‘Not everyone wants to move to London to make their fortune’ - the Oldham college chief trying to rewrite the rulebook

Levelling up, social mobility, devolution. As British politics has been turned upside down by the EU referendum, the 2019 election and the global pandemic, the differences between different communities - and in their opportunities - have been catapulted to the top of the political agenda, returning to old themes and creating new buzzwords.

Alun Francis, principal at Oldham College, is now one of those tasked with advising the government on what to actually do. After a career in regeneration and further education that has spanned Greater Manchester, he has been handed an extra hat - deputy chair of the Social Mobility Commission.

It will be his job, alongside that of chair and high profile London headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh, to look at how people move onwards and upwards through their lives. Historically, he believes, those in charge of making policy, generally in Whitehall and Westminster, have assumed there is only one way to do it. He doesn’t agree.

“It’s not clear that everybody wants what I would describe as the Dick Whittington version of social mobility,” he argues.

“People have different views of what they want for their children and for themselves and it isn’t always to go to London and make their fortune.

“Some kids do do that and that’s great. But many people feel what they want is opportunities which allow their extended family to stay within their neighbourhood and allow the fabric of society to hold together in their community in a different way.

“And we need to recognise that and not impose a view that they ought to somehow think something different.”

In other words, he says, not everybody wants to leave their roots in order to get on in life. It is a view echoed in opinion polling. In December a