Tuesday, 31 July 2007

Social mobility

The Department for Work and Pensions has just published an extensive literature review carried out by the Policy Research Institute on Factors influencing social mobility.

Alright calm down, form an orderly queue. Emerging from the detail comes the conclusion that

Trends in social mobility are remarkably resistant to policy interventions. Those in higher social classes appear to have been able to take greater advantage of the opportunities created by policy interventions and more able to use a variety of additional social advantages to maintain their relative position.

The authors go on to point to the complex effects of a range of policy measures which require more prior impact assessment. Perhaps the most useful contribution the research makes is to clarify the need for a new hierarchy of social mobility, 'based upon both labour market participation and the quality and security of that participation.'

Oh, and I don't want to seem too picky but I do wish these things were done properly... Scanning through, I found myself wondering how come 'Murphy 2006' was cited so frequently. Must be special I thought, I should know about this. So it's a shame it doesn't get mentioned in the bibliography. Scanning the bibliography briefly revealed several other mistakes, so I decided it was time to look away. Hopefully they'll take advantage of online publishing to release a corrected version, because it looks like a valuable reference source.

31 Jul 2007 17:30:08 | Mobility and change

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Playing out Adults were three times more likely to play out when they were young, than children are today. New figures released by Play England haven't made a big noise (wrong time of year, and I fear the world is tiring slightly of this thread), but they deserve reflection: 71 per cent of adults played outside in the street or area close to their homes every day when they were children, compared to only 21 per cent of children today. It reminds me of a favourite quotation from She was aye workin, which documents women's experiences in early 20th-century tenements in Glasgow and Edinburgh: You were never in anyway. When you say you lived in a room-and-kitchen, your mum and dad lived in a room-and-kitchen, but you played out in the street, summer and winter, you didn't come in till bedtime. And my own memories, if I may, are of cricket and football in the street and late kickabouts at the rec' until we couldn't see the ball any more or hunger drove us home. Before that it was 'chicken steps,' 'pom-pom one-two-three' and other street games. Lauren Lacey's lit review for NCB notes: There has been a decrease over the past thirty years in children’s access to the streets and outdoor areas near their homes. Increasingly their independent mobility is restricted by traffic and fear, which in turn causes them to spend much of their time indoors or at organised activities. The combination of an increase in vehicles on the roads, increased parental anxiety, and restrictions on children’s mobility in the form of child curfews and anti-social behaviour orders has reduced children’s outdoor play opportunities. The qualitative research reported included focus groups with young people aged between eight and 18. From which comes this scary piece of news: Ten of the participants said that they never played outside on the streets and areas near their home. That's ten out of 64 participants. And in the light of my recent note about the importance of unstructured time, this point is noteworthy: In all the groups, children and young people said that having the freedom to choose what to do, and where to spend time, particularly in contrast to time spent in school, was very important. Even the youngest children talked about having this freedom and time away from parents and adult supervision. The quantitative research points to a complex range of interconnected factors such as intolerant adults, traffic, lack of facilities etc. Two things occur to me. First, I see no mention of the increasingly stifling competitive educational context in which many children are expected to complete ridiculous amounts of homework in order to try to fulfil their parents' ambitions for them, or die, emotionally, in the attempt. That's a social problem if ever I saw one. Secondly, it's reassuring to note that in drawing attention to the combined effects of the decline in child-friendly public space, the increase in traffic, and the demonisation of children and young people, Play England don't...
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Kevin Harris

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