Past, Present and FUTURE Lee Elliot Major talks to Seth Dellow By Fergus Byrne
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n Seth Dellow’s audio interview with Lee Elliot Major, the country’s first Professor of Social Mobility, Lee remembers his time as a dustman working for the council. He was earning money to get through college and recalls how he spent a lot of time dwelling on ‘societal issues’ and thinking about life. He also remembers how the people he worked with on the dust cart were ‘bright’ and ‘generous’. Despite initially finding some of them ‘quite challenging’ he worked hard and in time they became proud of the fact that this youngster was going to university, even gathering a selection of discarded items that they thought he might find useful. He says it was a tough job that at his age now he would find hard to do, but it offered valuable life lessons. ‘I learnt things like resilience, sticking at something, learning how to manage people’ he says. Today, as the country’s (and possibly the world’s) first Professor of Social Mobility, appointed by the University of Exeter, he has become a global leader in the field. His work is dedicated to improving the prospects of disadvantaged young people. He tells Seth how he feels he has been obsessed with the concept of social mobility most of his life. Despite studying for a PhD in Theoretical Physics, at heart, he says ‘I was always a secret social scientist’. His niche area is ‘how to improve the prospects of, particularly, the disadvantaged young people’. He says that ‘Britain has very low social mobility compared to many countries, and indeed, the South West has particular challenges’.
12 The Marshwood Vale Magazine December 2021 Tel. 01308 423031
