Civil Service internship. Only children of the "working class"

[Quirkswork]

If your child is coming up for 14 and interested in a career in the Civil Service and you have a job in a profession or that means you pay a lot of tax, I suggest you down tools now.

As reported in the Telegraph,

Civil Service internships will only be offered to students from lower income families in a bid to make Whitehall more working class, ministers have announced.

Only young people from “lower socio-economic backgrounds” will be able to apply to Whitehall’s internship programme, the Cabinet Office has said.

A student will be judged eligible depending on what jobs their parents did when they were 14. Students with parents who are receptionists, electricians, plumbers, butchers or van drivers would be among those eligible for the programme.

Yes, or in my case I am in a reasonably well-paid job but I am still a single parent. The dad who was around when the oldest was 14 has long since pushed off. I have been paying all costs of uni etc for my youngsters ever since. State educated BTW.

Why should my kids be discriminated against because I have done the responsible thing and gone on working and supporting them and I have refused to fall into poverty! Shouldn’t hard work pay off? At least in terms of a level playing field for applications on merit.

It’s probably more the ‘exclusive’ part that is the issue. People being excluded based on what their parents earned when they were 14?!? How easy is it to stir up resentment for people to go along with this rubbish.

The world has tuned in this toxic nonsense now anyway, I don’t think a 14 year old today will have anything to worry about because their parents are net tax payers.

If there’s a limited number of internships, whoever gets them it is at the expense of someone else.
You understand nobody is saying middle class people can’t apply for permanent jobs in the civil service? That these internships dont guarantee a job or prevent different people applying and being employed later? It’s just aimed at showing people who might not even know what the civil service does, or what it’s like to work for it, what goes on in CS offices. It raises their awareness. So yes, I guess more working class people might apply as a result but they still need to be selected and middle class kids have other privileges which make them likely to do well in a selection process.

@Browniesforbreakfast so you think supporting an initiative like this makes me a communist! That's a fascinating approach.

There's always one ....

The “lower classes” have an opportunity to apply same as everyone else. Class isn’t fixed anyway. Wealth comes and goes.

It's quite a small scheme and is basically like work experience. The Civil Service is still mostly white and middle class, I think this is a good way to show a more diverse group of people that they could have a career in the CS.

I understand why less well off kids need a helping hand (I was brought up working class, no spare money, council estate etc so I get it), but well off financially doesn’t mean a child is from a loving and supportive family. There are some terrible parents who happen to have good , well paid, well connected jobs but are awful people and awful unsupportive parents.

What an idea 😏

Taking a sabbatical just before the kids started primary school has already locked in free lunches for the whole of primary not to mention the free fun summer camps (lifesaver rn) always worth a cheeky sabbatical

Toxic identity politics nonsense. It’s just wrong.

Bit by bit, Labour seem insistent on driving anyone who’s not on universal credit out the country.

What middle class families can afford the theatre or indeed travel bar a rainy week in Cornwall????

Just like to point out that an average lorry driver earns £32K and a care home worker can earn between £22k to £30k so with a combined salary of £50-60k why would you be more deserving than anybody else on this hard earned household income?

But yes like many on this and below you would be highly unlikely to be working in the CS if not privately educated so I fail to see how this scheme will achieve equality.

Kids in families with both parents working their arses off at all hours with little time or cash left over are not the ones making the CS full of inequality
and do not deserve to be pushed down further.

It’s a ridiculous idea, achieves nothing and illustrates how little labour care or truly understand the reality of being part of the squeezed middle which is becoming increasingly more dissatisfied - for good reason!

We registered our children as mixed race other for similar reasons, it’s good to have a public sector job to fall back on.

Why on earth are you so jealous? I think it’s great they are doing this. Give someone from a working class or disadvantaged family a break, rather than a professional mum or dad ‘helping’ with the application process.

