To think social mobility is impossible for working class /lower middle class kids?

[Cheeriosay]

And if it is possible how?! I feel the prospect of social mobility is at an all time low for teens/young adults due to the educational crisis in schools, cost of living crisis & lack of opportunity to move up in the world. This was relatively easy years ago either through education, marriage (or both).. Now it's not going to be as easy for teens & young adults who want to climb the social ladder.
I'm putting it bluntly, I'm sure some posters will be on soon to say these teens should know their place & not be getting ideas above their station but sod that!

I went to a very rough comprehensive, so bad there were 2 attempts to close it whilst I was there.
We were in sets for maths, english and science. But even within the top set for maths out of 6, only 5 children took the higher paper with the ability to get an A or A*, and none of the higher paper content was covered as the top set there was probably similar to a middle set in most school. Half the children couldn't speak much English and only about 30% for 5 A-C GCSE's.
So I wasn't massively advantaged by being in a school with 'sets', most of the time in all sets was spent on behaviour management and I sat at the back and taught myself the curriculum from textbooks. I do think the concept of sets within an all ability school is better than grammer schools, seems like best of both worlds as long as good behaviour and parental support.

More than testing ability, I would love my daughters to go to school with children with the same core values of respect kindness and hard work, but I appreciate that would be impossible to implement

I remember watching a video on you tube recently and it was about the main item splitting kids today into 'the haves' and 'the have nots' was whether the bank of mum and dad was available to them.

So those kids who got a hand up onto the property ladder and bought something quite quickly had a huge advantage over those kids whose parents (grandparents) could not help them and instead they had to start out renting.
It makes sense. Those renting will face insecurity, unwanted house moves and wasting lots of money on rent as well as battling the awful rental shortage and living in unsuitable places due to lack of supply.

By contrast those helped by mum and dad to buy a property will start off with stability and security and money not wasted on rent can be used to start funding pensions/ISA's earlier. They might be able to bypass flats or starter homes and jump straight into their family or forever home thus saving on moving costs.

Lots of people saying they would let their child stay at home to save as they couldn't help them financially and of course this helps over the poor sods who are on their own having to battle the rental maze. However if prices continue to go up then getting on immediately (due to family money) must be better than having to delay for 5 years while you save up.

People who bought in the eighties and nineties who were 'working class' and had no help could still get on the ladder quite easily even if it was a flat or a starter home. These days are gone for lots of youngsters. When I think how easy it was to buy our first home it is almost laughable. In 1991 living in Guildford, Surrey with then boyfriend we stretched to buy our first house. I remember feeling quite disheartened because with our 2 salaries our choice of houses were a 2 bed ex council house (which we did buy) or a 1 bed quarter house in a private area. I was 19 and he would have been 23 from memory. We bought the ex council house for about £55000. These tiny ex council houses are now selling for £350,000 (wish I still owned it!). Seriously though what hope would two youngsters have now of buying a house there. We had no idea how lucky we were at the time.

Also I went to uni - course paid by Govt. Got a grant as my parents were low earners so managed to survive without working during term time (was very poor tho) but could concentrate on my studies then used to work in all the holidays except easter as right before exams. So I left uni with absolutely no debt, had my accountancy degree, bought a house in Guildford Surrey. I had no idea how lucky i was to be born when i was.

Even daft things like will working class families be able to afford good dental care for their kids when there are no NHS dentists left or will they be at a disadvantage over those with perfect white, straight teeth (paid for by private dentists). Sounds daft but these small items are important in appearance and making the right impression at job interviews.

In short I agree with the OP. I was from a poor family, grew up in a rented council house and no family money at that time to help me.

Lazy people don’t migrate, its unusual to find a migrant who isn’t hard working or well educated. You can’t compare us immigrants in low incomr households with non-immigrants as the cause of poverty is completely different. We were very poor in the UK when we were children, both my parents were well educated and had skilled jobs in Pakistan, their English skills weren’t good enough to work in those areas for a long time.

Our school sets for Maths and English only. Half way through year ten they decide whether a child will be submitted for triple or double science.

Apart from that there is no setting.

Also children can move up and down sets right the way through to year 11, depending on where they are at at any one time.

I'm not sure any comprehensive educates all children together whatever their ability for all their classes. I can't see it would be manageable, especially for those subjects like maths and languages where your ability to learn one bit depends on your having learnt the bit before.

Having worked for the DWP for almost two decades, in the 'job' centre (benefits centre) - I can assure you that lazy people with no intention of working, addicts, criminals and other useless sorts, absolutely DO migrate here. Often whole sprawling great extended families of them. Although I appreciate they make up a minority of migrants.

The whole point of social mobility is that you do it WITHOUT the help of your parents!
It’s about working your way up through your own education and hard work.

@lensalon that's very interesting & I guess marriage is really one of the only viable ways to social mobility. Still you worked hard & were well educated so you attracted a like minded partner.
The Carole Middleton social mobility route wouldn't work as well these days. Most men & women nowadays expect their potential partners to be of a similar background either socially or educationally (usually both).

Sets are needed. I'm not going to get into grammar schools because I don't have a strong opinion on them either way plus I've never lived anywhere near one.
At least with sets you can move up or down if needed that's a lot easier than moving schools.
Imagine trying to teach in a large secondary with no sets you cannot teach kids who can't read and kids who can analyse and discuss shakespeare at the same time.

