Today is Social Mobility Awareness Day, which seeks to promote conversations and celebrate commitments to positive change. Recent reports show that there are still large gaps in social mobility. Indeed, the former trend for upward mobility has been replaced with declining opportunities. As a university, we occupy an important space in social progress; both in the journey of individuals – students and staff – and using the outputs of our research for wider society.
There are many reasons why organisations should prioritise social mobility. As a higher education provider, we are required by the Office for Students to agree an access and participation plan as a condition of registration. This outlines our commitment to support students from underrepresented groups get into the University, succeed here and progress to graduate level employment or further study. We must meet our commitments to continue our registration. So, the first reason is we have to do it because we need to comply with the regulatory body.
There are also very good strategic reasons for organisations to engage with social mobility. Specifically for us, one of the core values of our strategy is egalitarianism, and we aspire for this principle to run through everything we do. That extends to ensuring equal opportunities for all, regardless of social background. If we limit our community to a narrow section of the population, then we miss out on large pools of talent which either go to competitor organisations or – much worse – get overlooked altogether, simply because of where people live, how they talk or what school they attended. For a rich, lateral organisational outlook, we need the widest possible range of views, insights and experiences. To avoid groupthink and maximise our talent pool, then, it makes business sense for us to recruit students and staff from diverse sections of society.
Aside from all of this, though, it is the right thing to do. As a university we have resources and opportunities which make a real difference to peoples’ lives and open pathways for the future benefit of individuals and society. The knowledge that we create and curate makes change in the day to day lives of people around the world. So, we prioritise social mobility because we have a responsibility to.
We know this isn’t a problem that one organisation can fix. There is a lot of excellent work going on in this area. The point of today is for organisations to showcase their contributions so that together we can maximise the impact of social mobility projects happening across the country. Through our individual efforts, expertise and will and the collective endeavour of our partnership we can turn around the declining opportunities. We can alter the life courses of so many individuals, we can ensure the health of our own organisations and we can cultivate a country where everyone has everything to play for.
Seminar invitation
Savanna Cutts, Vice-President Welfare and Community at SUSU, and Gino Graziano, Director of Widening Participation and Social Mobility at University of Southampton, will be hosting an online seminar on why social mobility is important on 23 June between 12.00 and 12.45. To book your space please email [email protected].
Gino Graziano and Savanna Cutts
Further information
Savanna Cutts writes about why social mobility is important to her, and how it motivated her to found the Social Mobility Network – a space for staff and students who identify as being working class or from a lower socio-economic group.
What is social mobility? The Social Mobility Commission explain their role and their definition of what ‘social mobility’ means.
In this first episode of the Class Ceiling podcast, hosts Daisy-Victoria Meadham and Heather Pasero sit down with Vice-Chancellor Professor Mark Smith to get his thoughts on social mobility and class.
Our Widening Participation and Social Mobility team share a video of their plans to make the future fairer through their work with students from underrepresented groups.
Director of Widening Participation and Social Mobility, Gino Graziano, writes about what makes Southampton’s approach to fair access and participation distinct in a blog for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes.
We are proud to present our Levelling Up Impact report. The report, undertaken as part of our partnership with the Purpose Coalition, highlighted the University’s exceptional commitment to its 14 Levelling Up Goals, with key strengths in at least four: Goal 2: Successful school years, Goal 4: Right advice and experiences, Goal 10: Closing the digital divide, and Goal 14: Achieve equality through diversity and inclusion. Read the report and see a video of the Purpose Coalition visit.
Professor Sally Curtis (pictured above) writes about the great work the School of Medicine are doing to widen participation:
Here at Southampton, we understand the alternative journeys of success through medical school as illustrated in this short video animation. In our medical school we take a multi-faceted and evidence-based approach to improving our learning environment for all our students. Understanding the outcomes for medical students from widening participation backgrounds and factors that may impact these, such as the need to undertake paid employment, is crucial for supporting our students. The article “Is earning detrimental to learning?” written by one of our recent graduates, Melissa Anane, will be published in this summer’s edition of The British Student Doctor Journal. Support for transition into the clinical environment through bespoke workshops has been shown to contribute to increased self-efficacy and also our innovative reverse mentoring scheme is challenging the deficit discourse in our faculty.
