State of the nation 2021: Social mobility and the pandemic – Launch event

Events

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On Thursday 22 July, we hosted a virtual event to launch our latest state of the nation report.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit the UK in early 2020, it prompted an unprecedented social and economic crisis which saw teachers, pupils, employers and their workforces forced to adapt to remote provision overnight. Millions of employees were furloughed or made redundant in the months that followed. The impact of the pandemic added unprecedented challenges to the UK’s already complex social mobility landscape – in many cases increasing existing inequalities or reversing progress made in key areas.

‘State of the nation 2021: Social mobility and the pandemic’ is the result of a comprehensive review of the data across a range of settings – including early years, foundation and post-16 education as well as in the labour market. The report examines the impact of government policies, economic shifts and the coronavirus pandemic on social mobility in the UK. It identifies a series of important priorities for policymakers centred around tackling child poverty and place-based inequalities, accompanied by a series of recommendations to Government on critical measures to ensure that an individual’s outcomes in life are not determined by their circumstances at birth.

For this event, SMC Co-chairs Steven Cooper and Sandra Wallace were delighted to be joined by external experts from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, The Sutton Trust, the Education Policy Institute and Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Catch up on the session above, then:

Read the report

Read our blogpost on the key findings for employers