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.

But you are saying yourself a lot of the advantage comes from home life and parental help.
Plus it’s utterly ludicrous to suggest private education doesn’t lead to value being added to raw academic ability - why would people pay otherwise?

You had a choice of private or state. That's a choice the vast majority of parents don't have.

So you chose the best for your children. Fair enough, I would.

But can't you see that the vast majority of children don't get that benefit? Of having the best school chosen for them?

Not to the same degree. I assume you mean postcode lottery for good schools. There are many good schools in poorer areas (though Ofsted/Estyn often fail to see it because of some of their obsession with raw results).

You are deviating from the thread. The point I was making is that my children are the same children whether they went private or state- they get zero advantage given their family background. I am not against internships that give a leg up to those that need it. I do object to the manner of this internship (too crude to pick up the children who need it). I would much rather a more nuanced scheme. Whether your parent is a train driver or a nurse or a receptionist should have no bearing. However, If you have done all your exams and got top grades whilst sharing a 2 bedroom flat with 5 siblings, I would think they are amazing and would want to interview them in a heartbeat!

No matter what i sacrificed, I would never have afforded private school.

We don't have a car, luckily we have good public transport. Holidays are a few days camping in the UK, and great fun.

My children have had a lovely childhood, but education has been down to state provision, in an area I could afford. It was pretty bad at one point, then I could afford to move and it got a lot better.

One child got an overseas university scholarship entirely on merit, no need to lie about protected characteristics (as a PP advocated).

But if I could have afforded to pay for the best school to meet their needs they would have had a far better education.

Edited for spelling

What? The PP said nothing of the sorf

This is such nonsense. The average cost of a day school in the U.K. is over £18k a year. The average wage is about £34k. The average persons couldn’t do it. They’d be left with 16k for everything else. Average rent is £1344pcm - so all of that £16k is gone on housing.
Only very, very privileged people think it’s possible for average people to ‘scrimp and save’ and afford private education.
And yes, I know averages are blunt tools and hide a lot of nuance, but the illustration still stands.

The point is it is only ever relative advantage. For a lot of private school parents the question they weigh up is ‘do we pay private school fees or do we take on a much larger mortgage and longer commute/job move to access an equally good state school?’

There is no dichotomy between private and state. Many state schools provide much more advantage (results, facilities, contacts) than many private schools. Those parents go private because that school is better than their local state schools.

My db made that choice - first son went to a private school rather than attend a failing state school. But for their second child they decided the cost was not achievable so moved (including job) to an area with a great state school. The rather mediocre private school gave his first son advantage over the failing state school but not over the great state school.

You paid money to have your children disadvantaged?
No. you saw some disadvantages offset by other advantages- otherwise you are very odd indeed.

Parental choice to buy a house in an expensive catchment when you are a single mum on a nurses salary?

And most families don’t have that choice - or the choice to just move house.
That’s a privilege.

Are you actually reading the responses @naicepeachjoker ? I didn't make any point.

I clarified a point from another poster at your request for an answer.

You seem to have difficulty following any kind of debate, so it's not really worth engaging any further.

Our receptionist at one of my companies was the daughter of an Earl.

Exactly. State schools discriminate on income.

Nowhere near as much as private schools 😂

No, it’s not deliberate exclusion. It’s a product of a pretty unequal society. The schools don't say ‘you can’t come here because you don’t have £18k spare each year’ though, which is (crudely put and rare bursaries/scholarships aside) what private schools do.

Most universities widening access criteria these days look at school performance not whether private/state as they recognise that some state schools are as good as, or better, than private schools.

Of course they do! ‘You can’t come here because you don’t have £18k spare to pay for the higher mortgage required to buy a house in our catchment’.

The are patches of wealth and patches of disadvantage in our LA. All the state schools provide a decent education, according to OFSTED.

So all families, no matter their income, can access a good education in state schools.

And yet some - with the money to afford it - choose to send their children to private schools.

What is that if not buying privilege?

it's a good idea, sharp elbowed middle class mummies won't like it.

How is a nurse struggling in the lower middle whose children have zero contacts or private education sharp elbowed exactly?

But still the privately educated are massively over represented in all the top jobs in all sectors.

Sensible. Private schools get better results than state

Exactly. Because their parents could afford to buy them opportunities.