Social Mobility Cracked by Tom Moule

Author:Tom Moule [Moule, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800315624
Google: 2ATdzQEACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Legend Press
Published: 2021-08-03T02:54:35+00:00

CHAPTER 6

FURTHER ROLES FOR TECHNOLOGY

Early years

As things stand, our life chances are unfairly influenced by our circumstances at birth. And while the results of this initial lottery are not quite powerful enough to determine all of our successes in life, in many cases one’s starting point can provide a pretty strong indication of what’s to come.

The Education Policy Institute has shown that by the time they start school, children who are eligible for free school meals are already 4.3 months behind those from more affluent families.1 As lamentable as this is, the following finding, reported by the Department for Education, is perhaps even more unsettling:

By the age of three, more disadvantaged children are – on average – already almost a full year and a half behind their more affluent peers in their early language development.2

To make matters worse, the evidence also suggests that once gaps emerge, they often grow wider. The Education Policy Institute has shown that the aforementioned gap of 4.3 months during early years widens to 9.4 months at the end of primary school and then widens further still to 18.4 months at key stage 4 with the most disadvantaged falling 23.4 months behind at this point.3

Recalling the thought experiment from Chapter 1, spectators from behind the veil of ignorance will be able to see that this state of affairs will not do. If a person were to enter the world blindly, they would have no way of predicting what circumstances they would be born into. But as soon as they step into this world, predicting what’s to come becomes much easier. If someone is born into a less privileged socioeconomic group, there’s a strong chance their developmental opportunities in early years will be worse than those enjoyed by their more advantaged peers. Their literacy, numeracy and general development is likely to lag behind, culminating in them being less able to benefit from full-time education when they get to that age. As things stand, if you start near the bottom, there is a significant chance that’s where you’ll stay.

So what can be done to change things? Well, first of all let’s be clear that there is not going to be a tech-based miracle solution. A suboptimal early-years education system coupled with entrenched socioeconomic injustices contribute to the gaps observed in early years development. As we will explore momentarily, early years educational provision desperately needs an upgrade. Furthermore, as the Education Policy Institute observes in their report Key Drivers of the Disadvantage Gap,4 the impacts of growing up in a disadvantaged household itself hinders development. It should be obvious that poorer-quality housing, limited access to basic amenities and the stress that naturally accompanies precarious economic circumstances cannot be good for childhood development. These circumstances mean that disadvantaged families face additional challenges to supporting their children’s personal development (more on these pivotal factors in Chapter 9). Bridging the gulf entirely may therefore require sweeping reforms: there is unlikely to be a silicon bullet solution.5 That said, there are clear indications

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