Does coming from a deprived background really seal your fate?

[Pinkjenny]

Just wondering, really, listening to Nick Clegg on R5 live. I come from Anfield in Liverpool, not deprived really, but certainly not affluent. My mum worked in a shop, and my dad was (and still is) an engineer.

I credit all of my success (relatively speaking, of course) to the way in which I was brought up, and the attitude of my parents, who told me I could be whatever I wanted to be, as long as I put my mind to it.

Does giving children money for their first shoes and first suit really help break that poverty cycle?

Or does it depend on the attitude of their parents and their general upbringing?

Schools should drag those kids out by hook or by crook and give them a chance despite their parents.

However, with the imminent slashing in school budgets-where will the staff be who are able to do this?

Ah well Horseman, lets just write them off as collateral damage eh? Or we could offer them something like this fairness premium which just might make a difference.

No, it doesn't seal your fate but I think the attitude of your parents goes a long way to making that leap harder or easier.

My ex-p was from a deprived background and was intelligent but was never encouraged to do anything with his life beyond his parents' aspirations and consequently, hasn't. He now wants to, but hasn't got the discipline, nor met anyone apart from me that would ever show him another way.

'appear to punish' or actually punish?

It doesn't seal your fate but my more successful friends had successful parents. I live in a 2 bed flat with dp and 2dc. My friend has just bought a 5 bed detached house with double garage with her husband, no kids. We are both 28 . Guess who had parents with a degree?

I am planning on studying when youngest dc goes to school next year, did a college course last year to ensure i got on course. But i had an arse hole father with a failed business and bankruptcy when my friends were going off to uni so I had no hope but to get a job. Working my way up in a company meant I could buy my flat so I am better off than some but still feel I could have done more with more opportunities as a teenager

i see people talking very interventionist strategies pull kids out,ignore families.when SW and statutory do get involved and potentially remove many are apoplectic about tyrannical state

But of course you can't have interventionist strategies like that - it's barbaric and all precedent in history involves a total lack of appreciation of human rights (eg in australia/argentina).
There is surely a long term happy medium between judging people to be wasters and removing their children, and cutting off programs for social change!

I'm not sure what MN means by deprived?

IMO a background deprived of money is nothing to worry about.

A background deprived of love and moral guidance is another matter.

When I was a child everyone was poor, some had hardworking honest parents.

Some had parents that never came out of the put or bookies.

but poor doesn't automatically mean deprived of love or aspirations does it ...I think on mn it does though

Being temporarily on benefits would not deprive a child of aspirations but long term I think it would. Being poor and working full time means they will have a good work ethic

Right again Lynli.

The attitudes of the parents and general upbringing are the important things. Lack of money isn't important and is probably much better than having too much. Poor little rich kids are probably worse off. DCs want parents time-not things.

I'm not talking about taking children away from their families. I'm talking about school being school, very different from home, not chaotic, but orderly, routine, consistent, aspirational.

The problem is not money, or budget slashing. Look at the money that was binned at education during the labour years to make no difference to social mobility. Education is the engine of social mobility so basically a lot of that money was wasted. The flaws are in the curriculum that seems incapable of establishing priorities in the face of chaos and degradation.

""Me too. What I want to see are measures put in place to dramatically slow down the rate at which babies are being born into disadvantage in the first place - we SERIOUSLY need to reverse the trend for enabling people to have babies at completely inappropriate times, in completely inappropriate circumstances. People need to be educated about personal responsibility and forward planning. the state doesn't disadvantage a child - its parents do"

here, here "Givesheadlesshorseman" here, here."

I would bet these are the people who favour less state intervention for themselves but don't mind the state disabling the lessers from having children
seriously one can't find a solution without looking at the moral and ethical implications of what one says

it is never that easy we are talking about major complex problems which do not have a simple short term solution
it does that courage yes but also a long term commitment, many of these issues do not resolve in a generation with the best of intentions, imagine that long term political ideas

It's clear that social mobility is horribly limited in the UK, more limited than anywhere else in Europe.

The traditional route out of poverty was education. It's ironic that successive Labour Governments closed down the grammar schools, and then the assisted places schemes, with the net effect of significantly decreasing social mobility.

"Me too. What I want to see are measures put in place to dramatically slow down the rate at which babies are being born into disadvantage in the first place - we SERIOUSLY need to reverse the trend for enabling people to have babies at completely inappropriate times, in completely inappropriate circumstances. People need to be educated about personal responsibility and forward planning. the state doesn't disadvantage a child - its parents do"

Are you serious?
The reason provisions are in place for mothers: young mothers, vulnerable mothers, single mothers, widowed is because we never want to go back to the days when a woman is forced to marry the man who's knocked her up; or prostitute herself at night in order to feed her kid and look after him by day; or destitute because she couldn't have an abortion on time.

Or indeed, the days where the only options for a pregnant single young woman were abortion, adoption or destitution.

In other words, enforced abortion/sterilization, when the woman desperately wanted to keep her baby but couldn't.

I have lived in countries where babies were found in rivers regularly because the mother knew she did not have the means to support herself and the baby regularly.

Provisions for mothers are the mark of an evolved society and it has taken women a long time for society to accept this.

Why any woman would advocate for a return to the dark ages is beyond me.

Perhaps they are lucky and were born with a silver spoon in their mouth and have fallen for this daft notion that girls "get themselves pregnant"

All that is needed is education, equal and good education for all.
Study upon study shows that the higher educated a woman, the less children she has.

that last sentence was statistically speaking (before loads of people come on saying "well I'm well-educated and I've got loads of kids" )

You are included in those statistics.
Statistically speaking, the better educated the mother, the less children she has

That's true (even though I'm pretty well educated and successful with 5 children). You do get that pocket of very well off families, mother perhaps workin gin the City etc who do have very large families (and they're huge fun, I'd recommend it) but on the whole as women tend to earn more than have fewer babies.

