The top 20 constituencies with the best social mobility in England are all in London, according to research from a leading education charity that underscores the stark regional divide in children’s life chances. In a report published on Thursday, the Sutton Trust has put together an “opportunity index” by analysing six measures of mobility. These include the share of children on free school meals who achieve passes in GCSE maths and English; who complete a degree by age 22; and who make it into the top 20% of earners by age 28.
London Dominates the Social Mobility Game
The trust finds that all of the top-scoring 20 constituencies on this index, and 42 of the top 50, are in London. The highest-ranked constituency outside the capital is Birmingham Perry Bar, in the West Midlands, in 23rd. The research shows the dramatic differences in children’s prospects, depending on where in England they happen to be born. Children receiving free school meals in the best-performing constituency, the social security minister Stephen Timms’s seat of East Ham, are a startling 30 percentage points more likely to achieve grade 5 in English and maths than their counterparts in the area at the bottom of the list, Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West, represented by Labour’s Chi Onwura.
Inequality of Opportunity Across England
As they go on through life, these same children are three times as likely to complete a degree if they came from Timms’s east London seat than they are if they were born in Onwura’s Newcastle seat. The latter is one of three of the 10 lowest-scoring constituencies in north-east England. Nick Harrison, the Sutton Trust’s chief executive, said: “This research paints a startling picture of inequality of opportunity across England. The life chances of disadvantaged young people remain strongly tied to where they grow up.”
Regional Gaps in Social Mobility
The report, which is based on data covering 10 million people over 25 years, also reveals big differences in the likelihood that children from low-income families leave the area they grew up in when they become adults. Despite the familiar narrative of young people moving to London to seek their fortune, the Sutton Trust finds that the capital is one of two regions, with the east of England, where the highest proportion of children on free school meals go on to move elsewhere, at 13%. That is more than twice the 6% in north-east England who do so. Anthony Breach, a research director at the Centre for Cities thinktank, said the Sutton Trust’s research suggested that aside from London, many English cities are not offering the economic opportunities they could.