Education superclass?

[Amber2]

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/iainmartin1/100245274/it-is-much-worse-than-sir-john-major-says-a-new-superclass-is-being-created-in-london/

This is interesting coming from John Major ...sounds like more lobbying along the lines of the Sutton Trust but do people really think it's much worse than it ever has been..? and this is do with with the inexorable rise of London...and the global money flowing in there...and so to creating an elite superclass of private schools also ...not just any old private school but a small handful of elite ones, applications to which have reached record numbers, presumably more and more from London and from overseas with over inflation rises in fees pricing out the traditional middle classes that used to be able to afford these schools.

bsc

But if you're thinking about those seriously unprivileged ones in the UK - they would never have that sort of leg-up even if they were in the other countries in Europe. That was always more of a middle class thing to do. To be honest, giving the seriously underprivileged a leg-up borders on the 'wishful thinking'. The world will never be equal.

What I am saying though is: here in the UK, private school may be out of grasp for many in the middle class due to the horrendous cost. But programs such as the above are not.

You don't need the internet to contact schools directly. I did that myself pre-internet in the age of libraries , pen and paper. You just need to be resourceful and organised.

slipshod But are the successful candidates, once their training is underway, noticeably stronger than they were in the 80 s / 90 s, despite the extra accomplishments?

No. Definitely not. IMO anyway.

word You should've opted to the production that was on immediately before the Dream moved in - best Private Lives Ive ever seen (and Ive seen many). Cost us rather less than £200! And we were in amazing seats. Othello at the NT was also much cheaper (even with the travel thrown in). Also Rich II at the Barbican. The Grandage productions look good but my dear, the prices!

I love taking my kids to the theatre. When I was growing up, there was still decent rep and there was a theatre 10 mins walk from where I lived in Croydon, amd it was dead cheap (compared to these days) so despite being v working class, I managed to see a lot of plays. Although most of them were of the 'murder mystery starring someone off the Telly' sort. But that was ok. I liked seeing murder mysteries starring people off the Telly. And occasionally there was so,etching more exciting like a JB Proestly starring someone off the Telly from a programme I liked (The best one was probably Time and the conways, starring Avon off of Blake's 7). Happy days.

The problems I have seen with DC spending a year in the US at 15/16: it seriously disrupts the progress of their education in their home country and they lose a year of school. This has serious repercussions for friendship as they do not return to the same peer group after a year away. In any case the changes are so profound that only DC who have done a year abroad can relate to one another.

Family dynamics are also profoundly altered and DC can be lost to their own parents at a young age when they still need a strong bond.

I wouldn't risk it.

I've just had a quick read of the beginning and end of this thread, and it's fascinating.

Does anyone else think this is just a media storm in an espresso cup? There has always been an elite, socially, financially, academically. There always will be. The chances of this so called new 'superclass' being any different from previous superclasses, in how far they pull ahead of the middle, seems negligible. The elite are always streaks ahead of the masses, due to the advantages being heaped on them from all sides.

But society constantly throws up new elites that step in from the sidelines and refresh from the ground up: the risk taking barrow boys of the 80s stock markets, the class geeks turned gods of the computer age, the mega wealthy DJs of the music industry, writers, actors, artists, entrepreneurs - all come from any background, their specialist skills and knowledge not bought by any background, because even the best education is constantly on catch up with what the world will need next.

Is it possible to predict what will be the next hugely desirable, overpaid profession?

There is obviously no guarantee that massive investment in DC's education will perpetuate the global elite lifestyle into which they are born. I do think that some of those DC are poorly accompanied emotionally because their parents value publicly recognizable achievement over all else.

But I do believe that there has been a qualitative leap in breadth and depth of opportunity for some DC that is unparalleled in history and is creating an experiential chasm between those DC and the vast majority.

giraffe on the contrary, I think itks the perfect storm. Social mobility has completely stalled. Hell, most of the middle class can't even hope to be socially static!

I agree with Noble and Bonsoir. I only partly agree with you Word. I think the fuss might be because of the loss of traditional jobs or the lessening of their importance. I think there are other opportunities appearing but you need to be able to see that and have the aptitude to prepare for them.

I agree there slip.

There will always be new and exciting opportunities. Especially for the resilient and the flexible.

I suppose I just don't see how many of our young people will have enough skills to take advantage!

I have an ambivalent attitude towards London and its superclass.

On the one hand, I hate how this country has become so metro-centric and that the provinces don't count for anything.
On the other hand, if we are going to have the concept of Global Cities then I would rather we had one here in Britain than somewhere else like China.

All this talk of needing multiple foreign languages to get anywhere in life is a bit silly. Out here in the provinces, we don't have jet-setting careers so there is no need for foreign languages. We have some foreign customers: they speak English. Who wants a career where the boss decides that you will spend the next five years in Dubai, then five years in Shanghai and then you might make senior Vice President? I live a life of my choosing, where I want, near family, near decent schools, in accommodation that I can afford. My next door neighbour makes a very good living selling specialist, hobby goods. He doesn't need more than GCSE Maths and English for his day-to-day work; what he does need is drive, determination and an understanding of his market. He is typical of many people out here in the provinces who have the work/life balance of making decent (but not extravagant) money and having a happy life.