Fewer.. not less if it's plural (particularly if we're writing about education)

I don't agree we have bad social mobility in the UK. It is heaps better in cultures like India where your caste can determine where you're placed. People move classes within one generation in the UK. We are very lucky that it is not that hard to do and so much better than say 100 years ago.

"IMO a background deprived of money is nothing to worry about."

Right, this is despite the multitude of studies, from Beveridge, to Black, to Acheson and beyond which state that poor economic circumstances have a dire impact across the board, from health, to education and beyond.

People have studied these issues. It's not just a bunch of spendthift lefties throwing away the money of the holy middle classes.

However it is much better IMO to have a loving, aspirational, emotionally mature parents who give plenty of time than over controlling, emotionally distant parents who have no time and yet buckets of money.
A DC doesn't need the latest in prams etc. A baby couldn't care less who wore the clothes before them etc. I know of DCs who are shoved off to boarding school and given £200 a week pocket money-they spend it on drink and drugs! How can they possibly need that amount of money?
Everyone needs money-it buys choice and it is important, but so is parental attitude and money can't buy that.
Emotional deprivation is much worse. The DC can see that the parents were not to blame for being poor, but they are certainly to blame for not being loving and supportive.

Sakura - those women you speak of come from times and places where free and plentiful contraception and education about sex and pregnancy did/does not exist. I really don't think there is any reason to apply those circumstances to all but a handful of women in the UK today. The better equipped we become to avoid unplanned and/or unwanted pregnancies, the more we seem to get.

And I am only talking about the UK - what goes on in other countries is not what we are discussing here.

You are SO wrong to say that all that's needed is 'education, good and equal education for all'. Do you think our state education is all crap then? Do only public schoolboys get 'good' education? Or do you think the state operates a deliberate two-tier system where all the ineffective teachers and lacklustre teaching methods and poor resources are channelled directly into schools especially reserved for children from disadvantaged homes? Are you suggesting poor kids are held down on purpose by the system, or what?

Do you think that schools with a history of low GCSE attainment are full of crap teachers trashing the chances of poor but clever pupils who are all deeply committed to education, and highly ambitious?

There will always be a percentage of kids who don't care, and can't be bothered. There will always be a percentage of kids with low intellectual ability. There will always be a percentage of kids who want to commit to education, but for whatever reason they are handicapped by dysfunctional home lives. They come from all walks of life, rich and poor. But let's face it - mostly poor.

The problems start with the environments they are born into, not with the fact that their opportunities in education are not 'equal'. Why it should be the school's sole responsibility to turn these children's lives around, God only knows, but they do try - they try VERY hard. But significant leaps forward with disadvantaged children will do little to dent the league tables, and if a school has lots of those children it will forever be fire-fighting, and perceived as a 'bad' school - avoided by the middle classes.

Taking private education out of the equation, all children do have access to equal education in the UK. The only exception is in grammar schools(I'm not a fan, but that's another story for another day.)

Why do we always tend to assume that apathy is a working class trait where education is concerned? No-one worries about the child whose parents may be reasonably affluent but apathetic, and there are plenty of those too.

There is absolutely no point in getting bogged down with arguments about schools in middle-class areas being 'better' than schools in areas of high deprivation. If there is huge disparity in the outcomes for the children it will almost certainly correlate to the socio-demographic intake of the pupils. Universities know this, and have been weighting their offer conditions for years, to reflect this.

My son's friend who is an exceptionally clever and highly conscientious state school (non-grammar) pupil told me he wouldn't want to apply to Oxbridge or Durham or Exeter, because he would feel 'out of place' and wanted to be around 'normal' people. That is not the fault of the universities - they are practically trying to drag high-attaining state school kids off the street! That is to do with his pre-conceptions.

If only it were as simple as 'equal education for all'. Plenty of children from disadvantaged families fail to thrive in perfectly good state education because of chaotic home environments, an inherited lack of enthusiasm about education, and a suspicion/dislike of authority, discipline, and adherance to routine.

But again, this comes down to 'what is disadvantage?' As many on this thread have pointed out, they had very little money growing up, but were enriched by parents who valued and encouraged learning, and gave them a stable, supportive environment in which to learn.

Standardising the quality of state education is not only virtually impossible to do, but it's of little use to a child whose mother can't even get out of bed in time to get him there.

I am perfectly aware that things cannot be turned around in one generation, or even two, but if we don't start insisting that young people work towards becoming at least a bit self-sufficient before we fund them to start families, and if we do not set limits on the amount of children per adult that the state will wholly or partially support, then the cycle of poverty (intellectual or financial - take your pick) can never be broken. It is an unpleasant, uncomfortable truth that no-one wants to admit, because there are no easy, palatable solutions.

If you need to be convinced, read the Marmot review

I am not sure you can achieve, without breeding clones, identical families. There will always be some better than others at bringing up children. There were dreadful parents in the old days, alcoholics and the like on the streets of London etc etc and today there are too and not just in poor homes, although children from poorer homes do worse not just poor but chaotic, no care etc.

Labour threw a lot of money at things but that doesn't work so that tap can be turned off now as is happening.

"Or do you think the state operates a deliberate two-tier system where all the ineffective teachers and lacklustre teaching methods and poor resources are channelled directly into schools especially reserved for children from disadvantaged homes? Are you suggesting poor kids are held down on purpose by the system, or what"

I'm not suggesting it, I'm stating it as a fact. Apart from the word deliberate I think a two-tier system is exactly what we have here.
Why bother trying to deny it? The UK has an enormous rich/poor divide.
I am half-way through Injustice, written by academic Daniel Dorling, who describes in detail the two-tier education system in the UK