Social Mobility

[Chil1234]

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.

"1. Very expensive private education

1. Oxbridge
2. Well-connected parents
3. Well-connected peer group from 1 and 2."

Quite brilliantly, succinctly put nepkoztarsasag. Posters in a lather should remember there's such a thing as satire. Even if it's true in her case it's still a concise description of getting on in rightwing Britain.

The environment the child grows up in is the single most important factor in their lives. If they grow up in a family where working is an alien concept, go to school where all their peers just want to leave school at 16 and smoke weed all day then this will be the norm to them and chances are they will repeat the same cycle because that's all they know.

But give them an environment where their parents push them to do their homework, listen at school, behave for teachers and achieve the best they can. If they can see their parents going to work each day and setting a good example then they will naturally want to aspire to the same.

To me if the parents don't care in the first place, then government can introduce as much well meaning legislation as they like. It won't make the blindest bit of difference.

Well I am certainly no higher than my parents - in fact would've been higher if I'd been "allowed" to do what I wanted to do - i.e., drop out of school and go and work in the horse racing world - would've married myself a good posho by now!

That aside, I had access to the grammar school system and my uncle made it to Kings College via the grammar school system.

My grandfather made it from the slums of east london to do very well in the BBC, via the navy, by being allowed to "get the fuck on with it" rather than being "forced" to remain in education.

The acceptance that not everyone is academically gifted would be a jolly good start.

I was having this sort of discussion with someone the other day and we concluded that, being middle class, it is so easy to slip backwards. If you're monied and posh, being unemployed or living a bit randomly doesn't matter because there's money and contacts around to mop up. You'll keep the same friends and no doubt have a nice place to live no matter what you end up doing.

Us middling ones, however, can soon lose our foothold on the ladder. A wrong career choice, ill-health, losing job can all result in a step backwards. As can marrying "beneath" you. It could go either way.

Personally I remain in a similar position to the last generation of my family because of a grammar school and university education, a suburban upbringing and marriage to a person of similar background. (God! How boring am I?! - I swore this wouldn't be me when I was young...)

But what really did hold me back was a lack of contacts and decent advice. My family are all good at passing exams but crap at doing anything with them!

nepkoztarsasag - I know a few who did

1. Very expensive private education
2. St Andrews (failure, obv.)
3. Unemployed (scum, obv.)
4. Oh no, wait..

I was just answering the OP's question.

On grammar schools, one thing that rarely gets mentioned is that there are whole areas of the country which have retained a grammar/secondary modern school system (including very large ones like Kent).

If grammar schools made that much difference you'd expect bright but disadvantaged kids from these areas to have significantly better prospects/social mobility than those who grow up elsewhere.

Well, do they?

Dubious, because since grammar schools are in short supply people now flock to live in those areas.

When I lived in Bucks the 12+ (as it was then) was just one of those things you did. You passed, you failed... And my village school had a very mixed intake - all sorts.

Fast forward (ahem) 30+ years and the house prices are ludicrously high, people are hysterical about passing the (back to) 11+ and my old school is now, as someone brayingly described it, "practically a little prep school" .

So whereas I grew up in an area that had all sorts, now it is the domain of mainly City people, moving there for the grammar schools.

Yes, gramercy, the more pubs there are; the more bar stewards you get.

Watch out for the stunts

Maybe we should pose this question to Kate Middleton...

Coming from another country, I find this a tough one because people here have it so good, and you just don't realise it. My DH and I are working very hard to earn good salaries and hopefully get some good education for our child. More importantly, it will provide him with an opportunity to live in a society where you're not constantly afraid for your life, or of losing your possessions, or have no career prospect because of your race. But we are not London-based.

Technically I'm not sure stalking generally results in social mobility unless it's downward "prison" mobility you were after.

"people here have it so good, and you just don't realise it."

Ohhhh, how true is this. But people simply don't believe it.

"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."

what nonsense -- look at Labour's record on social mobility and you are looking at 100 pc failure

the internship thing is nonsense -- it's Labour's fuck up of the education system that's done for social mobility

"In a healthy society with equal opportunities the result should be good social mobility."

I'd say that in a healthy society social mobility shouldn't be necessary.

what a strange thing to say

are you a communist?

Glasnost.

Dh went to a sink comp from a deeply impoverished, socially deprived family.Seriously deprived. Went to Oxbridge, double first now director of a blue chip so super successful.

Me, deeply middle class background, ponies, big house, grammar school etc.

Far less successful academically than DH and professionally but still pretty successful.

If you ask DH what drives him it is one thing and one thing only. A desire to never, ever give his children the childhood he had.

