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.

You've got to earn less than 7k to qualify for fsm. The real life hack is temporarily quitting your job just before the kids start school, ensuring 7 years of free meals and 16 free days of holiday camp every summer (which cost everyone else about£40 a day) .

You're welcome mumsnet 🤗

And finding out your children will be able to sob story about it years later and get onto some good schemes? This shit really has no downsides

?

Yes but what did your parents do for a living when you were 14?

Being a child of a receptionist might mean they are financial disadvantaged but only if you ignore other potential sources of income. If financial disadvantaged is the question then it should be based on finance not employment.

I’m a civil servant. Working class background. Both parents were economic migrants into England and both left education at 14. Both worked manual low skilled jobs. I got loads of qualifications (education then a steady job was all!) and am now working, via a longer circuitous route, in Whitehall. I routinely get awards and recognition because I am very good at what I do. And this is desperately needed, too many people around me are making policy without any real insight into the issues facing most of the population.

Interestingly, I also taught for a while at an RG university. All students needed 4xAs to be there. But oh my goodness was there a difference between comprehensively taught vs private school taught students. The latter had the confidence but the former had the stronger natural intelligence and aptitude. The latter had been hothoused to pass exams but were inferior in many ways. I see that now played out in central government. This will hopefully get us a more diverse and frankly an improved civil service with better brighter people working in it.

Do you think narrowing down internships to people whose parents had a specific list of jobs when the candidate was 14 will encourage diversity?

Of course class isn’t subjective. Just because it hasn’t been formally defined, it doesn’t mean it’s not objectively measurable.

Class is based on measurable material conditions: Income, wealth (assets minus debts), occupation, educational attainment, access to resources (healthcare, housing, social mobility). A person earning £25k a year with no savings is working class by most economic standards, even if they identify differently.

We can't base class analysis on how people feel about their class status. It skews policy, understanding and political discourse.

I don't remember what my dad did and my mother was just my mother.

I'm just saying there's nothing stopping one just lying about what their parents did.
Same way you can just temporarily quit your job for three months before the kids start primary school and get seven years of free school lunches out of it.

You can also just lie about being mixed race, a very ambiguous term who's going to prove I'm not 10% Chinese?

Hate the game not the player

If there are really university students who have no idea what is done in an office or what the civil service does then maybe they should do some research! There is ample information available. Or maybe PSHE should teach it?

Two of them would work for people from overseas wouldn’t they?

It doesn’t matter because by occupation of the highest earner, they will still significantly gather more working class applicants, regardless of other income streams.

But that isn’t, in practise, how class is defined at all so it is now a completely meaningless term in modern society.

the idea that most graduates in the UK (earning less than 25k, no savings) is WC is not true in practise. the majorly of people who were born WC seem to stick to the moniker for their whole life even if it is clear they aren’t WC anymore (Angela Raynor is a prime example of someone who was WC but clearly isn’t anymore)

Which two ?

But how do you objectively measure it? It’s not a trick question. Are you saying that earning below £25k and no savings makes you working class but some savings and a salary of £30k makes you middle class?

Agree on your other point , I also don’t think we should base class around how people feel about other peoples class status.

Narrowing down application to 200 internships via one scheme when others exist?
Yes, it’ll encourage diversity because those 200 will be chosen to be people who wouldn’t normally go this route. It won’t reduce it as you imply because there are so many other routes, via internships and otherwise.

Good - there needs to be more social mobility.

Manual occupation of parent and being in the first generation to attend university.

No. Because it’s not just salary. Look at the list.

It’s for all internships, others don’t exist. The main criteria is based on a narrow band of occupations that your parents had when you were 14, there’s nothing remotely diverse about that .

And how will this make them less competent? Higher earner and middle class people have more social connections that could help their child secure an internship and potentially people at home who can help with writing letters and filling in forms. Surely you can see that. Do you really begrudge giving kids opportunities?

There’s no list in the quote I’m responding to.

@Looploop

Actually I think that people generally don't know what the civil service does.
Its not all Whitehall.

Do you really begrudge giving kids opportunities?

Do you really support taking opportunities away from kids based on what job their parents had when they were 14??

Nope. It’s for one 200 place internship scheme. I’ve put links to some others (some for other disadvantaged groups, some open to all) earlier on the thread.

Yes there is. This list.
Class is based on measurable material conditions: Income, wealth (assets minus debts), occupation, educational attainment, access to resources (healthcare, housing, social mobility).