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 come from a poor immigrant background and have had the biggest jump in social mobility amongst the people I grew up with. Grew up with parents on benefits, in an overcrowded council flat. Did well at school and went to uni, but my financial situation only changed when I met a high earner in my 20s, we fell in love and got married. Now living in a large house in central London with 2 dcs at private school. Dabbled in investing and did very well in some high risk assets (enough to cover dcs education and housing needs). Not a typical hardworking immigrant story (tbh I have never had a serious job, and became a sahm when I had the dcs). But it worked out well for me.

Many of my friends from school (in 80s/90s) were just as poor, and have ended up in respectable professions like teachers, doctors, dentists, and all own their own homes. I have ended up doing better than them financially though.

You don't buy a 290k median home while renting a median rent home.

You buy something smaller and cheaper and work your way up to it. I earn 35k and own a 350k house. I didn't buy that first, I started with a a 40K bedsit in a crappy area, which I bought with a 5k deposit that I saved while renting, for 600 quid a month, also in a crappy area. I was only earning 20k when I first started saving.

No one gave me a penny and it took me 10 years from graduating union penniless to where I am now.

These cheap crappy properties still exist, people just don't want them or don't want to move to where they are.

Well @BalletCat you have made it explicitly clear that you don’t understand why some students feel they can’t afford university. Bravo! 🙄

You buy something smaller and cheaper and work your way up to it

the ladder doesn’t really exist these days for a number of reasons

A quick look on Zoopla shows there are currently over 3000 properties for sale in England for under 50k, mostly in the Midland and northern cities. Of course it's not easy but the bottom of the ladder is still there for people who want a starting block.

The fact you can buy a property somewhere for 50k doesn’t mean the property ladder still works as it used to in the past…

Nice bit of sarcasm there. I always love these threads where people come to tell people from poor backgrounds who have done well for themselves, that poor people can't do well.

My family was penniless, I went to university. I met a lot of other poor people at university too. I work with a lot of graduates who grew up poor. Most of the people on my team were poor as children but when to university and now own their own homes. At school the careers advisor literally told us "don't worry about the fees, student finance pays it and you only pay it back if you get a good enough job to pay it back. Otherwise it's written off after 30 years. Student finance exists so that anyone smart enough to go to university can go."

Could you link your search though as I’m not seeing anything like 3000 results?

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/property/england/?price_max=50000

As I thought you didn’t exclude farms/land or caravans or auctions or retirement properties, shared ownership etc Maybe have another go at it?

Social mobility is dire in the uk right now. I'm 20 years on from university and there is no way I could have got where I am now (which is not brilliant given my potential, talent, drive and tenacity but way above National and regional average wage).

I had:

• Ok home life up to 18 (stable home, food, clean etc). Middle class but with v working class roots in northern city
• A clever mum (not using her talents but v brainy)
• Ok comprehensive education, zero inspiration or aspiration building but ok
• First in the family to go to uni (red brick), again ok to good and got a 2.1, worked, grant, had debt of about 15k on leaving
• no means (money or connections) to live in London/Manchester/Edinburgh etc after graduating.
• but was able to buy a house in northern city fairly quickly as it was cheaper than renting and deposit was about 2k (which I got from building society share sales after they all went to be banks)
• met husband young (ish) who also had a house and was from solidly middle class family so brought along some financial nouse
• benefitted x2 from 00s house prices and a canny ability to pick next house which also doubled in value

Everything after uni, I couldn't replicate in todays climate. My uni debt would be x4-x5 what it was and zero chance of buying a house or seeing those massive rises in value. It makes almost no difference what career path was taken as I'd still be locked out of home ownership until late 30s/40s. And job opportunities (especially outside London) and security have also got more precarious over the last 20 years.

My child is now in private school as our state options are shit and I'll leverage all my professional, family and friend connections to get him in a field of career interest (and I have a network who could host and introduce him). He will be fine now but, if I was born even one or two years later, his life opportunities would be severely limited

@BalletCat I really don’t mean to be offensive but I think we have different definitions of what doing well is. How many people in your circle earn 6 figures or live in 1m houses?

You’re missing the point though. Of course people who grow up with “poor” parents can do well. The point of this thread is that it is now harder than it was in the past. Using the odd anecdotal experience to say otherwise is what people have an issue with.

