What role can education and skills play in "levelling up"?

The UK is one of the most unequal countries in the world, with differences in a range of outcomes and opportunities between those from different backgrounds, different areas or with different resources. Education is no exception. Pupils in England who are eligible for free school meals (FSM) – a proxy for low family income – are half as likely to gain good GCSE passes in English and maths at age 16 than other pupils (23% vs. 47%) and a third as likely to attend a high tariff higher education (HE) institution by age 19 (4% vs. 12%).

Given the strong causal links between education and a range of outcomes in adulthood (including higher wages, better health, greater civic participation), these stark differences in educational attainment suggest that, in future, we can expect limited social mobility and significant income inequality without urgent policy action to tackle these gaps.

The UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO) is driving forward research in this area, providing new insight into the determinants and consequences of differences in educational attainment, and working with policymakers, practitioners and parents to design and implement policies to address gaps across the lifecycle, from early years through the compulsory and post-compulsory education systems and into adulthood.

Inequalities emerge early and widen as children get older. Work from our early years research strand shows that more educated parents invest more in educational resources, such as toys and books and are also more likely to take-up their full entitlement to funded early education. This means that, by the time children start school, those eligible for FSM are already significantly behind their better-off peers, with only 57% reaching a ‘good’ level of development at age 5, compared to 74% of all other children. CEPEO is developing evidence on ‘what works’ to reduce inequalities in the early years, including evaluating interventions aiming to improve parental self-efficacy in the crucial first 1,000 days of life.

Our schools research strand highlights that a key reason why inequalities widen as children move through the schooling system is that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are less able to access the best schools. For example, they are far less likely to attend an academically selective (grammar) school than their more advantaged peers, even comparing those with the same levels of prior attainment. They also attend schools with higher teacher turnover, giving rise to more disrupted educational experiences which in turn contribute to widening educational inequalities. But even within the same schools, our research has shown that children from lower socio-economic backgrounds fall behind their better-off peers, even when they started with the same prior attainment.

Gaps continue to widen when compulsory schooling ends, with those from different backgrounds making different choices about whether to stay in education, what to study and where to go. Young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to go to university – which tends to have higher returns, at least on average, than many of the alternative vocational routes – largely due to their prior attainment, not any lack of aspiration. Evidence from our tertiary research strand shows that they are also more likely to ‘undermatch’ in their degree choices: that is, enrol in courses that are less selective than might be expected, given their grades. This penalises them in a graduate labour market which prizes HE institution choice highly.

And the pandemic seems to have made things worse in many cases. This is a generation-defining challenge, with potentially profound long-term effects on the life chances of young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Responding to this challenge, CEPEO (along with partners at the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies and the Sutton Trust) are leading a new major new youth cohort study – the COVID Social Mobility & Opportunities study (or ‘COSMO’ for short) – which will help us to understand the disproportionate burden of the pandemic on certain groups, providing crucial insight into the experiences of these young people as they move through life.

Given the importance of education for individuals’ career options and wider wellbeing, differences in education outcomes and choices between those from different backgrounds must play a key role in driving inequality. But does it therefore follow that inequality can be eliminated by equalising educational outcomes? Could we ‘level up’ simply by improving educational opportunities and outcomes in the most deprived areas of the country?

Work in our adulthood research strand has shown that differences in education between sons from rich and poor families explain, on average, around 80% of the gap in adult earnings between these groups. But the power of education in reducing gaps in earnings varies substantially across areas. In the most mobile areas gaps, educational performance explains virtually all of the earnings gap between sons from different backgrounds. In the least mobile areas, relative educational performance explains only two-thirds of the pay gap. Another recent study in our adulthood strand showed, similarly, that around two-thirds of the difference in average wages across areas can be explained by the characteristics of the people who live in different areas.

In both cases this suggests that addressing educational inequalities would reduce differences in wages or productivity between individuals or areas, but would not eliminate these gaps. To ‘level up’, we cannot pin all our hopes on equalising education and skills. That is why CEPEO’s work extends into adulthood, including groundbreaking work on the recruitment and development processes of leading professional firms, tackling practices that privilege already advantaged groups in accessing and progressing in these high-status jobs.

While education may not be a ‘silver bullet’ that can fully equalise opportunities across individuals or areas, improving the educational experiences of those from disadvantaged backgrounds in a joined-up way across the life-course will get us a good distance closer to a more equal society, and make a substantial difference to the lives of those individuals. That is surely a challenge worth tackling.

This piece was co-authored by Dr Gill Wyness, Professor Lindsey MacMillan, Dr Jake Anders and Dr Claire Crawford.