New ‘class unit’ must decide what problem it’s trying to solve

Despite its slightly sinister name, the government’s decision to establish a “class unit” within the Office for Equal Opportunities to “drive forward government work to improve life chances” and to abolish the Social Mobility Commission will undoubtedly have supporters. But it is not clear who the class unit is going to help, largely because it has an unresolved problem of purpose.

So far, it has been described in terms of class; the white working class, low-income groups and the disadvantaged. This is muddled.  Those categories can only be treated as interchangeable if we assume class background is a fixed identity that is easily defined and closely aligned with income and disadvantage. It is not.

Class is very messy. It still matters in shaping identities. The Social Mobility Commission’s research found that 54 per cent of people say they are working class and 65 per cent say their family was. Yet what they mean by this varies enormously. Some define their class in terms of parents, others include grandparents. Many keep the identity even when their occupation and income suggest otherwise.

Consumption, culture and lifestyle are all influential in shaping perceptions of class. But so is social mobility. There have been huge changes in Britain’s occupational structure, particularly upwards. In 1971, 25 per cent of the male workforce were in professional jobs and 45 per cent in technical or routine occupations (working class).  Today, these figures are almost completely reversed.

Fewer people are working class and fewer come from working class backgrounds – despite what they say. Alongside this is a smaller but significant group who have experienced downward mobility.  Once they are added in, most people (two thirds) are in a different social class from their parents. And this pattern has remained remarkably stable for decades.

This raises an obvious policy question. Should interventions focus on class origins, even though many people from working-class backgrounds are progressing successfully without special assistance? Or should policy focus on those most likely to experience poor outcomes, regardless of where they started?

Low income is in some ways a simpler focus than class, and it is misleading to conflate the two. Every FE college knows there are occupations commonly perceived as working class that earn significantly more than many graduate professions. Train drivers, electricians and plumbers often earn more than primary school teachers, social workers and journalists. It would be contradictory for government to champion technical education while simultaneously implying that working-class status, low income and disadvantage are synonymous.

If ministers wish to focus on low-income households, they should just say that. There is a case for concentrating on persistent low income, which is different to being poor temporarily. The Commission is aiming to publish research which shows how “sticky” the welfare system really is. But even this is not the full story. Income alone cannot explain outcomes.

Many children from low-income families do extremely well. Chinese pupils on free school meals are an outstanding example. Outcomes between low income families differ.  Those in London generally perform better than those living elsewhere.  And it is difficult to correlate improved income with better outcomes, as the evidence from projects such as Baby’s First Years shows.

All of this points to the need for a much clearer definition of what we mean by disadvantage.  If it is not synonymous with class or income, what does it mean? And how do we remedy it?  The class unit will need to grapple with these complexities if it is to develop policies that genuinely expand opportunity.

The recent Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes illustrates the challenge. Despite its title, the report does not actually analyse “white working-class” outcomes because it struggled with definitions and data limitations.  So it used free school meal eligibility as a proxy for low income and analysed achievement gaps on this basis.

The report’s claim to be examining class rests largely on qualitative research into attitudes and experiences. From this, it concludes that the education system is not designed to serve white working-class children and families effectively.  This conclusion sheds more heat than light on the problem, and the methodology highlights the dangers of clumsy class analysis.

Participants are divided into broad A/B and CDE groups, categories commonly used in market research. This produces average differences between the groups but obscures variation within them.  It assumes that skilled, high earning “Cs” hold the same views and values as “Ds” and “Es”.  There are likely to be differences and they may be important. Not all children in CDE households perform poorly. Why do some succeed while others struggle?

The report itself offers clues. It shows that too many children across all backgrounds spend too little time reading, but the problem is most pronounced among white children in the CDE categories. Reading is crucial to cognitive development, emotional, educational and later lifetime outcomes.

Understanding why some families foster strong reading habits while others do not would give policymakers a far more practical route to improving opportunities than broad claims about the class character of the education system.