Social mobility requires far more than a good education | Lee Elliot Major and Stephen Machin

Evidence shows that privileged families will stop at nothing to prevent their children being overtaken

Britain is stuck. Too many of us are destined to end up in the same positions occupied by our parents – particularly if we sit on the lowest or highest rungs of life’s economic ladder. Generations growing up today face a bleak future: falling real wages, shrinking opportunities and greater income divides. The dream of just doing better, let alone climbing the social ladder, is dying.

Our privately educated elites are remarkably persistent. Today as many as 50% of leading people across a range of professions – from politics, media and law, to film, the arts, music and elite sports – attended private schools, despite comprising only 7% of the population. These startling statistics have been sustained for at least half a century. The problem is that the schools are only accessible to a minority able to afford their fees. They are a glue fixing the top of British society in place.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2QbYl97

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