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.

It seems to be reform. It’ll most likely be a conservative & reform mash up by the time of the GE.

Virtue signalling by labour , lots of publicity, little cost. If they wanted to ensure equality of opportunity they'd have state paid quality child care available for children from backgrounds with less resources than average, homeless issues, addictions etc. They'd follow this with excellent quality education for children in state schools.

100% this.

Just dropping by to say I'm FURIOUS about the denigration of trades in this country.
It takes a FOUR YEAR apprenticeship to become a plumber/gas engineer.
That's longer than most degrees.
Disgusting that this is classified as an example of an unskilled job.

State education is free and compulsory. There is a welfare state to help the poor. Private education (which I couldn’t afford for my kids) saves the state paying for those pupils.

I'm sorry you didn't grasp the more nuanced meaning. To be as clear as I can. It's silly to put together teaching politeness with paying for education. The first is accessible to all. The second only to those with privilege. So they are different things.

Presumably it's within the remit of the CS to ban nepotism then and have a blind recruitment policy . It's a state body not the private sector. Rather than ban a large section of a cohort from applying in the first place.

We need the best people in the civil service not a bunch of over privileged, left inclined people. It needs a shake-up and I get that. But in the private sector, the aim is to simply hire the best person for a particular job that needs to be done well to have the best outcome. Internships usually have to.be applied for through HR rather than through a friend these days. Social engineering and diversity hires usually won't be helpful.

The civil service should be run on the same basis for the best outcome for taxpayers. So diversity of choice is vital and encouraging kids from all walks of life is the way forward not restriction of applications. Then there's no excuse if the CS is shit.

Yes paying for education is not free, I get it. The word ‘paying’ covers that bit.

Education only benefits the individual? You guys have some odd belief systems. Do you not use Drs, pilots, architects, accountants etc?

This wouldn’t be a civil service role - it would be up to the local authority to ensure a fair hiring process.

Anyway, this internship programme targeting specific candidates from diverse backgrounds is nothing new - I did it many years ago when it was also open to disabled applicants and applicants from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Parental occupation at 14 is a bit of a blunt instrument but it is a commonly used indicator of socio-economic background. If the CS chose to check parental income, the media would be frothing about the resource needed to put checks in place.

The CS feels very middle class when you work there. I completely support this scheme targeting applicants from diverse backgrounds.

Train driver is unskilled it seems by that list until it comes to justifying the large pay rises, then it suddenly becomes very skilled and only a few highly trained people can do it.

They are different things, you are 100% right. I’m going to write all this down, some incredibly deep insights here.
1.Paying for education is not free
2.Teaching politeness and paying for education are different things

It’s going to be a short lived profession, whether the unions like it or not.

I’m absolutely not voting for either Reform or the Tories after the past 14 years and who is leading , I don’t think I’ll be alone. However I won’t be voting for Labour again either.🤷‍♀️ Green is looking like the only option. Lib Dem’s used to be a safe bet for the struggling middle until they signed with the devil in the coalition so they’re off my list too, if they’re even still around. It’s going to be such a mish mash government next time.😕

You may find the discussion less challenging and the views less 'odd' if you read the words properly and commented on what has been said rather than changing the meaning to something else you do understand and feel able to argue against. Education benefits society. Private education available to a minority of privileged people, harms society.

Ha ha, you’re the one writing the words. No I get it though, state education benefits society and all other education (unless fee) harms society. It’s an interesting point of view comrade.

Reform are odds on winners and I’m voting whoever gets Labour out.

@5128gapPrivate education also provides work for individuals, plus pupils gojng into the jobs listed. Just a different route and it doesn’t harm anyone. These dc aren’t taking up places in the best state schools so more dc without money get in. We are allowed choice and many doctors are delighted to make ££££ via their private medicine work. We as a nation like choice and it’s not harming anyone.

Quite worrying that our trains are driven by such unskilled oafs who have so many lives in their hands and can barely scrape by on £80k a year!

Hmmm I’m going to try and vote for whoever is best for the squeezed middle which Tories, Reform and Labour all clearly are not. Tories were a disaster and Reform would be too. Both hate the middle and focus on their rich mates. Labour seem to hate the middle too and I fear the middle will be increasingly battered by them as they refuse to actually deal with inequality and make faux damaging gestures like this. Slim pickings!

I'm assuming that because you're laughing and calling me 'comrade' you disagree, and believe that all education is of value to society, regardless of whether there is equality of access? If so, then you must be supportive of the scheme that's the subject of the thread, as the education the target group of young people will recieve on the internship is of greater importance than whether access to the scheme was fair?

I would prefer to live in a society that was run by the brightest and best suited to hold the positions of power. A system that allows wealthy people to artificially elevate the abilities of their children to ensure these positions pass down the generations isn't the best way to achieve this.

@5128gap It’s clearly not fair because it’s based on what jobs parents did when dc are aged 14. So the very rich doing virtuality nothing would get dc qualified. They could be doing a minimum wage charity job and have £millions in investments. How is it checked? The civil service fast stream appoints 2.2% of applicants. 7800 applicants are on free school meals already. It’s all playing with numbers really and internships are not jobs!

Yes I’m laughing because I disagree, education is a value to society regardless of whether it’s provided by the state or not. I’m definitely against the state discriminating access against groups based on their race, religion, parent’s jobs, gender, school they went to or sexual orientation. Identity politics is divisive nonsense.

Internships are only a summer thing and don't lead to a job offer. If it balances out the who you know culture in other organisations then that's a good thing surely?

‘artificially elevate the abilities of their children’

Do you mean education?