Anyone watching 'How to crack the class ceiling'?

[Aslockton]

On BBC2 now about how working class university student break through barriers to land elite jobs.

@TizerorFizz I can’t know for sure because AFAIK my student never got feedback on his accent, appearance, etc. But my impression is that yes, he would have been open to constructive criticism and, as you suggest, perhaps a loan. Also a number of our students begin as ‘quants’, in non-client facing, analytical roles. IIRC that is the type of job he was applying for.

I am still furious on his behalf. Guess I will never be properly British

I used to give a lot of talks to young lawyers. When I started and did not know the group I could virtually divide them without checking into who was at the better law firms and who are worse firms simpoly by clothes and if they were very attractive and even on the basis of their weight! I remember thinking that was so strange as fairly irrelevant to practising law (which you can do at 6 stone or 25 stone pretty easily). May be it was money - the richer ones i the better jobs eating better foods, paying for teeth whitening and expensive clothes.

Teeth actually is something that divides those who have money and those that don’t. Non client facing: then looks don’t really matter at all. If a job is client facing, then the presentation of the employee or potential employee matters.

The question of internships being not affordable was not queried. Seth said he could not do one, but they didn’t investigate paid ones or look into companies that did help financially. They also looked at jobs in London. What about Bristol? Why just look at one broadcaster? There are lots of them. I know they don’t have hours and hours but it came across as one sided.

The other issue that wasn’t really investigated (and it’s difficult) is what proportion of applicants actually fall into the categories they were looking at. How many, and percentages, of other DC were rejected? We do not know. The BBC with 43% BAME is over representing to make up ground to alter their overall employment stats. That won’t actually help all disadvantaged applicants at all because it actively excludes some.

Yeah, teeth are a pretty good indicator of social level for want of a much better phrase. I immediately know the demographic of a service user as soon as I see their teeth. But then, some people on the same demographic have teeth which are fine. It's either lack of basic dental care or heavy drug use.

I'm not remotely well spoken, but in my job it often works out for the best. I'm more relatable, I sound the same. I admit I take SSRIs and that it's nothing to be ashamed of.

I can speak easily and freely to senior police, to professors and to seriously mentally unwell people. As well as addicts and career criminals. 99% of the time I get total respect from every demographic.

I’m not sure what job you do but the programme was about elite jobs. Many many people have no language barriers at all but in some areas of work it’s critical to speak clearly and accurately so there is no debate about what is meant.

Are speaking clearly and accurately and a working class accent mutually exclusive?

Of course not. I speak clearly in a neutral but northern vowel accent.

The programme examined barriers and accent was one.

Precisely. I was questioning @TizerorFizz 's inference.

Would And and Dec be multi millionaires without their accents? Sometimes accents help but only in rare circumstances.

consider politics: most politicians speak with rp or at least a dialled down accent as they need to appeal to a wide spectrum of voters and there may be an impression of regional bias if a strong accent was used. There will be a correlation between accent strength and general educational level (sad but possibly true) that realistically leads people into unconscious bias when hearing a strong accent associating it with relatively low education. Of course this bias is utterly wrong and I wish it would change but which parent would hinder their child's life chances by promoting a strong regional accent if possible. It's like a stutter, how many people in high profile public roles stutter even though this is a speech disability and apparently we live in an inclusive society? If someone stutters we can get referrals to speech and language therapy services to assist; there may be some parallels with accent.

On accent - that is a point the programme did not make - that you can speak clearly with good grammar with a particular accent and get on fine in the City. It is when you um and are, say like all the time, not have good concepts or ideas, use the wrong words that how you speak can affect a career. I am not saying if you purely pronounce bath or path in a Northern way that is never held against you in the South but on the whole it is not an issue.

That’s really what I meant about speaking so you are understood. Regional accents are not an issue but the manner in which you speak is. It’s fluency and accurately conveying what you mean that’s important. In the programme Seth made the point that regional accents are found at regional broadcasters. He said they about his Somerset accent (albeit not a very strong one). I think some accents are more accepted then others. A Somerset accent is thought of as agricultural! As indeed most countryside accents are. Not that you hear them much now! My parents had rural accents. My siblings and me don’t! Accents are affected by who is around you but that doesn’t stop anyone speaking clearly.

