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LANCASHIRE LEADERS By Ged Henderson
UNLOCKING OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL
Alun Francis
Alun Francis sums up his view on social mobility in one simple sentence: “Everybody should have the opportunity to improve their circumstances.”
He is on a mission to create that opportunity, both as principal of Blackpool and The Fylde College and in his role as a key government advisor on social mobility.
In that national post he is determined to change attitudes around the issue, which he believes is too narrowly focused on getting people into “elite” universities and jobs.
And in his college leadership role he is helping drive forward plans for Blackpool’s ‘Multiversity’, a multi-million pound development looking to transform the opportunities for people on the Fylde coast and help deliver a highly skilled workforce.
Alun, who arrived on the coast last summer, was brought up in another seaside town – Colwyn Bay in North Wales. His childhood was challenging, though it is something he is reticent about.
He lived on one of the town’s more deprived estates and for a time he and his family were homeless, relying on other people to put them up for a few weeks at a time.
Alun, 58, was one of three brothers and the only one to go to university. One of his siblings went on to have a career in the NHS, sadly the other became an alcoholic and died at the age of 41.
Not keen to go further into his early years, he says: “Some of my experience helps me, as everybody’s does. You shouldn’t be defined by your background, whether good or bad.
“You shouldn’t reduce people to their backgrounds, they make the best of their
circumstances. We have a lot more to learn about how people achieve the things they do.”
He adds: “It is an advantage to know about poor communities and how people there think and what their aspirations are but you need to be able to bring more than that.
“You have to be able to think what the successful areas look like, what do areas with a strong economy look like?”
Alun was appointed deputy chair of the Social Mobility Commission in 2021 and took over the main role – dubbed the ‘government’s social mobility tsar’ by the tabloids – last year.
The commission is an independent advisory non-departmental body, sponsored by the Cabinet Office’s Equality Hub. According to its
“The notion is that if you get more people from disadvantaged backgrounds to make that great leap into a professional occupation that solves the problem. It doesn’t, it solves the problem of a small number of people.”
He adds: “Everybody should have the opportunity to improve their circumstances. For some people that is not going to mean a big upward leap from the bottom 20 per cent to the top 20 per cent. It might be something more modest but equally valuable. We shouldn’t be saying one thing is the most important.”
Alun says geography and the regional disparities that exist in the UK are also an issue, among many others. “The economy, productivity, all these kinds of questions, to reduce it to the idea of just getting more people
In a modern economy we know the future
wellbeing of the country and its communities depends on having high levels of skills
website it seeks to “create a country where the circumstances of someone’s birth do not determine their outcomes in life.”
Its chair believes there needs to be a broadening in the thinking around the issue. For him, social mobility should not just be about ladders up into the elite for a few.
“Social mobility in our country has been taken over by a view that it is about getting people into elite jobs and elite universities,” he explains. “That is just one small part of the story.
into university seems extremely narrow. How do we improve the outcomes for as wide a range of people as possible?”
He says that one way is through initiatives like the Multiversity, explaining: “It is a perfect example of what I think social mobility should focus on.”
The college’s planned new £65m state-of-the- art education campus in the town centre has been described as one of the best things to happen to Blackpool for a generation.
Part of the £350m Talbot Gateway regeneration
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