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.

Not necessarily. My parents didn’t go to university, so when I started the application process I had to figure it out by myself. No guidance from them. My younger sister enjoyed a lot more opportunities than me because I was able to support her.

I’m a civil servant from a working class background and it’s glaringly obvious I’m in the minority.

Many of my colleagues have no understanding of other people’s lives but they’re making decisions all the time that hugely impact them. If we want a government that serves the whole country, that starts with representation in the workforce.

The middle class kids will be fine; their education, connections and opportunities mean they’ll always be well represented in the civil service. This is about giving working class kids a taste of what the civil service is like so they consider it as an option, something I’d didn’t do until my 30s because I didn’t think it was for “people like me”.

It’s not a gotcha. You said the civil service is made up of upper middle class, I asked you to define class in a measurable way. You can’t because it’s totally subjective as you’ve admitted, in rather a grumpy way. We’re agreeing here 😀

There have been initiatives like this for at least 20 years. When i was a new graduate there were several internships/schemes only open to specific underrepresented groups - ethnic minorities, those who were the first graduate in their family etc. I understood why. Unsurprisingly as a white middle class person I'd already benefitted from a wealth of opportunity and missing out on those internships did not prevent me developing a successful, highly paid career.

Try reading the details and you'll see that it is paid.

I really don't get the strong feeling this is generating. Despite half of Mumsnet seemingly knowing a bricklayer with a gold-plated Rolls Royce, and a duke without a pot to piss in, the stone-cold fact is that kids from lower socio-economic backgrounds are woefully underrepresented in lots of professions, and it's not due to lack of basic ability. If it's a profession like mine - commercial law - I can understand why you might not really care. But if it's something like the civil service - the people that run the country on behalf of everybody - it does seem pretty important that it is fairly representative of the people it is working for.
At present the civil service really isn't representative of the country at large, nothing like it in fact, so shitting on an attempt to do something about it just because you can't come up with a single perfect, all-embracing, incontrovertible definition of 'working class' or 'lower socio-economic background' or whatever other nomenclature people are getting bogged down in, just seems a bit petty and missing the bigger picture.

Yes. The key point here is that there is a measurable issue. Individuals from working class backgrounds are not making it into the civil service. Further, as a group, individuals from working class backgrounds do not go on to positions of high pay and influence. Looking at this, you have to ask yourself why. It’s not that they are less qualified, it’s that they lack the visibility of the whole job market, the softer skills required to obtain these jobs and definitely the networks that can ease them in. Schemes like the civil service internship being discussed address the first two of these three factors. It is right that positions of power are truly open to all and this scheme is a proportionate correction.

Well indeed they should be taking people from a range of backgrounds - which is exactly what they are not doing, by saying a certain class of person can’t apply.

I do think it’s a good thing. The civil service is not representative and I say that myself as someone from a working class background. I always got wheeled out to meet the unions as I was the only one who did t go to private school (something the unions we engaged with would raise).

And I think internships in my Department have been restricted to BME and disabled people for a good couple of years in order to try and increase diversity - so I think this is a good extension to that approach. I agree this is worthwhile even though my own son would now be excluded as I had a professional job when he was 14.

Oh I see where your verbal reasoning has failed you.

If you read back, I said Senior Civil Servants (SCS). There's a distinction.

The data is pretty conclusive (having been privy to it) that the overwhelming majority of SCS come from privileged backgrounds comparative to working class individuals, and Civil Servants generally.

Agree. I'm in a MC profession, in a MC income bracket, in many ways living a MC life, but I had a solidly WC upbringing and would never describe myself as MC. That's not inverted snobbery, I'm not claiming to still be WC either - these days I don't really feel I fit into the class system at all, tbh - but I'm definitely not MC. The class system in this country is really lacking in nuance.

I apologise, Senior civil servants. My point wasn’t around the seniority however, it was what criteria have you used to define their class

Actually, and this isn’t pedantry, it’s a real distinction, they’ve said one particular group can apply. It’s not done negatively.
And it’s on,y for this type of internships. There are many others - I posted links to info about a few. Some are for other disadvantaged groups, some are open to all.

Clearly they have an agreed set of metrics, you're well within your rights to disagree with them.

The end result is they will increase the representation for the internships for people from more deprived backgrounds, and reduced the representation of individuals from more privileged backgrounds.

I'm not particularly fussed about the semantics.

How would people map this onto candidates whose parent(s) are not from the UK ?

Or am I being odd for just querying practicalities rather then ideologies ? Surely if the implementation is impossible, the ideology is moot ?

Do you know how many places you are all getting your knickers in a twist about?

200

Yes a mere 200 places. I'm sure the middle classes will survive the deprivation of opportunity.

Who has an agreed set of metrics? I was asking you how you came to the conclusion about civil servants being upper middle class and what measurable criteria it takes to be considered upper middle class.
I want to know when I get there!

I genuinely have no idea what my dad did when I was 14 and my mum was just a mum looking after my younger sibling.

I mean are they actually going to ask for proof of what your parents did? You could say anything are they actually going to look into it?

@NaicePeachJoker

for the 4th (?) time

• parental occupation (skilled manual &below)
• FSM (received)
• first gen uni
• non-selective state school

you can agree or disagree but please stop the faux claim that there’s a lack of definition/defining is impossible.

What was it the Manics said ?

"If you tolerate this, your children will be next".

😀

Now you get it 😁

?? sorry must have missed this, what is this in response to?
Is this a definition of working class?
Your parents have semi skilled (or below ) job, earn less than £26j (to qualify for fsm) and no one in your family has been to university.

That’s a definition we can work with, I bet there’s a lot of people on this thread didn’t realise they were middle class. I don’t actually have an issue with a scheme aimed at those people to be honest.

Look, I'm in a totally different sector, but at work recently I've been quite down, because all the other people on my project group at work are two decades different in age to me, and of a different sex/background/technical education to them.

My ideas and contributions have been routinely shot down in advance of talking to the expensive and experienced consultancy brought in to fix the problem.

And the consultant thought I was bloody brilliant. I'm not the only one of value - but I DO have something individual to offer that is in part BECAUSE I don't fit the narrow definitions of "suitability" that the other project staff all do.

I've run major government contracts successfully, and it was because I dug into differences that made previous attempts fail - you can't problem solve for something as complex as a country without a detailed understanding of it's people.

So if you want an effective civil service, it needs to be diverse as a quality in itself.

If something is an advantage over another, it’s a privilege. It’s as simple as they. That’s the objective measure of it.

Those are, of course, only applicable to people whose parent(s) are from the UK.

It's clear when someone is responding to disagree rather than understand.