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Original poster

Social Mobility

76 replies

Chil1234 · 05/04/2011 11:28

Plans upcoming today from the government about improving life-chances and social mobility. What's held you back or given you a leg up in the past? And what do you think would most improve your social mobility going forward?

My 'leg-up' would be having parents with high expectations and access to the grammar school system. If anything held me back it was the lack of good contacts and poor careers advice.

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darleneconnor · 05/04/2011 11:32

There was a programme on a while ago about this. It said that not having access to London and/or not having financial support to do free work experience for a year were major barriers to non-rich people getting the top jobs.

Decentralising the economy would help a lot with this.

K999 · 05/04/2011 11:34

Having parents with high expectations can have a negative impact sometimes.....ie not living up to them...

reallytired · 05/04/2011 11:42

Allowing children in ANY part of the country, whether its inner city, leafy suburbs or whereever to have the opportunity to do 3 seperate sciences or a second language if they have the intelligence.

The country needs to realise that different children need different curriculum. The national curriculum is great for the average child, but fails the exceptionally bright or the exceptionally stupid.

There needs to be a range of special schools for children with behavioral problems or low intelligence or other disablites.

I think its a mistake forcing children to stay on at school until 18 or wanting 50% of kids to go to uni.

glasnost · 05/04/2011 12:27

"Plans" my arse. PR guff intended to mask the fact this vile coalition of the killing of the country are bent on putting the nail in the coffin of social mobility once and for all.

Nick Clegg burbling on about work placements being open to all and not the sharp elbowed and well connected is beyond laughable. The man should piss off if he has any dignity left.

Original poster
Chil1234 · 05/04/2011 12:38

So you're not in favour of improving social mobility then, glasnost? 'Know your place'... is that it?

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glasnost · 05/04/2011 12:47

That's such a willful contortion of what I typed that I'm suspecting you're in charge of the government's PR guff.

They are the ones not in favour of social mobility. Today was a vacuous, cynical ploy. Media manipulation old bean.

Original poster
Chil1234 · 05/04/2011 12:51

Not in charge of 'PR guff'.... if you read the original post my question was a more general conversation about what MN-ers had found either advanced or held them back in terms of social mobility. You're the one that contorted things by going on about nails in coffins, media manipulation and Nick Clegg.

Has your life been socially mobile then, or have you stayed where you started?

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K999 · 05/04/2011 12:52

Am not sure what is meant by social mobility....is this another name for something else?

glasnost · 05/04/2011 12:59

But your general conversation is presupposing and lending kudos to today's gov PR initiative whereas I'm criticising it at source as cynical and vacuous. Now feel free y'all to have your conversation.

I think you'll find people's lives in general have been socially static unless you're one of the moneyed classes in which case you'll have got much richer in the last 30 years. After all we're talking money really here, right? And the UK is one of the least socially mobile countries in the world. Along with the US. Hmmm there's a pattern forming here, surely.

SardineQueen · 05/04/2011 13:05

I don't really understand social mobility. Surely it depends on having an ever growing economy? Otherwise for every person going up, there must be one going down?

And how are our leaders - who are successful and want the best for their own children - ever going to do something that would risk one of their maybe not super-clever children having to give up their "place" for a bright child from less well off community?

Or do we assume that the majority of those who have succeeded will buy privilege for their children with private schools etc, and any policies they produce will involve shuffling what small proportion of the general population are allowed "in"?

darlene was the the program with andrew neill? The conclusion seemed to me to be that social mobility had collapsed since the grammar system was scrapped.

Original poster
Chil1234 · 05/04/2011 13:09

Social mobility is the phrase to describe starting in one socio-economic group and moving (preferably) up to another. In a healthy society with equal opportunities the result should be good social mobility. Starting poor shouldn't mean you're automatically destined to stay poor, for example.

I have no idea what the government will be proposing but wondered instead what other MN-ers would put forward as the snakes, ladders and glass-ceilings of social mobility from their own experience.

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SardineQueen · 05/04/2011 13:10

I suppose my brother and I would be downwards trajectory types, neither of us have fulfilled our potential or education privilege IYSWIM.

So that has freed up a couple of spaces I guess!

