Dr Lindsey Macmillan

A socially mobile country provides equal opportunities for everyone, across big cities and small towns, and regardless of whether your parents are rich or poor. This report makes use of newly linked administrative data on all state-educated pupils born between 1986 and 1988 to follow a group of sons from where they grew up, looking at their family circumstances and their educational achievement, through to the labour market.

There is substantial evidence of a significant relationship between parents’ income and sons’ earnings in the UK, and that this relationship has strengthened over time. We extend this by exploring a broader measure of net family income as an outcome.

Fifty years ago, entry to state secondary schools in England was decided on the basis of an exam taken at age 11. Those with the highest scores – around 25% of the population – could go to grammar schools (selective state funded schools), while the rest would go to secondary moderns. Children educated at these different types of school followed different curricula and took different qualifications at age 16, and staying in education beyond this point was usually only open to those who had attended grammar schools.

In this CAYT report, we track the performance of high-achieving pupils from poor backgrounds through the education system and compare their trajectories with those of their more advantaged peers.

This report looks at the reasons why the achievement gap between pupils from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds has narrowed in London and asked whether this can be replicated elsewhere.

This CAYT report examines the transitions that new graduates make as they leave university and enter the labour market.

This paper analyses the causal impact of fathers’ job loss on their children’s educational attainment and later economic outcomes.