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.

We didn’t help them apply. The whole system is different than when we went to uni. We’d have been zero help.

It’s discrimination and our taxes are financing it. That’s a disgrace.

The country can’t actually afford all this nonsense.

It's not 'social engineering' - they're just trying to counteract the nepotism that goes on with internships.

And this does nothing to stop it or help the vast majority of the non privately educated.

Im amazed how many on here seem to think mummy and daddy get the jobs through connections for their kids

What Connections do you think 2 architect parents have for their kids in
Film and Television
Zoology
and Neuroscience

It’s ridiculous to make these huge sweeping statements.

Of course it is.

These internships are awarded through open competition. There may be arguments about parents being able to look them over etc but they are not allocated by contacts.

What mask? I've never made it a secret that I grew up in poverty. Every adult I knew until I was 16 was a variant upon van driver, mechanic, dinner lady, worked at the Post Office (if they were 'doing well for themselves' or wasn't working because they were bringing up 3-5 children. Except for the teachers or the doctors, that is - and they definitely weren't anything like me. The only person I knew from school that applied to the Civil Service and got in was a complete stereotype - over six foot tall, blonde and the child of a bank manager.

It's true that getting to university may have changed my view a bit, but that wasn't an option for me - and it certainly didn't occur to me on leaving school that anybody would want the likes of me when they could have somebody whose school experience didn't include knowing how to defend oneself against another kid coming at you with a knife or how to spot plain clothes police from 100 yards.

@NeverDropYourMooncup could be good experience for MI5!

Surely it's not to do within one so much as it is to do with contacts. Kids born into families where parents and their colleagues know the " right" people ( even if it's their own bosses) definitely have an advantage.

Take school work experience that you have to sort yourselves. If you work in a supermarket for example and most of your friends / family are in similar jobs then your kids is less likely to get some office work for their work experience that someone who has a parent who is management in an insurance firm does

And there's stuff like " raising money" to go these volunteerism trips. Of course the kids with connected parents will have far for opportunities to raise money, whether is use of premises, donations of good stuff to auction etc

The mask re your comment on wealthy white people

as @NaicePeachJoker clearly stated

then the last comment re blonde child of a bank manager

These are discriminatory comments

some academics would call this reverse racism

Maybe! But that was all James Bond and Moneypenny types as far as I knew - and even if I'd been drop dead gorgeous (which I wasn't), the idea of having to shag somebody and invariably end up dead in the next ten minutes wouldn't have sold it to me, even if I'd been contacted by one of those spy recruiters I'd seen on TV.

But that's the point - I didn't have any background that could tell me it really wasn't like that, nobody who worked for the Civil Service, nobody to explain the applications process and I didn't know who to ask. The most we had was a (very posh sounding, tall, blond Armed Forces recruiter say awkwardly when I asked if there was anything, 'We have secretaries'.

They'd be bloody idiots, then. That's what his parent did and what he looked like.

Making stuff up isn’t a great look. Some of those schemes are for other specific demographics already. Some are open to anyone. Your ‘I bet’ means nothing.

I don’t know to be honest. But a couple of posters said it used to be for ethnic minorities and it’s now been changed to target a different group who are underrepresented

200 votes aren’t going to make much difference. It’s really not as big a deal as you are making out.

They aren’t interviewing anyone when they are 14. It’s a scheme for undergraduates. Maybe try to understand what it is before pontificating about it.

Couldn’t you just have said some of my best friends are white?

Link please.

It’s not to do with ‘what people on here think’ or ‘mummy and daddy getting the jobs’.
Research shows that a key indicator in relation to future prospects is employment of parents when a person was 14. It’s not an opinion. It’s not been made up.

This exactly. Getting a ‘good’ job can be via a direct connection but inequality of access takes many forms. It’s knowing that these sorts of jobs are available in the first instance and feeling that you are worthy, have a place there and won’t be marginalises It’s having the soft skills to interview well and manage interactions in social situations. It’s knowing how to behave and rise up the ladder if you are lucky enough to get a role. If none of this resonates with you, then you’ve been lucky in life, as have your children. Not to say that your kids aren’t bright and competent. Social mobility isn’t about bringing them down, it’s about raising other bright and competent people up.

Not really, as I'm white as well. As were a significant number of kids at my school. You'd lose your shit if I told you that Naseem and Jaspal got married in the summer holidays, Brian moved to the US to live with his cousin (a dentist) and became a realtor because he'd decided he wouldn't get anywhere in the UK due to his ethnicity and last time I heard of Rodney, he was up for manslaughter. He might have met Andrew there, as he decided at 25 that he was fed up with working in the storeroom of the local department store and became a Prison Guard.

(Especially when I chuck in that of my brothers, one worked in a factory and then the sorting office, one delivered TVs and then parcels and the other's first job when he left school was a toolmaker.)

I don’t know what’s happening.

@August3r - you've quoted completely the wrong stat. 59% of very highest ranking senior civil servants are privately educated (according to research on 2019) - the Permanent Secretaries, the equivalent of the CEO of each department. I can't immediately find the percentage for civil servants in general but it will be waaaaaay lower.

That's not to say that there is a separate debate to be had with the high percentage of Perm Secs who went to private school, but it's a very different debate (albeit linked) to the civil service as a whole.