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.

Nobody is taking anything away. Nobody is guaranteed an internship anyway.

..and what are measurement criteria in that list?

Of course it’s how class is measured in practice – whether you want to call it privilege or social economic status, these are the measurable objectives. They are measurable because when assessed they show real-life practical advantages, namely life expectancy.

I didn’t say graduates earning £25k – that’s a deliberate skew of the measure.

Bringing up individuals that have shown social mobility despite their working class origins does not mean that class is subjective.

If policy relied on how people feel about their class, you'd get rich people who "feel" poor because of high expenses or working-class origin people who "feel" middle class because of upward mobility. That kind of subjectivity makes serious analysis and policy impossible.

Angela Rayner may no longer identify as working class, but her class origin is objectively working class, based on standard measures. Her subjective shows why we need objective definitions: identity can change; structural history cannot.
Therefore, class is not subjective – though class identity can be.

All are measurable criteria.

They are guaranteed not to get one if their parents didn’t work in a list of occupations when they were 14. Do you understand?

You must be joking right? You really don't understand that the civil service is currently entirely unrepresentative of the society it seeks to serve? And that encouraging applicants to the fast stream that are working class will increase socio economic diversity? Really?

Ok, so what is the criteria of wealth to be working class or middle class?

They are taking it away because they are not letting them apply.

It would be fine to do outreach, heck it would even be ok to have a quota as long as it's reasonable, but this is not fair.

I agree nobody is guaranteed anything but if you don't or can't apply you definitely won't get one.

I disagree. I would say class is cultural and therefore subjective. There are loads of working class people on more than £25k per year. And loads of middle class on less (especially younger people). And given we are considering university students here, the vast majority of MC students will be in debt and earning less than £25k and have very similar education attainment to their WC peers.

This can be a fantastic process IF (and it's a big one) one grouping isn't more likely to pass the aptitude test purely based on their family background or other personal circumstances.

Equal isn't always fair.

Though, fair play to the CEO for thinking/actioning

What a fantastic idea. We are from a deprived area, my dd got into two uni summer schools . As a family who had seen little beyond our town (other than a few holidays) this opened her eyes to a bigger world beyond our town. It also showed her she can hold her own in new situations (that plus NCS) she ended up attending one of the unis and being the first person in our family to get a degree.

Socio-economic markers and measures are a sliding scale. That some individuals sit just above and below those markers does not mean that the measure is not objective. It simply means that some individual sit just above or below – that’s it.

Race can also be diluted to within percentages. Does that mean disadvantages due to race are not systemically objective? If so, that’s an awfully dangerous way for social analysis and policy to go.

Well quite. If I am a teacher earning 40K why is my child more privileged than if I am a train driver earning £60K Disclosure, I have no idea what the average teacher or train driver earns but suspect that the train driver earns significantly more, on average.

Also - what happens if someone who did go to university decides to be a SAHM (or D) but marries someone who didn't. Is their child "privileged"?

The whole thing is stupid. Do outreach and recruit on merit (and don't rely on internships and previous experience to prove merit).

That’s a deliberate skew of socio-economic status and you know exactly why.

OMG what are these objective measure markers?

Those sorts of schemes are great - was that Sutton Trust? A few people work at my employer who came through the Sutton Trust and of course the NCS is open to everyone.

Those are exactly the sort of schemes we SHOULD support. They do not exclude, they enrich.

This is excluding.

Plus of course, the only way you can be Upper Class is to be born into it. Having lots of money, any particular educational attainment, etc does not make you Upper Class. And loss of money does not stop you being Upper Class; it would take at least a new generation to do that.

I don't have a problem with this. I'm from a working class background and my husband is from an immigrant/working class background but our children aren't, they are very much middle class and have many advantages due to this. If they can't succeed given this background then that would be a them problem as opposed to a situational problem, I have zero issue with less advantaged kids being given a leg up. Social mobility is good for all of us.

Yes it’s stupid. Another example of Labour’s ideology before practicality. I suspect the supporters are the usual support Labour no matter what.

So you are now saying we can’t rely on income?

For those who genuinely want to understand why certain proxy measures can be used as markers of disadvantage, the Sutton Trust has done lots of research.

As with any population level set of measures, there will be outliers. But then, schemes like these internships are aimed at population level change, so fair enough in my opinion.

If you just want to moan that your privileged child doesn't get a chance at another benefit, feel free to ignore the evidence and crack on.

And if you can bothered to game the system by taking a sabbatical at the crucial moment, I feel a bit sorry for you.

Edited for typo

I would rather we had civil servants with integrity than ones who game the system.

Apparently you can identify someone’s class objectively, it’s called ‘just knowing’.

Income is one factor, social connections and cultural capital are others.

It was yes. Having that time away from home , school, her friends and meeting new people from different walks of life, seeing beyond what she knows, it gave her such a confidence boost. She’s mid twenties now, she went to uni, then did a gap year travelling the world and now she lives about an hour from us and has a great job she loves. She’s done amazing.