The next generation: a blueprint for increased social mobility

The Social Mobility Commission (SMC) is inviting proposals to co-design a long-term measurement framework for improving social mobility in England.

In December 2018, the Commission relaunched with a diverse set of 12 Commissioners, under the leadership of Dame Martina Milburn. The Commission rapidly got underway with work on a one-year, £2 million Research and Evidence Fund and published several pieces of analysis ranging from Adult Skills to Extra-Curricular activities. Most importantly, it published its annual State of the Nation report, monitoring the state of social mobility and laying out its recommendations for change.

While all of these actions seek to drive improvements in the short-term, the Commission now wants to set out a bold, long-term vision for permanently improving social mobility.

Social mobility covers many policy areas and is easily mistaken for other areas (for example, the conversation around intergenerational inequalities can be erroneously assumed to be social mobility). The successful supplier will keep clarity of focus on social mobility, as defined by SMC.

SMC defines social mobility as the link between a person's occupation or income and the occupation or income of their parents. Where there is a strong link, there is a lower level of social mobility. Where there is a weak link, there is a higher level of social mobility.

Social mobility, by definition, takes a long time to change. As such, we want to set out a long-term vision and develop a 30-year measurement framework that includes bold targets for tackling structural issues that affect social mobility; interim measures that assess progress on a medium-term basis; and a revival of the annual social mobility index that monitors the nature of short-term shifts. 1

This contract is not a typical research procurement. We are interested in suppliers with deep expertise of social mobility to work in an embedded way with the SMC Secretariat and Commission. Strong facilitation skills will be needed to engage with other experts as well as creativity in developing the measurement framework. The final products should contain a clear, unified vision of the Commission's voice but be informed by evidence, the suppliers' expertise and the wider community working on social mobility. All outputs must be written in non-technical and engaging language that is accessible to the general public.

Additional information: This opportunity will be published via the Jaggaer system. Please register at https://education.app.jaggaer.com/web/login.html to view the procurement.