Social mobility has stalled, but Labour wants equal opportunities for all
|
Version 0 of 1. l’ll never forget going for an interview at the BBC and being told I wasn’t from an “under-represented demographic”. When I asked how many Bradford-born, free-school-meal kids they had on air, the executive looked rather embarrassed. As Alan Milburn’s latest report on social mobility is published, one fact remains clear: if you’re born poor in Britain you are more likely to stay poor than in many other wealthy countries. That is why it is so important that the best opportunities, life chances and jobs are open to people regardless of their start in their life – and that means measuring the problem. In the weeks to come I will be teaming up with Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, to ask questions about how we improve every child’s chances of getting on in our country. If we don’t ask the right questions we will never learn any lessons, our top institutions will remain shut off, and young people from working class backgrounds will remain shut out. But let me give the government some credit. Since 2011, the civil service “fast stream” recruitment statistics have contained a breakdown by social background, arrived at by asking applicants what school they went to and what type of work their parents do. As the fast stream’s chief assessor, Phil Wilson, explained: “We wanted to focus on social mobility from one generation to the next. We look at the results and we’re very aware they’re a signpost for action.” But, rather than burying the results, political leaders must now discuss where this “signpost” leads. Only 7% of young people attend private schools, and fewer than 5% attend grammar schools, but combined, they accounted for 44% of 2013’s UK-schooled fast stream applicants, and 46% of those who succeeded. No wonder more than half of the current Whitehall permanent secretaries went to fee-paying schools. On the question of parental occupation, the figures are even more stark. The civil service uses the same method as the Office for National Statistics to identify the socio-economic status of occupations, splitting them into higher, intermediate and routine; what most people call upper, middle and working class. You can also see that 30 out of 864 fast stream recruits in 2013 were from routine households, compared to 678 recruits with parents in the higher professions. For the top fast stream posts in Whitehall and the diplomatic corps, applicants from middle- and upper-class households had a combined success rate of one in 28. For the 661 graduates from working-class backgrounds, that fell to a scarcely believable one in 220 – just three successes in total. To put that into perspective, the University of Dundee got as many students on to the top scheme as all Britain’s working-class households put together, and only needed 46 applicants to do it. There is clearly something wrong here, and we need action. First, social background must be given the same attention as the other measures of diversity monitored by the civil service – gender, ethnicity and disability. If any of those were as far out of kilter with the population as a whole, there would be external uproar and internal inquiries, not just a shrug of the shoulders. Second, as I proposed at Labour’s conference in Manchester, we must extend the monitoring of social background to other top recruitment schemes across the public sector so we can see comparable figures for the BBC, the armed forces, the police and the judiciary. Third, the civil service must look at these figures, examine comparable graduate schemes outside the public sector, and ask themselves not just why they are currently getting their fast stream recruitment processes wrong, but how others are managing to get them right. Law firm Clifford Chance has introduced a blind CV programme whereby applicants are not asked where they studied but instead for an essay demonstrating what they can do. As a result, the number of successful candidates who were the first in their families to attend university has risen sharply. I know that some people see the monitoring of social background, and any resulting changes to recruitment practices, as a threat. One Tory MP recently asked me: “So would I get sacked because I’m middle class and I went to private school?” I explained that this isn’t about stopping the 7% of young people who go to private schools from getting top jobs, it’s just about ensuring the other 93% gets to compete fairly for them as well. The MP replied: “Well I hear the social mobility point, but you know …” I didn’t reply because no, I don’t know. To suggest that there isn’t as much talent among the 93% as there is in the 7% seems to me more than a little ridiculous. But, unlike gender, race and disability, social background isn’t something you can see in the flesh, or can always gauge from the limited information on a CV. That is why asking the questions of applicants is a necessary first step. The principle is simple: there should always be room at the top for anyone with talent, regardless of their background. And if that is not happening, if the vast majority of kids who attend comprehensive schools – working class and middle class alike – are not getting a fair crack of the whip, we need to ask why. That’s exactly what we will be doing in the next few weeks. We know politicians don’t have all the answers, but we’re determined to learn lessons so that when we are elected we can ensure Britain has the ladders for everyone to climb. |