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 agree. I went through the grammar school system, but I didn’t pass the 11+. It is a great idea. Those that can, regardless of background, have the chance to achieve. But it only works is everyone has the same. No one at my school had a tutor or the like.

I said "someone who is very driven". That doesn't mean "from the bottom", it means someone who is very self motivated with lots of drive. The statistics you refer to are not looking at this group - they are looking at a general cohort, most of whom are not especially driven.

It is known that grammars prevent social mobility.

If you design a system where a small number of people get one single chance to get through a gate that gives much greater access to educational success, you are designing a system that unfairly disadvantages those who don't make it through.

This is simply not correct.

The research shows that it is harder for those who are self-motivated with lots of drive than it was in the 60s/70s/80s.

No, grammars entrench social privilege. They do not open things up, they are restrictive.

I grew up in a very working class environment in the 70s when things were much more difficult than they are now. My husband and I both knew that the only way we could get on was to work hard, save and have ambition.

I’m in Scotland where social class isn’t a big issue but I can and do traverse both worlds. Always making sure I stay true to my roots

In areas like Lincolnshire where property prices are low, grammar schools haven’t at all improved social mobility or quality of education. Lincolnshire has some of the worst outcomes in the whole country for graduates and generally very low wages.

@wheredidthetime
"brought up in London" will be the defining part of it.
Who you mix with is hugely affected by geography. And so is education, job opportunities and cultural offering&influences.

I've lived in London. And home counties. But where I'm at now the mobility ladder has no rungs. Starting with the fact that there is no selective schooling available and state schools are crumbling under the pressures of mass immigration, disinterested parenting and poverty.
It's shambles. To get upwards somewhere, one would have to get out first.

They did not.

Middle class people dominated grammars and subsequently university.

This fantasy that grammars were the answer is weird.

With house prices as they are whether your parents own their home & if they can help you is probably a bigger influence on whether you become a home owner vs salary. Which is ridiculous.

Harder

Yep. There are vast swathes of kids who don’t stand a hope in hell of escaping poverty in this country. From cramped, insecure homes, to poor diets, to bad schools, to lack of outdoor space, to parents whose employment is far less likely to be 9-5 and therefore around to facilitate going to school/help with homework etc…life chances have never felt more set from birth then they do now.

I agree with a poster upthread that middle and working class are largely obsolete now. The divide is those whose parents are in stable employment (often university educated, but not always) and are home owners vs those who are not. It’s definitely worse to be born into poverty in this country than anything else. But it’s not enough to have 2 working parents anymore, home ownership plays a huge role.

"Social mobility refers to how a person's socio-economic situation improves or declines relative to that of their parents or throughout their lifetime. It can be measured in terms of earnings, income, social class, and well-being dimensions such as health and education. Promoting social mobility benefits individuals, the economy, and social cohesion."

According to OECD

It's hardest it's been for 40 years - harder still for particular groups.

It is bad enough that it seems harder for children from poorer families to move up in the earnings distribution than it was 40 years ago. But this may understate the true challenges we face with respect to social mobility, which are made worse by a long period of overall earnings stagnation alongside the increased importance of wealth and growing wealth gaps between North and South. Poorer children from the North and Midlands face the combination of poorer educational outcomes, weaker local economies and relatively low levels of inheritance from their parents.

ifs.org.uk/inequality/press-release/social-mobility-continues-to-fall-and-moving-up-is-harder-if-you-grow-up-in-the-north-or-midlands/

Some grammar school kids were from working class backgrounds but there was a clear class divide between grammars and secondary moderns.

What percentage of grammar kids are you imagining were from working class backgrounds?

Totally agree.

I live in a poor area with a bright child.
I WISH we had grammars here.
Alas, that's reserved for the leafy counties. Of course.

I think it’s getting better

I work for a large accountancy firm and we have business apprenticeships where school leavers aged 18 can join

and wow - we have had the brightest kids come through who are now managers a few years in, from a lower middle class or working background, earning a good wage, not wasting it on uni and getting an accountancy qualification at an amazing very well known firm

The FUCK they are. How do you know? They've been in power for five minutes after 14 years of a total Tory shitshow.

Being bright isn’t enough. The 11+ is not an exam testing IQ. Hence why children are tutored extensively for it and bright, poor kids don’t make the cut.

Im not adverse to school selection on aptitude. But the current 11+/grammar system isn’t the answer.

As someone who attended a grammar from a very poor working class family, being surrounded by people who had tutors, fancy cars, big houses and foreign holidays who looked down on me was fairly shit. When things went missing it was always the small number of us FSM kids who had bags searched. Lincolnshire is a poor county, it has grammars, social mobility is extremely poor.

For thenation it is better to educate all kids well than give an advantage to a small proportion and a disadvantage to a larger proportion.

Lower middle class or classically ‘working class’ backgrounds are different to the vast amounts of kids born into complete poverty today. I would hazard a guess your company doesn’t see many of them.