We talk to Eloise Skinner about social mobility, education, and why every young person deserves the opportunity to decide their own future
A confession: I don’t know how to introduce Eloise Skinner. You see, on paper there’s several options: Cambridge university graduate, successful former lawyer, author, teacher, existential therapist, founder of two businesses making a difference in the education and social impact sectors. I could go on. And that’s without adding one-time member of an experimental monastic community established by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Enterprise Advisor for the Mayor of London’s education and careers strategy, and youth board member of the UK’s national social mobility charity, for good measure [we will, in the interests of time, save tarot reader and contortionist for another occasion].
In reality, the choice doesn’t matter too much. In the context of meeting Skinner to discuss social mobility in the UK, fairer access and inclusion for everyone, improving education and routes to work for young people, and social impact, they all contribute to her passion for the causes. And, rather helpfully, they’re all underpinned by a singular theme: purpose. Skinner is driven by the idea of integration, bringing all aspects of work and life together to live with intention, value, and integrity. She believes it’s fundamental in education, in finding work that’s as meaningful as it is a source of income, and in creating equality and diversity in the opportunities available to all of us. But first, that monastery.
“I saw firsthand the power of being in an environment where you’re told you can do anything and it struck me how unfair it was that so many never get that opportunity”
— Eloise Skinner
“It came about towards the end of my time in law,” Skinner says, telling me how a year of soul-searching after five practising as a successful corporate lawyer awakened her own sense of purpose and giving back. “It’s basically an experiment in applying ancient concepts around what it means to really live fully, to connect with what matters in the most deep and meaningful ways, and living to a set of principles you value and believe in, whether that’s how you help others, how you give back to the community, or even something like living sustainably. It’s extreme. Like, the most intense version of spirituality and how you live out your beliefs about the world, your place in it, and the purpose of your life.”
In principle, we suggest, it’s an idea not too dissimilar from the global citizenship ethos at the heart of sustainable development. “Certainly the tradition I trained in, it’s very much based on loving people in the same way you do yourself, giving back to the community, and thinking about and caring for others as you would for you or someone you cared about,” Skinner agrees. “In the broader sense, finding that kind of purpose is crucial to living well, discovering and accessing new opportunities in education or in work, and understanding our place in the world.”
“It’s all about breaking down barriers”
— Eloise Skinner
Empowering young people
For Skinner, much of her own sense of purpose revolves around advancing diversity, equality and social mobility. It is, in part, a product of her own life journey. “I was born on an East London council estate,” she says. “My parents were musicians, so I was exposed to a lot of music, art, and culture – my first ‘business’ enterprise was teaching piano to kids, and I loved reading, writing and, basically, arguing with people… or, as we should call it, ‘debating and advocacy’. I wasn’t really ever inspired to be a lawyer.”
Skinner went to sixth form, and later university, in Cambridge where she studied law, graduating with triple first class honours. It was, she says, an environment that cemented her thoughts on equal opportunity in education, social mobility, and equality.
“I always felt a little bit out of place,” she recalls. “I was surrounded by people who, I thought, had far higher aspirations than I did and it really opened my eyes to what was possible. I saw firsthand the power of being in an environment where you’re told you can do anything and it struck me how unfair it was that so many never get that opportunity, especially in their formative years when they’re wondering what to do as a career or how to shape their future. It helped me realise the importance of role models in education who can practically demonstrate what a job or an industry looks like, show what’s possible, and get young people to believe they’re capable of doing something if they want it.”
"It shouldn't matter what your parents or grandparents did with their lives, whether or not they went to university, what kind of career they had, or the level of income they earned"
— Eloise Skinner
While at Cambridge, Skinner worked on the university’s Access Team to broaden access to students from a wide range of backgrounds and with a diverse scope of experience. She continued to work with other charities after graduating including Young Women’s Trust, an organisation tackling economic issues facing young women in the UK who, on average, earn £5,000 less a year than young men of the same age and are more likely to be in debt or struggling in the cost-of-living crisis. Skinner donated the profits of her first book to the charity; profits from her second, The Purpose Handbook, went towards the UK national social mobility charity Career Ready, for which Skinner is a Youth Board member.
“I wanted my books to contribute something more,” she says on joining the charity, “really, to be more purposeful. I was inspired to help fix the challenges young people face including social gaps that start early and endure throughout life, hurdles in education that lead to barriers to employment, and the mental health and wellbeing impacts those issues can create. It shouldn’t matter what your parents or grandparents did with their lives, whether or not they went to university, what kind of career they had, or the level of income they earned. We should all have a fresh opportunity to create our own life story.”
