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.