Chaotica · 05/04/2011 13:10

Glasnost - I agree about the questionable basis for the discussion.

But, I don't think you're right about the social stasis.

I , for one, am on a downward slide: I am less well off than my parents (despite doing the same job that they did): I am unlikely to be able to afford to send my children to university (despite working in one); the labour market I am in has been casualised (is that a word?) so that I have no job security from one year to the next and no pension (after 15 years of work) and my pay is less than a third of what it was two years ago. I am not alone in this either.

BTW I would happily rejoin the 'working class' but there is no work for me there either.

Chaotica · 05/04/2011 13:13

SardineQueen - I don't think the spaces remain if someone moves down (as the situation changes). There will just be fewer at the top.

Chaotica · 05/04/2011 13:14

In terms of my own parents' social mobility (which was meteoric by today's standards), WWII and the labour party policies after the war were almost entirely responsible.

Original poster
Chil1234 · 05/04/2011 13:15

" for every person going up, there must be one going down?"

I don't think social mobility is a zero-sum game. Something like the introduction of compulsory state education, for example, probably improved social mobility for a particular group but upped the average standard of living more generally at the same time.

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wordfactory · 05/04/2011 13:49

I am a poster girl for social mobility.

I started on a sink estate in a mining town. Both parents left school at fifteen and we lived in poverty.

I now live in affluence and my own children attend private school.

The biggest factor for my was my Mother. She was not prepared to think small for me. She was the opposite of protectionist and talked about me leaving from five years old.

I went to a god awful school, but fortunately in those days, A level choices were narrow so I didn't scupper my chances by taking inappropriate subjects.

I was also very lucky that further eductaion was free and I got funding through professional qualification. No free work experience was required either.

Things that held me back?
Self confidence (this took a long time), articulacy, contacts, .

GabbyLoggon · 05/04/2011 14:51

Social mobility

apparently Cleggy is going to advise business to start paying interns because (a) it favours ther rich and (b) it could breeches the minumum wage law to exploit them for free.

I think big business will ignore Clegg on this one

SardineQueen · 05/04/2011 14:57

Chil surely it can only not be a zero-sum game in times of economic growth? If everything is static, and one person moves up, someone else must be moving down. When we are in recession, or boom times, things go up or down for everyone in line with that (roughly speaking).

If I have moved down - ie my parents were professionals and I am not, having not taken my place at that level despite the opportunities afforded to me, then that is a job at that level free for someone else to take.

SardineQueen · 05/04/2011 14:59

All this is assuming that "social mobility" is shorthand for "wealth" - as opposed to class. It is much harder to become "posher" or "less posh" than you are born, than to become more or less wealthy than you might have been expected to be.

glasnost · 05/04/2011 15:01

Chaotica I think you're right that now social downward mobility is predominant . In fact an underclass has been created that is no longer even working class.

wordfactory · 05/04/2011 15:03

sardine what I have noticed is that many middle class people are financially worse off than their parents, and cannot offer their children what they had -

one parent at home
private education
comfortable lifestyle

Much of this is to do with house prices (particularly in the SE) and cost of living, I think.

These people are still in what would have once been thought of as well paid jobs, but these days it's just not enough.

Chaotica · 05/04/2011 15:11

Glasnost - I think in the past it was usual (if you were poor) to have periods on unemployment within a generation, so you might spend some of your life unemployed (without the dole). But there are people who are now second and third generation unemployed who have either lost aspirations, or never had them (even to get a job, let alone improve their lot).

This is not surprising given one case I knew of a teenager who sent 250 letters to get his first job (£120 cash in hand, off the books for a 56 hour week). No wonder most of his friends just stopped trying.

Chaotica · 05/04/2011 15:12

OTOH there are plenty of well-educated people without jobs (or in unskilled ones) - it's such a waste of talent.

SardineQueen · 05/04/2011 15:15

£120 for a 56 hour week?

Fuck me.

wordfactory yes that's true. But in amongst all this average change in wealth/perceived wealth/whathaveyou - there are people who are moving up or down more than the rest. The people who are experiencing social mobility IYSWIM. If everyone's standard of living goes up or down across the board then that is an entirely separate issue.