{"id":5834,"date":"2025-12-22T04:03:44","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T04:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=5834"},"modified":"2025-12-22T04:03:44","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T04:03:44","slug":"starmer-lacks-coherent-social-mobility-plan-top-government-adviser-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=5834","title":{"rendered":"Starmer lacks coherent social mobility plan, top government adviser says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Sir Keir Starmer does not have a &#8220;coherent approach to social mobility&#8221;, the government&#8217;s social mobility commissioner has said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Alun Francis, a top adviser to the government, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2025\/dec\/21\/keir-starmer-lacks-coherent-social-mobility-plan-says-advisory-body-chair\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"noopener\">told the Guardian<\/a> that there was no &#8220;overarching narrative&#8221; to pull various policy strands together and called on the prime minister to set out a clearer strategy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/socialmobility.independent-commission.uk\/reports\/state-of-the-nation-2025-the-evolving-story-of-social-mobility-in-the-uk\/\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"noopener\">A report by the commission<\/a> released last week warned that &#8220;extreme regional disparities exist&#8221; in the UK, with many former industrial and mining areas worst affected.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;We have a government that talks quite a lot about social mobility, but mainly about individuals \u2013 often about [the] social mobility of themselves or their colleagues,&#8221; Francis said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;But what we don&#8217;t have is a coherent approach to social mobility as a useful concept that you can build a strategy around.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">While praising individual policies on housing and skills, he said other proposals had been &#8220;stop-start&#8221;, while almost one million young people are now outside education, work or training.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;We&#8217;ve got other policies like growth, educational improvement where we&#8217;re just not sure where we&#8217;re going,&#8221; Francis said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Without an overall strategy, he said, the government would &#8220;struggle to address some of those issues and have a clear-headed view about what we might do to improve things&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Among the conclusions of week&#8217;s report were that a child&#8217;s family background still heavily shapes their education level and future life chances in the UK. It also said there were &#8220;extreme regional disparities&#8221; within the country. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A government spokesperson called the number of young people outside education, work or training a crisis that couldn&#8217;t be ignored and said a review by Alan Milburn would help build a system that ensured every young person had an opportunity to make something of their lives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The report listed North East of England, Yorkshire and the Humber, and the West Midlands as facing &#8220;enduring disadvantages&#8221;, while former mining areas in Wales and Scotland are also &#8220;notably disadvantaged&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">However, new areas outside London with &#8220;favourable conditions for innovation and growth&#8221; include Aberdeen, Brighton, Bristol, Chester, Edinburgh, Oxfordshire, Reading and West Berkshire, the report said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">It also noted that almost half of young people aged 25 to 29 years were in professional occupations between 2022 and 2024 &#8211; up from 36% between 2014 and 2016.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">But people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds &#8220;don&#8217;t benefit as much from these opportunities as their peers&#8221;, it said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#Starmer #lacks #coherent #social #mobility #plan #top #government #adviser<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sir Keir Starmer does not have&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[242],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}