Social Mobility Foundation

The Social Mobility Foundation aims to support young people from low-income backgrounds into the top universities and professions. Each student they work with is predicted to achieve at least ABB at A-Level, has at least 5 A grades at GCSE and is in receipt of Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA), which you receive as a sixth-form student if your household income is below a certain threshold. Over 80% of SMF’s students receive the full EMA – meaning their household income is less than £20,817, often significantly so. A further 81% of young people they work with are from an ethnic minority and over 75% have parents who did not go to university.

Why SMF exists

The students SMF works with attend state schools in 6 main cities (Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Nottingham) and find it very difficult to access the top universities and professions. They rarely have professionals within their families, nor university graduates, so they lack the network of informal advice and guidance that more privileged young people can access. The schools SMF students attend very often do not have the knowledge or expertise of what employers are looking for, and the students themselves cannot afford to undertake unpaid internships, which are an increasingly important way to gain entry to certain professions. These difficulties are compounded by the current economic climate: more students want to go to university than ever before, entry requirements are being raised, and too many of the students at schools SMF works with no longer see the point of going to university due to the combination of debt and fewer jobs available.

What they do

SMF provide such students with a holistic programme of support called the Aspiring Professionals Programme (APP). Each student is given a mentor from the profession they are interested in, who mentors them for a minimum of one year. They are given a range of workshops to improve their ability at tasks such as networking, writing a CV or making a presentation. They are placed in prestigious employers for short, work-taster internships to give them a real insight into their chosen profession; over 90% of students say they would not have got their internships without the support of the SMF. They are also given intensive support with the university application process, including tailored visits to universities, and workshops on the personal statement, interviews and aptitude tests. After having applied to university, the young people are given support to prepare for university and events to further develop their skills and help them make competitive applications for graduate jobs.

The results of their work

In the last 4 years, 53% of the SMF’s students have gone onto Russell Group universities, including Cambridge and Imperial College, the rest going to other universities including excellent non-Russell Group universities such as Durham and Queen Mary College London, which is a significant step towards them entering their chosen profession. Over 90% of respondents to the 2010 employer evaluation felt the student(s) they hosted were of the calibre they would employ after university. Despite the difficult climate, the SMF are now seeing the earliest students they worked with obtain employment with the firms they were hosted by as 17 year olds, such as Georgina, Nitish and Michael, who have all been awarded training contracts by top city law firms. Current supporters of SMF programmes – of which there are over 200 – include Accenture, Clifford Chance, Barclays, Scottish & Southern Energy and the office of the Prime Minister.

For more information, please visit their website http://www.socialmobility.org.uk/.

If your organisation is interested in providing funding, internship opportunities, mentors or workshops for the SMF, please contact Samantha Barker via samantha.barker@socialmobility.org.uk. If you are a school or college interested in finding out more about the Social Mobility Foundation and how it could benefit your students, or a university representative, please contact Mark Copestake via mark.copestake@socialmobility.org.uk