@Quirkswork data shows that working class children who go to university are significantly less likely to secure professional roles of which the civil service is one. These are young adults with equivalent qualifications to their middle/upper class peers.

on a personal level, I went to Oxbridge from a working class comp almost 40 years ago. It was very uncool to talk about your parent’s jobs but come the summer vacation my friends were agog a) that I needed to work b) that my parents couldn’t get me job. Forget internships. I couldn’t afford that. They were also agog when they found out that I didn’t know a single dr, ceo, school teacher, lecturer or any other professional person in a personal or family capacity. I only knew what I knew. I lacked insight into the scope of work. I lacked the soft skills to make rapid progress in business environments.

one of my friends is now a very senior civil servant. His Dad was a civil
servant, as was his sister and brother. Application then was by exam
then interview; these were conducted en masse in Oxbridge and possibly some other university key cities. He mentioned one day that he was registering for the exam (which everyone else seemed to know about)
so I did the same. I guess you might like the idea of an exam OP? Nice and fair? Clear metrics and merit? I had not a clue what was likely to be on the exam, no means to find out and too little wherewithal (or time with finals) to investigate. I seem to remember questions in areas I had never studied. Suffice to say I did not make the grade and my friend did. And I was ok with that. Didn’t think it was unfair or feel discriminated against. It’s only now as an adult that I see that the system was weighted against me.

so, what about my child now? She definitely wouldn’t qualify for the scheme and quite rightly. My life experience in employment is worth more to her than an internship with the civil service. I don’t know every tree but I know what the wood looks like so I can help and direct with the white collar privilege I now have. So no, I dot begrudge this scheme.

Labour really hate the hard-working law-abiding sensible people who save and want to pass something on to their kids, don’t they? Hence inheritance tax on pensions. And now this scheme. The message is clear.

Wow. There are quite a few people on this thread who are so fortunate that they do not understand why this is so necessary. We should all be so lucky. Those who oppose this probably know that if they were given the opportunities many of the working class kids would blow their own out of the water in terms of ability.

Good luck to all the youngsters who benefit from this scheme. I hope you go on to have wonderful careers and when you get to positions of relative power that you also open up opportunities for those less fortunate.

The latter child isn't allowed to hope to get on ONE PARTICULAR internship scheme.

You're acting like this one scheme is literally the only option for anyone to join the civil service.

It’s not uncommon. The company I work for only takes work experience students via social mobility charities. The rules means that my DC will never be eligible to undertake work experience at my company. As someone who came from a working class background, I find it extremely frustrating. I wanted everyone to have an equal chance but now my DC are going to have the same struggles that I had, just from the opposite angle.

👏🏼

Do you understand it’s discriminating against people based on what their parents earned when they were 14? What’s going on that people think this is a good idea??

I got a job im utterly unqualified for after claiming to be mixed race and bisexual (like to see them prove I'm not 😏) but I must say the best time for taking a sabbatical is the summer before the kids start primary school, never having to make a packed lunch or pay for a lunch is glorious

NRTFT but the issue I have with this is that both DH and I were those kids in social housing with nothing. We were both the first in our families to get to uni, the first to own our own home and we’ve both done well in spite of our start in life. We never were offered these opportunities as they didn’t exist. We now have male children at the age where they can apply for internships and because we have worked hard to move away from our backgrounds, they are penalised in a way their cousins are not as they’re not eligible. It makes me question slightly what the point was of dragging ourselves up when relatives who haven’t tried get afforded opportunities for their families we cannot access…

I think it's a good thing, my only query is that if they are looking at targeting kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, the electricians and plumbers I know all make more than many of the white collar "professionals"! Obviously not compared to high level lawyers and ceos etc but they vastly outearn the teachers or finance assistants or office managers etc.

Also, I have one DC at a private school. Some of the richest parents are those that have trades. We need to get over this obsession with class in the UK.

Define working class.

Bricklayers one of the professions quoted earn £32- 40k.

What makes a child in a family of two parents one of which earns £32-40k any more deserving than kids whose parents professions aren’t on the “working class list”.

@Looploop

Why do you assume that working class people are lazy and on benefits or mired in poverty.
I come from a very working class background. My grandfathers were brickies and merchant seamen who worked literally till they dropped. My grandmothers were cleaners in the docks. My father was a milkman, my mum worked in shops and was a dinner lady.
They all worked. I was the first person in my family to go to university and I only got there because my mum had the foresight to get me into a good school were I had friends whose dads were civil servants, doctors, lawyers etc

Ie was exposed to other possibilities - just like this scheme is meant to do
Otherwise I've no doubt I would have been pregnant and married by 18