All this talk of needing top degrees from top Universities and Masters from even toppier US establishments is tosh.
You know all these mis-selling scandals that we have had recently? ... I predict that the next one will be the over-selling of qualifications.

purits - that lifestyle is seriously under threat.

That's fine for you purits.

A lot of people want a very quiet life. Nowt wrong with that of course.

Although it does mean that the superclass who run the show and have a huge impact on all our lives will all be cut from the same cloth and think the same way! Which doesn't seem very wise.

But on a more practical note, the provinces have for some time now, been propped up by public jobs and money. It's been very pleasant for many. But it's exceedingly clear that this is being severley eroded. So how will the next generation of provincial kids make their way?

That sounds a bit silly Bonsoir. Are you saying that everyone has to be a globe-trotting superstar?

My tip to the DC is to get into an area that can't be outsourced to China eg a service that has to be done here. Plumbing would be ideal.

Yes, but purits people have to pay for their plumbers!

They would have done that from their wages in industry not so long ago. When industry disappeared it was replaced by public sector jobs and money.

When that goes, then what? You can't offer goods and services to folk with no jobs/cash.

It's economics innit?

Indeed. Where my parents live (rural, affluent) tradespeople make a comfortable living. Their bills are being met by pensions that the next generation will not have.

I thought that the superclass in London were doing the trickle-down? Anyway, industry hasn't totally disappeared. We do still make and export things you know!

The trickle down effect isn't working. MC white collar mid-level jobs are being gobbled up by technology and working class jobs are being gobbled up by immigrants...

Hollande got elected as President of France on the "protect our lifestyle" ticket. Now he is the least popular president ever - he never was going to have the money to pay for his wish list....

The trickle down effect isn't working. MC white collar mid-level jobs are being gobbled up by technology and working class jobs are being gobbled up by immigrants...

Where I work, the old mid-level jobs might have been gobbled up by technology but that technology has created different mid-level jobs. The working class jobs are done 50/50 by locals and EU immigrants. How is it at your workplace, Bonsoir?

I'm a globetrotting person (not a superstar). I don't speak any languages apart from music and maths and the language of what I do (so, a very precise form of tech/regulatory speak). And the international language of footy. I the last week I;ve been in Brussels, Paris and Vienna. In the coming weeks I will be in several different German locations, Kiev and Brussels again. I won't need to speak any language other than English or professionalese. Language skills are not worthless but they are very over-rated by those who have them but don't have the other, more relevant, skills. There are many people who 'speak' several languages but can't communicate effectively or efficiently or (crucially) relevantly in any of them, including their mother-tongue. That's the challenge. It's currently not being met by our education system which seems to think that a smattering of science is a fix-all elastoplast for every possible eventually. And it just isn't.

Where I live probably doesn't even qualify as 'the provinces'. But few people work as 'internationally' as I do.

Bonsoir - yes, I do feel afraid that the purits lifestyle is under threat, because it is a really nice life to live. I think sending children off to live with strangers in another country for a year, or sending them to boarding school, or spending all your money and your children's spare time on high class cultural and "improving" activities can help mould a particular type of person. I also think we do need some people like this, who can be posted off to Dubai or Shanghai, then on elsewhere at the whim of their employer, but I don't want a world where you have to be like this in order to have life where you don't have to worry about whether you can afford to put a roof over your head, feed your children and have a tolerable lifestyle, because to make some people like this you actually have to damage them. The result of this damage is a group of people who think it perfectly acceptable to contribute to a mess in one country and then just shrug their shoulders and think it's OK to move on and behave in identical ways in the next country, and just keep moving on and making a mess of things, with no sufficiently strong sense of identity or allegiance to anything other than themselves and their profit-driven employer, to really, genuinely care. They can have all the social graces in the world, but there is something seriously wrong and inhumane about that mentality. I really don't want to have a world where I must choose to damage my children by moulding them against their characters to become global players, or to damage them by not trying to do that and thus condemning them to poverty. To lose the capacity for the world fairly to accommodate different types of people is really rather sad.

Languages are great for relationship building and of course for the cultural and personal benefits they bring, but international work is done through the medium of English. I recently visited a European independent school where pupils received 6 hours of English a week from a fairly young age. The older IB students told me there would be no chance of a good job without very good English skills.

Yes, but Slipshodsibyl, as others on this thread have already implied, if an employer has two CVs in front of them, one from a person who speaks 6 useful languages fluently, including English, and one from someone who only speaks English, they will go for the multilingual person, all other things being equal. It matters not one jot whether the person actually needs their languages to transact business.

rabbit no they won't, not necessarily. And all other things are in fact unlikely to be equal (they almost never are). Unless the job is actually an interpreting or translating role, then language skills are always in the 'might be nice to have' column rather than 'crucial' one. Translating and, in a more general sense, facilitating, are valuable roles for any international organisation but they aren't either the main roles or the most numerous.