OK, so social mobility may appear on this basis to be pretty good. But what if we were to compare Britain with other countries? The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) surveyed the international evidence in 2007 and concluded that Sweden, Canada and Norway were “the more fluid countries” while the “most rigid” nations were Germany, Ireland, Italy and France. As for Britain, rather boringly, it fell in between, along with the United States. When it comes to international comparisons, we don’t need to beat ourselves up. We are run of the mill – more or less average.
What about educational mobility? A child who goes to a top private or grammar school will certainly get a better education than one who goes to a “bog standard” comprehensive in a bad part of town. But is Britain worse than other countries in this respect? Again the answer is “no”. Britain is ninth best out of 30 countries in achieving educational success for children independently of the parents’ socio-economic status according to a comprehensive OECD study in 2010.
Across advanced countries, the background of parents accounts for 14 per cent of the variation in reading scores. The figure for Britain is fractionally better at 13.8 per cent.
There is some evidence on the other side. This comes from measuring income-based social mobility. Academics have tried to calculate how far the income of children is different from that of their parents. The Sutton Trust has employed economists from the London School of Economics to make some studies and on the basis of these has concluded that Britain performs worse than most other advanced countries.
The trouble is that the data on which this is based are highly unreliable. The OECD has said “these comparisons can be invalid because different studies use different variable definitions, samples, estimation methods and time periods”. One basic problem in most countries is that it is impossible to get reliable information about what the parents of those people being studied were earning a generation ago. With such big statistical difficulties, even the author of a Sutton Trust report has said that, as a result, it is “unclear how these countries should be ranked”.
Undaunted by these cautionary words, our politicians have used these unreliable figures to assert that Britain is at the bottom end of social mobility. Not all the studies agree on incomes anyway. According to one academic, Stephen Gorard, 17 per cent of those born to the poorest quarter of families end up in the richest quarter. That is a truly remarkable figure.