So is the anti Somerset accent thing really an anti rural thing? As is that different than class (full disclosure I am from peasant stock). It almost felt like Seth was critical of rural people.

On accents I struggle to understand people with accents from certain parts of country or world but the more exposure I have the easier I find it.

I didn’t watch the programme and am aware that there is a multitude of unconscious bias towards not only background but also SEN.
I just wanted to pick up the issue of going to university getting a degree and then being unable to get a better job. It’s absolutely possible to choose a degree that will give you improved prospects- anything healthcare including medicine, teaching, many IT courses and others. All you need do is look at graduate employment. Not all degrees are worth it from an employment perspective but I can guarantee there are careers where your accent or whatever will make no difference!

Thats new, they didn’t when I applied in 2017. Science. Straight Distinctions. I applied for 4 local (as in a 100 mile radius) Unis (3 RG/1 Top 20) and figured I might as well apply for a 5th being as I could, but there weren’t any more close(ish) by ones I wanted. Flipped a coin between Bristol and Edinburgh as they both offered the course I wanted.

Got a sharp email stating “Due to the caliber of our A Level applicants, we don’t accept applications from Access courses”.

I was offered a place at all 4 of there others I applied to and graduated from an RG with a First.

Re working class families - most of mine - Grandparents, parents and siblings either have no GCSEs (or whatever their equivalent was) or very few with very low grades. Ex mining village. Deprived. Education scoffed at.

I wasn’t supported, let alone encouraged when I was making the 3hr round trip to my nearest college that offered STEM A Levels. They were so unsupportive that a few weeks after I turned 18, at the start of Year 13, they kicked me out.

I was told to leave college and get a job or leave home. So I left home. And by the end of that first term I had also left college because I qualified for zero benefits, and I’d tried working evenings/weekends but as I’d picked Bio/Chem/Physics, it wasn’t doable. The house share I lived in was grim, and the people who lived there were chaotic to say the least.

My MH was shot to shit because there were also addiction/neglect/abuse issues with my parents, I’d seen education as my means of escape the house, the area, that life and was a straight A student.

I was 30 and a single parent when I came across an advert for the Access Science course. Applied on a whim, was accepted, made it work. University was hard in terms of juggling childcare/illness/school holidays/deadlines but the degree content itself was mostly a breeze.

IAmTheFire, that is very inspiring. You have done so well. My mother came from a mining village too but her widowed mother and grandmother encouraged her to sit the 11+ for state grammar school in Sunderland and that way she became a teacher and married a doctor and I suppose changed class. I suppose that was partly possible because the state funded her for 2 years residential teacher training from age 17 - 19. I don't think her family had to pay the fees and I think the board and lodging in the college where all the girls trained was probably free too in those days (1940s)

On the programme the Somerset accent boy who I thought had no accent by the way, he could not afford unpaid work experience. He wanted to work at the BBC.
In subjects like law (my area) the summer vacation schemes are 1 or 2 weeks fully paid - about 450 a week which in some makes it easier than journalism; although it is quite competitive.

The other students on the programme wanted City type veyr high paid jobs and those are very hard to get even if you have all As and went to Eton and Oxbridge these days

Yes I found out at a recent conference. But Liverpool vet school will only accept Access into the Foundation year.

The Access science course was good prep then for vet sciences? More unis could do with truly widening participation by accepting Access.

I am sorry for what you went through, @IAmTheFire I admire your resolve enormously, and your success speaks for itself.

I have distinctly mixed feelings about this and I have never posted about it before: my (RG STEM) School strongly discourages Access applicants. We don’t quite refuse them as a matter of policy but the bar is very, very high and I don’t know when we last accepted one. I hate that.

But the reason is that during my time as an admissions tutor we did a big analysis of what was and was not working. We found that no Access student had ever graduated with a 2.2 or better and most had failed to progress.

There could be many reasons for this. Our uni’s main Access feeder course is weak. Our School is not great with extra academic support: only a few personal tutors are committed to it, and money for extra support sessions was cut some time ago. The ethos amongst students has become more cutthroat and MH resources at uni level have been pared back to a pathetic level. In other words, if you start to struggle badly you are likely screwed. Because of this, I reluctantly concede that admitting a cohort statistically likely to fail is not a good idea

@IAmTheFire so sorry to hear about your unsupportive parents. And what an inspiring story that you got your success.