If more people had his attitude and drive instead of blaming Thatcher/The Nasty Tories/schools/Nick Clegg then they might actually make something of themselves.

newwave: "all these measures have kicked away the ladder of opportunity"

if there is one thing that can be blamed for kicking away the ladder of opportunity, it is the almighty godforsaken fuck up of education by the last Labour government

"if the parents don't care in the first place, then government can introduce as much well meaning legislation as they like. It won't make the blindest bit of difference."

and if the curriculum relies on those parents to instil basic educational requirements it is failing already poor and neglected children

I voted Labour -- now I hate them for what they did to education

Over the last twenty years more money, greater equality , better teaching practice and resources have been invested in education. And still thousands fail and end up on benefits long term.

You only have to watch Jamie's Dream School to see that it is not schools or Govts that fail children, it is their familes and their own attitudes.

so we just leave them to fester?

no

Billions have been spent but to no good effect because the thrust of every policy has been "greater equality" the appearance of it, nothing substantive. It was all focussed on putting a veneer of success onto failure. Bad results became developing results, Cs became As, repeated resits and modules everyone pretended that meant success. Boys were abandoned. Primary schools failed to listen to children read, or drum in their times tables. Handwriting training was oppressive, chanting not creative enough. At the same time welfare dependency among NEETS became endemic.

I hate Labour for this.

oh buggeration

Billions have been spent but to no good effect because the thrust of every policy has been "greater equality" the appearance of it, nothing substantive. It was all focussed on putting a veneer of success onto failure. Bad results became developing results, Cs became As, repeated resits and modules. Everyone pretended that meant success. Boys were abandoned. Primary schools failed to listen to children read, or drum in their times tables. Handwriting training was oppressive, chanting not creative enough. At the same time welfare dependency among NEETS became endemic.

Timestables are pointless.

All you need are the powers of 2, 5 and 10 and the squares and you can work the rest out.

For some to come up others need to fall down. Mobility works in both directions.

Worse social mobility since the 60s is partly because the state education system seems to worsen.

There has been a lot in the press about how politicians got into the work they do. Some of it is inaccurate reporting. There are some professions where you don't get your first job because of who your mother or father is and where graduates are paid. Journalism isn't like that nor fashion and a lot of others but the careers with real money in them amazingly are the ones where it's your pure A level grades, ability to give a good interview and the like which count often with blind assessment on line first. In others nepotism and connections counts you out not in.

The everyone a winner, all As etc system hasn't really worked very well. To make chidlren have drive and ambition and to postpone what they want today (to watch TV etc) to get what they might get tomorrow - As in their exams or to rise to the top of where they work is what we're really looking at.

This country is a huge success compared ot its past in these respects. It is easier in 2011 than in 1911 to move class.

Education is part of it because if theyre' 16 or 18 and idle and badly educated it's much harder to integrate them into most work places. I suspect if the state schools copied elements of what the private schools do so well things might improve a bit.

Getting work experience is often hard and a lot of it done by younger children i a total waste of time and doesn't really motivate most of them and is a huge hassle for those who have to endure them. Ensuring they learn how to work though is good so perhaps those who might not get As and Bs at GCSEs when aged 14 - 16 should do school from 8 - noon and then work from noon to 6pm.

Coalition -- exaclty the attitude that's got us in a mess

"I suspect if the state schools copied elements of what the private schools do so well things might improve a bit."

yes sure especially at primary

agree social mobility is improved over 100 years but it's ground to a halt now

plus, we need to sort it out not just for the people being left behind

we need to sort it out because the rest of us, the ones borne into families that are able to help and given their children a bit of drive, the ones who had a decent education and valued it, we'll be paying for it financially and socially if we don't

one lost generation is enough

What do we mean by that though? For some to move up others need to fall back so surely you'd always have people at the bottom. There may be an issue of fairness - that it may be harder with the grammar schools to move poor children up but there won't be more at the bottom because of it - just that it will be the same ones at the bottom. We can't all go up without others going down.

I am not sure which are the issues htey are trying to address. If they mean getting people who have never worked in 3 generations back into work and reducing benefit claimants that is one issue. The second issue is whether we want fewer or more university students and if we want to make it harer for the rich or squeezed middle to go to university at the expense of the poor who have bad exam results and will do worse in work and making the companies they work for benefit.

If we are losing the very clever poor from top jobs and there is a hgue shortage of talented people from which our major banks and accountany firms etc can choose then there is a problem. If there are more than enough and we are not losing out abroad because we choose from too narrow a band of people then yes there's an issue.

Economics normally drives most things not ideology.

We need to get to clever chidlren b y age 3 when their languagei s forming otherwise is almost too late. By age 11 is usually is too late.