education can be a social mobility superpower.
Before the pandemic, pupils who attended university after being eligible for free school meals in year 11 were almost four times more likely to be in the highest 20 per cent of earners at 30-years-old than those who did not.
This rises to ten times more likely if they attended one of the four most selective universities in the UK.
Today’s context is more challenging. Watered down catch-up measures have failed to recoup lost learning, with the attainment gap growing and the damaging impact on younger pupils now becoming apparent. In 2022, 275,000 Year 6 pupils in England left primary school without basic maths and English skills – that’s 41 per cent, 50,000 more than 2019.