Social mobility challenges
The challenges of social mobility and its impact on areas like education and employment continue to be very real, as discussed in Citizen Zero’s report Education for all. In 2023, the UK Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the Nuffield Foundation launched a sweeping review into inequality and intergenerational mobility in the UK, addressing areas including income, health, wealth, and opportunity, not just between rich and poor but by gender, ethnicity, geography, age, and education. It found that children from poor households were finding it harder to move to higher income brackets than 40 years ago, and that parental income had become a stronger predictor of the income people born from the 1970s onwards could expect by the age of 28.
According to the IFS: ‘Previous work has shown that intergenerational income mobility in England was lower for those born in 1970 than those born in 1958. Using administrative data on the most recent birth cohorts for whom earnings data are available, we find no evidence of recovery from that decline. National estimates of mobility of cohorts born in the late 1980s look very similar to those of the 1970 cohort and education inequalities continue to be the dominant mediator’.
The UK government’s Social Mobility Commission published its State of the Nation 2023: People and Places report on social mobility across the UK in September 2023. It found it ‘worrying that social mobility outcomes not only depend on who your parents are, your education, and your skills, but also where you grew up’, recognising 21% of lower working-class young people are not in employment, education, or training – a figure significantly higher than all other socio-economic groups.
Career Ready helps to empower young people, giving their talents a platform to flourish from. It works with young people, schools, and colleges who face barriers in education and employment that often means these skills go undiscovered.
“It’s such a multifaceted problem, and consists of several deep-rooted and persistent challenges,” says Skinner. “A lot of what Career Ready does is based around building people’s worldview in a way that’s different from their current perception, about shifting mindsets, and mentoring programmes – don’t underestimate the power of having someone in front of you as a young person who has been through the same challenges, is from the same background, and can show you it’s possible to succeed. There’s also practical help: things like resources, employer-led programmes, workplace experiences, and insights and information. It’s all about breaking down barriers.”
Purpose in education
As well as consultancy and mentoring work for charities, Skinner runs two businesses – One Typical Day and The Purpose Workshop – focused on education, purpose, and living a full and meaningful life. One Typical Day, which she developed during time spent training at Oxford University’s Venture Creation Programme is a content creation programme that helps students figure out their first careers and demystify the future world of work. It works with the Careers and Enterprise Company, the Mayor of London’s selected careers provider, to build a portfolio of digital resources that’s shared across a network of London schools and educational institutions.
“It’s so hard to even predict what the future careers environment looks like; how do students begin to prepare for that?,” asks Skinner. “In that context – and this is where learning and work integrate so well with purpose – we’re trying to help young people focus on a set of career values instead of a specific job, to know what they want out of the world of work, and to understand there’s flexibility and fluidity there. It goes back to changing mindsets and showing, with real examples, that people the same as many of these young people from disadvantaged backgrounds have built a career based on these kinds of values. Inspiring like that is one of the most powerful things you can do.”
The Purpose Workshop builds on many of these themes. Through an approach based on existential analysis and logotherapy – a form of psychotherapy focused on the future and our ability to endure challenges through a search for purpose – it helps people from all walks of life, not just school, navigate life. “Everyone should have these kinds of ideas and processes accessible to them,” says Skinner. “It’s something we have a tendency to shy away from – we might not always want to know the answer or be prepared to face something that can fundamentally change our lives.
"We're trying to help young people focus on a set of career values instead of a specific job"
— Eloise Skinner
“The Purpose Workshop is about finding a way to introduce many of these themes in a positive way that’s not intimidating,” she explains. “We do that in businesses, charities, and in schools that work with us to create class plans and guide personal development for students. Giving young people the space to find that sense of purpose is fundamental in education. Often we do what we know, or what’s relevant to the environment we grow up in, which is one of the challenges of social mobility. How we bring this to school depends on the age group but it’s broadly about introducing certain questions in a way that’s practical. It’s often a part of a career class, where it’s quite a natural fit into workshops and career planning, but it can be about personal development too – all of these kinds of questions are invaluable in terms of mental health and wellbeing.”
Skinner has a decade of experience in the social impact space, particularly in education and social mobility. In her view, a long-term and sustainable evolution of the education system is necessary to tackle many of the challenges young people currently face. “From the perspective of things like social mobility and purpose, there needs to be a shift to a broader, more varied and flexible approach to careers and work,” she says. “That’s even truer today than ever. We’re seeing young people go into jobs that didn’t exist five years ago so there’s a practical education piece there, but also the need to develop an understanding that it’s about designing a future that’s meaningful or which reflects who the person is and their values. Whether it’s companies, charities, businesses, or any other scheme that’s helping young people into work, we have to show them there are alternative paths, that they shouldn’t think they’re not capable, and that there are many ways to reach their goals.”
And with that, my time with Skinner is up. But not before she tells me how, in the face of climate change and the threats we collectively face around sustainability, discussions like this around purpose and its practical impacts are more important than ever. So much so in fact that she’s in the midst of a master’s degree in existential analysis. There goes our intro…