I don't really understand the difference between working and middle either lol so middle are supposed to be wealthier but I'm doing a typical middle class office job which pays minimum wage and there's plumbers earning more than three times as much as me ??

I concede that I'm lucky in that I sit on my ass all day so I'm less likely to injure myself than a builder

My experience is people don’t tend to move sets very often. It isn’t very dynamic. Unless someone in bottom set is acing exams then maybe but mostly the classes pretty much stay the same the whole way through.

i see what you say about teaching without sets but the fact remains the argument against grammar schools is that it creams off the clever children and then the others are left to fend for themselves. What is the difference to creaming off the clever children into different classes? I thought the point of comprehensive education was that everyone was educated together and the less academic can feed off the more academic to pull children up

But it's not fair on the more academic children to be held back waiting for the less the academic children to feed off them and be pulled up. Every child deserves to be educated to their highest potential it's not a one size fits all.

I'm not pro or anti grammar schools I'm just saying not having sets would not work at all at secondary. When I was at school the sets were re set each year I remember in year 7 I was middle set for everything but I started moving up to the set just above middle as I went through school.
There's nothing wrong with teaching children at different levels separately imo and it's a lot easier to move set than move school.

Not the case at our school. My daughters best friend was moved down a set a few months before GCSE as the top set he was in before was also doing further maths. It was felt better to drop him down a set so he could focus on the main exam than have the additional pressure of the FM paper. He got a seven, but by his own admission felt that was a stretch target and was delighted.

it does sound like you dont actually have any real experience of a comprehensive education to be honest, and have got all your knowledge from Waterloo Road.

But his children will more than likely be middle class. Around here the private schools & extracurriculars are full of tradespeoples kids as they can afford them & are investing in their children. Their families have very comfortable lifestyles with the trappings of wealth.

In my school we moved sets each year based on the end of term tests in each subject.
Sets is very different to gramners, more room for movement, more flexibility to very need if stronger in one subject than another.
I never quite get the 'pull less bright children up' arguement, as if being brainy is contagious!
The reality is often the reverse, classes often go at the pace of the lower ability children, as subjects are taught in a scaffolding approach. They can't move onto topic B until the majority of the class have a good grasp of topic A, which holds higher ability children back.
Currently my daughter in year 4 is sitting next to a child with a lower reading and maths ability than her younger sister in year 1 has. My daughter is we are told working at year 5 level equivalent. How on earth can a teacher effectively teach a class whose ability spans 5+ year groups?

You are right in the sense that it still ended up being the top set kids have the best teachers, etc, and that was a failing in the comprehensive model.

But the big difference ultimately was that your life ceased to be decided for you at the age of 11. The stigma around not getting into grammar was very real and it pigeonholed children, when the fact is that some children still haven't found their academic 'legs' at that age. Children who might still have had potential to do well academically were facing 5 years of reduced academic expectation and opportunity on the basis of their performance at the age of 11.

It was assumed if you didn't make the grade for grammar (or, worse still, were told it would be a waste of time trying for it) that you were not only academically average to below average, but (and this was the real issue) would never be much better. Your education, therefore, would be designed with the aim of preparing you for certain types of employment. It was a form of typecasting.

The abolition of the national 11+ system actually opened a lot more doors to a lot more children, because it reduced that 'funnel' effect that basing so much on capabilities at the age of 11 did. I was fortunate to miss the system by being too young. My sister-in-law had the misfortune to fail the 11+ and the impact it had on her confidence in her own abilities has been a lasting one (especially as her older sister passed).

You’re not talking about a comp scenario though. You’re talking more a secondary modern approach with those that fail the 11+ heading there.

A true comprehensive will have kids of all abilities. A good comp will have plenty of kids who chose not to take the 11+ because they had a preference for going to the comp.

Yes this. I remember in infants school being sent to borrow books( from the upper juniors ) to read in the reading corner and collecting the milk every day " while the rest of the class learned so and so"

Not sure I actually progressed much in the 2 years there

Is Tiffin and Nonsuch not in Surrey ?

Yes this. I remember in infants school being sent to borrow books( from the upper juniors ) to read in the reading corner and collecting the milk every day " while the rest of the class learned so and so"

I can relate. My parents took me out of my first primary school because the ability range was so wide I was learning v little. I seem to remember the teacher being very tied up teaching kids to read, while those of us who already could read spent a lot of time reading or playing games having finished our work early. None of this is meant to sound superior, btw - the teacher was in an impossible position with the spread of abilities and just doing what she could. The class was way too large.

The school had an awful attitude though - they bawled my mum out for having 'taught' me to read (she hadn't, I'd picked up the rudiments from TV 😄 then just built on that, apparently) - that was 'the job of the teachers' apparently. Thankfully I wasn't there long after that.

I thought the point of comprehensive education was that everyone was educated together and the less academic can feed off the more academic to pull children up.

I thought this too but all the comprehensive schools around us stream, most of them from the very beginning of year 7, based on SAT scores and their own "getting to know you" () exam.

They have to stream. Mixed ability simply unworkable. You could have children with a reading age of 5 in with those of 16. Would be a lose lose for everyone.

I'm not against it and I see why they do it. But I went to a comprehensive school in Ireland where there was no streaming for junior cycle (up to public exams at 15), and it seemed to work fine.