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.

To those who don’t take responsibility for their actions and blame abstract groups of oppressors for poor life decisions, reality must feel like discrimination and life will always be a struggle.

Absolutely ignorant.

Wouldn’t life be great if everyone regardless of class, ethnicity or gender had the same opportunities available to them.

Discouraged for life? Because one internship programme wasnt aimed at them?

It doesn't say much for their resilience if that's true. And resilience is one of the most important factors for people in employment.

Look at it this way, a handful of people will be able to put the internship on their CV. But they'll still have to compete with people with gap years, d of E and impressive hobbies when it comes to getting a job.

DofE is offered by state schools. My kids did it at state school. You can borrow kit from the school or the scouts. It doesn’t have to cost anything. Your kids can work in a local charity shop for the volunteering section. Or help a local old person. Too much to ask? Too privileged?

I’d say it looks pretty shit for the middle at all levels within the CS and set to get worse going by this, but hey who cares. Let’s just leave the rich alone and target the middle. At least Labour are finally their cloth to the mast and we all know.

It's interesting this thread as I think the old MN favourite of class definition is coming up here.

I think what you have here is lower middle class ( that's not an insult- it's an observation) people feeling frustrated because they've worked hard to give their kids an advantage, only to discover they're now considered too privileged.

I come from an affluent working class/lower middle class background. As I've said upthread, I'm one of the most 'common' people among my work colleagues.

I get that it's frustrating if your kids are at a comparative disadvantage to the very privileged people i work with. But this is a handful of internships. It's one small initiative aimed at a particular group of people- it's not actively excluding anyone from a career in the civil service.

And if your child is privately educated, you have bought them an advantage. Where's the fairness in that? Your child isn't necessarily the brightest- even if better educated

Its really school dependent. My sons state school did dofe as you describe as the school fundraiser for equipment and the teachers did the expedition for free.

His sixth form charged £800 for the expeditions and i really struggled to find a free weeks residential for gold. There were some but very restricted.

The privileged oppressors really cross the line when they make sure their children are well educated. What next? That they are polite and not anti social ? B@stards

I think that it is the usual narrow view of disadvantaged. A child of a professional single parent earning £38,000 as a solicitor would not be offered an internship but a child with 2 parents one of whom worked as a train driver earning £80,000 would. The former would rarely see their stressed and over worked parents whilst the other has a parent at home to read with them etc

DofE and expensive extra curriculars( that many in the middle can’t afford either) get you nothing on UCAS forms now and quite rightly so. It’s so over used. The forms now focus on interest in subject. Anybody could do a bit of volunteering which is probably the most useful bit within DofE

Well we never got as far as gold! I don’t remember any charges at all. And anyway apparently people are saying CS recruitment is blind so they don’t know if you have done DofE or not. But they do know what jobs your parents did at 14! That is going to take a lot of cross checking with HMRC, I imagine? Might need to recruit a lot more staff to do it.

Fair enough. And by the sounds of it, you would be eligible to apply for this internship. And I'm not saying working class kids at Oxford should be excluded.

My point was that too often recruiters just default to selecting graduates from top universities. But that leads to a bias where you are more likely to get the upper middle class, privately educated candidate.

And I'd agree that the oxbridge degree doesn't automatically bring the network, it's often the network that gets you into Oxbridge. But one benefit you do have is the confidence to know that you are as bright ( and likely brighter) than your cohort.

I was in a similar position to you. ( top uni but not Oxbridge) and I think it made me realise that I had every right to go for these jobs.

I'd be interested to see how many of those who apply for this internship would otherwise not have applied for CS graduate scheme.

This is a good point. Class system is very complicated now, so it's never going to be perfect.

But this isn't a change to civil service recruitment, it's just one initiative.

Silly comment. Teaching children to be polite and 'not anti social' (social?) is free. Paying for an education that artificially elevates them above others, ensures they are steered through exams, and embeds the knowledge, behaviour and vocabulary that can mask Intellectual mediocrity is not.

My son wasnt doing it for ucas. He isnt going to university. He wanted the opportunity to do the expeditions as they werent something we could do with him as he is a young carer, but £800 was too much for gold.

I was just explaining that dofe isn't free everywhere as some people have only experienced it being free.

They’re not going check, it’s just a gimmick to get some identity politics headlines in as JC has launched a new party and they know what’s coming on that front.

I'm torn. I wouldn't want any kids to miss out because of their parents life choices.

However a close friend knows someone who works in a very very well paid work from home job for Leeds City Council. It's 4 days a week over 100K. Their father was the leader of a council and the person involved was lead by the nose from childhood into this low stress, report writing peach of a job.

That does need combating

Im not clear on what point you're trying to make.

Can you explain why you don't think privately educated kids are at an advantage? Otherwise, why pay the fees?

FYI my DC are privately educated. This initiative isn't for them, but I'm comfortable with the fact they have enjoyed many benefits and privileges which will help them secure a good career.

A few kids doing an intern at the CS isn't going to stop that. The civil service is massive and takes in more than a handful of people each year.

I’m a board Director of a large PLC. DH is also a senior professional.

We had our DS later on in life so will be retired well before he is 14. Does that mean he could apply as we’d essentially be unemployed?

Paying for an education that artificially elevates them above others, ensures they are steered through exams, and embeds the knowledge, behaviour and vocabulary that can mask Intellectual mediocrity is not.

Is not what?

Wrong thread, but kind of relevant. Who on earth do those very much squeezed in the middle vote for?

...Is not free. The clue is in the first sentence.

Your point is that paying for education is not free? Great point, well made.

Free. It's a paid for advantage. So entirely different from teaching children to be polite. It's also different in that it doesn't benefit society, only the individual.