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.

What makes a competent civil servant before taking up the job?

Despite not believing in social engineering I am quite sure you will have bought your child the best education you can, whether through house prices, tutors, private schools or opportunities and equipment, and will give your child as much inheritance as possible.

Its just giving advantage to the underadvantaged that you dislike in terms of 'social enginnering'.

I think this is a very positive thing for society.

I was the happy recipient of such schemes, although very rare, many years ago. My kids won't be eligible but I whole heartedly support anything that encourages social mobility.

I work in the CS. I was brought up on benefits. My DD has a completely different lifestyle. I support this. I can give my DD what she needs, other families can't. Why take away this small opportunity?

This isn't something I could get worked up about. More middle class families have had better access to internships, work experience etc for so long and still will in most cases just though friends/connections/money to support longer periods of earning low/little. This is one opportunity to redress the balance. I do wonder how they'll judge it though - lower income is mentioned initially then some specific jobs but some of those jobs, at least where I live have very decent incomes!

I hope you’re equally concerned about the fact that post-university internships in many desirable sectors e.g. publishing are unpaid and require you to be in London and thus vastly, vastly privilege middle class entrants and basically rule out anyone whose family can’t afford to pay their way into that job. I went to a Russell Group university and have a lot of privately educated friends, and as much as they are intelligent and work hard, they simply would not be in the desirable careers they now are if they had not had parents who could afford to fund them to live in London during (in some cases quite long) periods where they were earning little or nothing. The system is so stacked in favour of these people, and it’s so gross frankly that you are resentful of anyone else getting a similar unearned leg up. Take a really good hard look at our society as it is now and ask yourself if these internships are what’s unfair.

It’s called ‘widening participation’ and is needed everywhere in our government and services.
We need people who are from the backgrounds of the people they represent and I would be much happy with working class kids being given the opportunity rather than more kids of the private education system.

If you are increasing the pool, yes. But you aren't. You are increasing the pool for one group while decreasing the pool at the expense of another group of kids. A very large group of kids. How are they supposed to get civil service work experience or an internship? By osmosis?

We aren't talking about the tiny amount of private school kids. We are talking about shutting out all kids who don't have parents on the list of jobs.

They would but some have greater privilege all the time which I think you already know. Anything that evens up the playing field is good in my book.

"Privilege" is subjective according to an individual. Not your parent's job when you were 14.

I work in the CS … our SCS are all white, all went to Private School, all from money, all send thier kids to Private School, and all have very high salaries.

Despite what you might think, appointments to SCS are not as fair as you might think, with high numbers going to people that the recruiting officer went to school with / worked with / Daddy worked with etc.

This was allowed to grow, unchecked, under the last government… and it needs to stop.

Government Institutions are right to use Public Money to level up.

I work in science (not civil service but similar in many ways) and take on a variety of work experience kids / interns / trainees through a variety of schemes.

some kids come via my children's school / family friends / children of colleagues - these kids are all solidly middle class & have many advantages already

other kids come via widening participation schemes like this and haven't got any other opportunities to get this kind of experience.

both groups are equally hard working and well suited to careers in science.

so why would you cut out the access for the second group? that doesn't remove opportunities for the first group, it just adds some extra opportunities for the kids who need them.

Do you think people from a working class background won't be competent then?

I have an acquaintance like the OP.

Big house, three beautiful intelligent children, privately educated, great A levels. Each young adult has a horse and a car.

All she does is moan on social media about things like the OP and that black kids and poor kids are being offered opportunities that her kids aren't.

You have to ask what more she wants for them.

Not at all. I just don't think their prospective competence can be judged according to what their parent did when they were 14.

Omg sounds gorgeous!! I wish!!

There was a chap in the radio this morning, talking about his company and its internships. They refuse to have informal ones, no friends arranging them.
There are no personal details of applicants, not even names; they are given aptitude tests, and the best candidates get the internships.
He doesn't agree with social engineering, saying it should be a meritocracy.

It’s a good thing. Many interns work for free because they have parents who can afford to subsidise them. Charities are rife for this.

I personally think it's a very, very good idea.

I'd be very nervous about say a 'BAME only' internship that'd likely as not end up going to a hyper-privileged Indian-via-East-Africa Rishi Sunak type, but this one makes a lot of sense to me.

This is the best approach. Social engineering doesn't get the best candidates. And we need the best to sort this country out.

59% of civil servants are privately educated. So only the poorly paid and privately educated get to work in the civil service then. What happens to the increasingly squeezed middle or are they just not worthy?

Gotta love the telegraph language

'in a bid to make Whitehall more working class'

Will all civil servants be handed a flat cap, a three piece suite of tick and a holiday to Butlins too in ths endeavour?

Equality of opportunity isn't a bad thing and broadening participation is good for society imho.

We don't have those now 😂

Did you mean to be so insulting?