Access is a brilliant way to progress. For many school isn’t the right place or other circumstances prevent success. A few later students can achieve via Access.

I remember when benefit claimants were pretty much prevented from studying access. Short sighted imo as within a year they are more likely to be out of the benefit system for their working life.

Would it be possible to be work with the local Access provider to get it up to the standard you want? Or offer your own version?

But if neither is possible then be transparent in the entry requirements so students don’t make a pointless choice. I’ve seen uni admissions criteria state ‘we consider Access’ but in reality these applicants would be unsuccessful.

@poetryandwine I respect your honesty but cannot agree that the best course is to exclude access students rather than at least trying to address a broken system. How will it ever be addressed on that path?

An excellent question, @MarthaMoose

As I said, it is not a blanket exclusion but based on our past experience the bar is very high. We do a lot of outreach attempting to get students who aren’t ready for our degree programmes into STEM Foundation Years, at both our university and others. In our experience these give better preparation.

I would like to see our university’s feeder Access programme strengthened, at least for STEM. But this might have unforeseen effects. Other Access programmes, that don’t send us students, may be stronger.

I agree the system is broken. However I think it could be fixed largely be steering everyone to their best option rather than admitting people from the wrong programmes. Even this Access programme of no use to my School is valuable for other purposes. When I characterised it as ‘weak’ I meant it did not prepare participants to compete against those with top grades in some of the most traditionally difficult A level subjects. That was a poor choice of words

@Rummikub I agree with you about honesty in advertising but I lost that battle. TBF, as I said in theory we would consider a very, very strong Access applicant

All I can offer is anecdotal evidence here, and it’s very limited as there were only 11 that did Access/were mature students (2 from the same college as me) across the entire Sciences - so Physics, Chemistry, Bio, Medicine, Pharmacy. 3 (I living myself) did Microbio, the other two I went to college with did Chemistry, there were 3 on Biochem, 2 in Neuroscience, 1 in Pharmacy and 7/10 of us got a First.

No Physics in the Access course, and no Foundation Med offered there (at the time, might have changed now).

All 11 of us found the A Level kids were entirely unprepared for lab work (we had done a lot of it in comparison), the speed at which things were taught, the weekly mini exams, the semester big exams, and the general “find out things yourself” (this in particular).

They were far better at huge end of year exams, though. I struggled like fuck to recall all the information from the entire year and I almost didn’t get my First due to the results of those big exams (2:1s).

I knew I wasn’t as strong in them and aimed to get as many Exceptional/High 1:1s as possible in assignments, coursework, labs etc to balance it out. Even after I was Dx with ADHD/SpLDs in my first semester (medicated and adjustments put in place), I still found it incredibly stressful.

I’d have preferred a Foundation year over Access for the simple reason of funding. I’d have happily taken on extra SF debt.

College paid for my 1YO to be in nursery the 2.5 days, but wouldn’t cover wrap around for my other two. I wasn’t working at the time as I’d fled DV, so I used my Income Support (£65 a week) to pay for that childcare.

There was a lot of studying to do outside of those 2.5 days, as well as revision and assignments, so on top of living on one small meal per day, I was often awake till 1-2am. I was rather underweight and exhausted by the time I’d finished the course.

I had no family support whatsoever.

I had to be relentless and stubborn for those four years. I was told not to apply to those Unis as they wouldn’t take me, and if they did, I wouldn’t get the grades needed, and if I did, I’d fail out after a year. Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do.

I often wonder how many other amazing female STEM minds are out there, unable to join us because they didn’t have the opportunity to do it at the “normal” age and can’t find way to get out of their crap job/being a SAHM/horrible husband etc.

Most people have an inability to see beyond their own circs/the circs of their own circle. They can’t imagine not having supportive parents who value and encourage education.

No adult can take two years off work to do A Levels, and that was pre <gestures vaguely> all of this shit.

So it’s Access or nothing. I sure as fuck wasn’t doing an OU degree when I knew I was plenty capable of attending an RG Uni, and it was only general life issues that were preventing me. If that makes me a snob then so be it

And I’m certainly doing better than my friends who went to the local comp sixth form, scraped 2Cs and a D then did Media Studies at the local, bottom of every table possible Uni.