There are many different ways to define and describe Social Mobility. Often when looking at social mobility businesses consider whether a candidate is a non-traditional student or comes from a non-traditional background.
Evidently, the “non-traditional” is entirely contingent upon the context of the organisation that uses it, in that the non-traditional is defined against the “traditional”. However, this will typically include things like:
- students/candidates whose parents have not attended university;
- students/candidatesfrom a poorly performing school background;
- students/candidates from a school with a relatively low-rate of progression to higher education;
- students/candidates who reside in a low-income geodemographic area;
- students/candidates who have spent a period of time in care during their upbringing;
- students/candidates with refugee / asylum-seeker status;
- students/candidates from an under-represented ethnic heritage group; and
- students/candidates from lone-parent families.
These are merely examples, but they highlight the way students can be selected for outreach and social mobility programmes and illustrate the diverse nature of “non-traditional” students/candidates. It also shows that it can be difficult to measure/collect data on social mobility and when looking at data you need to know and consider the question asked.