It is just a fact that in the vast majority of places in the country house price/rent increases have massively outstripped pay inflation. In addition, It’s much more expensive to go to Uni now when rent and living expenses are considered. There will vanishingly few students who can save a house deposit whilst at Uni now.

This idea that people can just buy 50k houses and flip them for profit is also naive. This is now generally the remit of real estate companies who make it so that such houses that have the potential for profit will be out of reach of your average young adult.

My dad harps on about how he bought his first house for 20k and flipped it for 80k after some DIY work. He ignores the fact that he was doing this in one of the best times in history for property price growth. If it were so easy, we would all be millionaires by now.

No one is taking away the hard work you and others have put in to get to where you are. But to think everyone else could have what you or I have if they just work a bit harder is narrow minded thinking.

Students living at home recieve a much smaller maintenance loan.

How do those of us who grew up in very rural counties with almost non-existent public transport get to and from university everyday? If I had stayed at home, which I couldn’t do as I was homeless the nearest university (which didn’t offer my course then, and doesn’t now) was over 1.5 hours away. The nearest university that offered my course was just over two hours away by car, much longer by public transport, it was also crap and rated very very poorly for my course.

I’ve worked since the age of 14, I find it surprising you think school children earn nothing, considering children in poverty are statistically more likely to be working under the age of 18.

I always love these threads where people come to tell people from poor backgrounds who have done well for themselves, that poor people can't do well.

My parents came to this country with nothing & did very well. Of course some do well but there is a much smaller chance that an immigrant today could do what my dad did. For one his job would now require a top degree from a top uni & you don’t see the property gains now vs the 90s.

Lots of universities have social mobility programmes with lower entrance requirements for people who qualify and lots of employers have schemes whereby the offer scholarships or other types of financial and mentoring assistance to people from certain backgrounds. So help is out there.

Not necessarily, the 11+ has questions which need a specific approach, passing is not just about how bright they are, but knowing the techniques to answer these questions in the way the examiners want them answered. Those who are aspirational will find a way to learn these techniques. That's why a big chunk of places are taken by private school children. About 5% of children go to private primaries, but they make up around 20% of grammer school students. Children are very rarely tested for entry to private primaries, these children are not naturally brighter than the state school children, but have a much higher chance of a place at grammer as they are coached in how to take the test.

Our area is very mixed socioeconomically, our primary is outstanding (not just by ofsted standards, it is amazing). The primaries in our neighbouring very affluent town are fine but don't acheive as good sats results, reading assessments etc as ours. But they get far more children into the grammers as their parents can afford tutoring much more than ours.
Tutoring can be the difference between getting in and not, it's not just about how bright they are

Completely agree. The parents being priced out of private schools will use that money saved to spend on extra sports, music, languages, trips abroad & so the gap will still continue to widen even though those kids have been forced into the state system..

There's nothing with any of those things. They're a way in. It's literally something to build some equity up and move on. No one starts with 3 bed semi.

If your definition of doing well is owning 1 million pound house or earning 6 figures then yeah, 99% of the country is doing shit. 🙄

Doing well and being a 1 percenter are two different things obviously. Wouldn't you call a big house, never worrying about money, nice holidays, good food in the kitchen, activities for the children, a savings account and no debt doing well? Isn't that what most people call doing well? If you need to be a millionaire to feel you've done well and the vast gulf between poverty and millionaire means nothing then yeah, everyone is doing shit 🙄

That sounds truely awful like it's a race to the bottom. Hope it works out for secondary for your boy🙏

Exactly, when dh and I were trying to buy, we rented a pretty grotty bedsit. We had the income to afford a nice place but knew that we had to save as much as we could to boost our deposit, so put as little as possible into renting. And bought another place which needed a lot of work, was pretty much unliveable, to the point where we lived in the garage for a few months until we got the downstairs liveable, as was only place which had safe electric, we took showers at work etc. But it had huge potential and we over doubled the price we bought it for in 3 years from buying it. House prices in general went up about 10% in this period.

It's the removal of choice that I don't agree with. Parents should have a choice in how they educate their children, Labours additional taxation of private education is taking away parental choice by putting it out of reach of families who could once afford it. There is not enough state school places as it is

It was also very much a postcode lottery. In some areas there were far fewer places available.

It's not "impossible", but it is difficult, and the odds are always going to be against it. Those who do make it are used in info wars by tories as evidence of a "level playing field". There is of course no level playing field, hence the current obsession on here with private schooling.