The role of education and skills in driving social mobility

The papers that form part of this special issue of Fiscal Studies together make a unique contribution to our understanding of the role that education and skills may play in determining the life prospects of children from different backgrounds.

This workshop will provide an overview of the findings from all five papers that constitute the June 2012 issue of Fiscal Studies, with more detailed presentations on two of these five papers.

The socio-economic gradient in teenagers’ literacy skills: how does England compare to other countries?
John Jerrim, Institute of Education

Previous studies have shown that the link between family background and children‘s achievement is, on average, stronger in England than in other parts of the developed world. This paper investigates how this relationship varies across the achievement distribution: in particular, it considers whether the test score gap is particularly large between the most able children from advantaged and disadvantaged homes, or between low achievers from different backgrounds. These questions are investigated using cross-national data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data. The implications for social mobility and educational policy in the UK discussed.

The distributional impact of the 2012 higher education funding reforms in England
Haroon Chowdry, Lorraine Dearden, Alissa Goodman and Wenchao Jin, Institute for Fiscal Studies

This paper provides new evidence on the financial and distributional implications of the higher education funding regime due to be introduced in universities in England in September 2012. This analysis updates IFS’s previous evidence on this issue by making use of information on the fees charged and bursaries provided to students by each institution. In particular, we consider who gains and who loses from the reforms, considering the effects on students, graduates, universities and the taxpayer, and how these effects vary for students from different backgrounds and graduates with different simulated lifetime earnings. We consider the implications of our findings for social mobility.