People with fewer social advantages benefit most from essential skills‍

The Skills Builder Partnership is made up of hundreds of organisations, and many working towards improved social mobility through skills development. 

Skills Builder Founder and CEO, Tom Ravenscroft, while working as a teacher, noticed a fundamental gap in how we support individuals to build essential skills through education and then in the rest of their lives. The organisation was founded on the belief that essential skills should be a normal part of a good education and workplace training. And that everyone has the capacity to build those skills.

But in 2023, when it comes to social mobility at work, we see some stark findings in the recent Social Mobility Employer Index report.

• Fewer than two-thirds of young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds think a satisfying job is open to everyone if they work hard enough. 
• The average employee from a disadvantaged background is paid 17% less than an employee from an advantaged background.
• Employees from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to be promoted than employees from advantaged backgrounds.
• Employees from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to be employed in low-paid, insecure jobs.

Our own skills research in 2022 revealed for the first time the “skills trap”. Starting in an education setting with few opportunities to build essential skills leads to low value placed on those skills and lower skill levels. Beyond education, these people secure lower skilled, lower paid jobs that in turn provide fewer opportunities to build essential skills and ultimately lower life satisfaction. 

Our understanding is that higher essential skill scores are associated with social mobility, as well as realising the benefits of other skills (Essential Skills Tracker 2023).

Essential skills are a platform for a skills portfolio that can change lives

Essential skills are important for everyone, but they're especially important for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

In our latest research, we saw that full-time workers in the UK broadly fit into five groups:

Enabling individuals to escape the Skills Trap

The evidence suggests then, that regardless of social advantage, without strong basic and essential skills, people will not reap the benefits of a “good” education. And for the most disadvantaged in our society, essential skills in a portfolio with basic skills are associated with social mobility and escaping the Skills Trap. Our data shows that people with fewer social advantages are more likely to benefit from developing essential skills.

We see that the relationship between skill score and income was stronger for people without a parent who attended university, when we control for factors like education, numeracy, literacy, gender, and health. This difference was statistically significant, but more research is needed to confirm it.

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For social impact organisations

We work with hundreds of organisations working to address these challenges, through delivering life changing and impactful interventions that are often targeting social mobility or improved outcomes for the individuals that they work with. 

One of our partners, Higher Education Progression Partnership (Hepp), challenges the idea that where you come from determines where you end up.  Hepp’s Multiple Intervention Programme provides students in Year 8 through to Year 10 with a series of sessions over 3 years, taking place in school and on university campus. The sessions aim to provide participants with the skills, knowledge and confidence to make informed decisions about Higher Education progression.

Sessions within the programme have been developed to provide participants with opportunities to identify, utilise, develop and reflect on key transferable skills, derived from the Skills Builder Universal Framework – Aiming High, Problem Solving, Speaking and Listening.  Through participating in activities and post-programme evaluation, learners reflect on their use and development of these skills and how they will transfer them to other areas of learning and life.

“At Hepp we are passionate advocates for Higher Education and its ability to open doors and transform lives. In our region we have many young people who have the ability to go to (and benefit from) higher education, but don’t go. If this is because they understand their options and have made an informed decision then that’s great. However if it is because they don’t know enough about higher education, don’t know anyone else who has been, or don’t think it’s for “people like them” then we need to challenge this.

Hepp works across South Yorkshire and North East Derbyshire to encourage more children, young people and adults to consider higher education opportunities; to know what higher education is and that it could be a viable option for them.”

-- Alex Bairstow (Hepp Operations Manager)

In this way, Hepp’s approach complements the data – providing people with awareness of their options opens doors, with essential skills as a prime component of how those with or without a “good” education can utilise them to find higher job and life satisfaction. 

Designing interventions so that they align with the work of educators as well as the skills that employers are looking for should help continue to drive awareness of the value of essential skills and the impact they can have in individuals’ lives. 

Providing targeted and high-quality opportunities that explicitly build essential skills, measuring progress in a standardised way, should continue to be a focus for interventions that are targeting improved life outcomes through a skills-related mechanism.

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What can you do?

At Skills Builder, our Partnership approach is supporting the next generation of workers with disadvantaged backgrounds toward a life-long journey of skill development. With over 850+ partners, we are on the right track to achieve our mission that one day, everyone builds the essential skills. 

Take a look at our Impact Directory to find programmes that have gained Impact Levels and Excellence Awards in building essential skills into their programmes, provision, and businesses. 

For educators, our flagship Accelerator programme provides funded places on a year-long programme designed to deliver a complete strategy for building essential skills in any educational setting. Download our prospectus to learn more about the Accelerator programme.

What could you do to address social mobility challenges? Learn more about how we work and join the Partnership.‍