrounds) in the most prestigious universities (namely Oxford and Cambridge):

In each year around 600,000 children enter state education. Of those, the poorest 80,000 are eligible for free school meals. In the last year for which we have figures just 40 of those 80,000 made it to Oxbridge. More children from an individual public school, such as Winchester, made it to those top universities than from the entire population of young people eligible for that basic benefit. What makes this tragedy sadder still is that, far from opportunity becoming more equal, our society is becoming less socially mobile. In the year before last, the number of children eligible for free school meals who made it to Oxford or Cambridge was actually 12.5 per cent higher – at 45 (DfE, 2010, p. 6).

Set against the concern for distribution, Students at the Heart of the System was the first higher education White Paper to reference social mobility specifically, and to express it as a specific policy aspiration for higher education. Indeed, the Foreword presented the idea early on in the document that higher education must ‘foster social mobility’ (DBIS, 2011a, p. 3). Furthermore, social mobility almost acts as short hand for the policies on fair access and widening participation in 2011.

To affirm the Coalition’s interpretation of social mobility, Chapter 5 of the White Paper provides a detailed definition:

Social mobility is a measure of how possible it is for people to improve their position in society. It can be inter-generational (i.e. the extent to which people’s success in life is determined by who their parents are) or intra-generational (i.e. the extent to which individuals improve their position during their working lives, irrespective of where they started off). It can be “relative”, which refers to the comparative chances of people with

different backgrounds ending up in certain social or income groups or “absolute”, which refers to the extent to which all

people are able to do better than their parents (DBIS, 2011a, p. 54).

The White Paper went further to indicate which type of social mobility Government was concerned with:

Absolute social mobility is important. However, high levels of absolute social mobility can be driven by, for example, the growth of white-collar jobs and so can go hand in hand with a society in which background still has an unfair influence on life chances. Our focus is on relative social mobility. For any given level of skill and ambition, regardless of an individual’s

background, everyone should have a fair chance of getting the job they want or reaching a higher income bracket (DBIS, 2011a, p. 54).

The Coalition aligned itself with the idea of ‘relative’ social mobility; it wanted background to have less influence on career, income and social status outcomes.

Background is not, however, qualified here in the document and could include

familial and social background, (such as social class, parental income, education, personal circumstances, ethnic origin and locality). Perhaps, the intention of not defining background was to appeal to the widest audience possible, rather than narrowing the agenda to just one or two specific factors.

Despite the initial, broad interpretation of mobility illustrated above, the White Paper goes onto specifically emphasise access amongst ‘low-income’

backgrounds:

Higher education can be a powerful engine of social mobility, enabling able young people from low-income backgrounds to earn more than their parents and providing a route into the professions for people from non-professional backgrounds. But as we set out in our recent strategy for social mobility, Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers, there are significant barriers in the way of bright young people from the most disadvantaged

backgrounds accessing higher education. This chapter sets out how we will promote fairer access without undermining academic excellence or institutional autonomy. We expect higher education institutions to be active partners, challenged and supported by a strengthened Office for Fair Access (OFFA) (DBIS, 2011a, p. 54).

The idea of higher education as a vehicle for social mobility reinforced similar expressions evident in the earlier policy documents of the end of the New Labour and beginning of the Coalition Governments, including the Milburn reports and Social Mobility Strategy (Milburn, 2009, 2012a; Cabinet Office, 2011).

Overall, the articulations of fair access and social mobility in 2011 were relatively limited in their reference to related concepts. For instance, terms such as social

justice, meritocracy, democracy, cohesion, citizenship, and social harmony do not

feature in the document. Moreover, the idea of higher education as a collective, social good seems to have been a less important theme in 2011. Instead, the individual benefits of higher education were promoted, as demonstrated by the title of the document, which placed ‘students at the heart of the system’. Moreover, the focus on social mobility illustrated a central concern for the

individual.

The individual benefits of higher education were further highlighted by the proposed financial reforms, which would pass the cost of higher education almost entirely to the student (the individual). Along with a clear economic rationale for the new fees regime, the omission of any reference to the role of the state in financially supporting higher education added weight to the idea of higher education as a private good in 2011:

It fell to the Coalition to receive the report by the Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance (the “Browne Review”), which was established by the previous Government. We were given the report in an environment when public funding had to be reduced and we accepted the main thrust – that the beneficiaries of higher education would need to make a larger contribution towards its costs. We proposed a new system for higher education funding which gives more support to students for their living costs, ensures that no first- time undergraduate student will have to pay fees up-front and ensures graduates will only be expected to pay a portion of their salary towards the cost of their education once they are earning over £21,000. Many part-time and distance-learning students will become entitled to tuition loans to cover full tuition costs for the first time. In short, we proposed a “pay as you earn” system, with many of the best features of a graduate tax but without its defects, which ensures that people are only ever asked to contribute towards the cost of their education, once they can