Sorry, being born rich still leads to success more than working hard in school

Sweeping education reforms have done very little to change the fact that in the UK, being born well is by far the surest route to prosperity. Since the 1980s, the degree of social fluidity in Britain has plummeted with more people experiencing descent than ascent.

“Decades of educational policy have completely overlooked that younger generations of men and women now face less favorable mobility prospects than did their parents—or their grandparents despite having earned higher qualifications,” Dr. John Goldthorpe – a leading sociologist at the University of Oxford and author of the study Social Class Mobility in Modern Britain: Changing Structure, Constant Process – told VICE Impact. “That is, they are less likely to experience upward mobility and more likely to experience downward mobility,’

His work shows that investments in education at the national level have very little impact on social mobility because rich families are using their economic, cultural and social capital to ensure that their children stay ahead. According to Goldthorpe, the only factor that can increase upward mobility is not how much education individuals obtain, but rather how much they receive relative to others.
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