Class barriers keep poor out of professional careers

November 15, 2013 8:10 pm

Class barriers keep poor out of professional careers

By Elizabeth Rigby, Deputy Political Editor

The poorest Britons have no better chance of becoming a doctor, lawyer or accountant than they did almost 20 years ago, according to social mobility indicators seen by the Financial Times. The revelations, contained in a set of 17 trackers drawn up by Nick Clegg’s office to measure the coalition’s progress on improving life chances for disadvantaged people, also show that the most deprived children are still significantly behind their more privileged peers on the day they start school. The findings will add weight to growing public and political anxiety about the lack of social mobility in the UK.The deputy prime minister, who has made improving the life chances of poorer children his personal priority, said the indicators showed that the government still had a “a long way further to go” to create a nation where “what counts is how hard you work and the skills and talents you possess, not the school you went to, or the jobs your parents did.”

Sir John Major, David Cameron and William Hague have all weighed into the debate after Alan Milburn, the social mobility tsar warned in his first annual “state of the nation” report that social mobility risked “going in to reverse” without action from the government and business leaders to tackle low pay.

Mr Cameron said he wanted to create a Britain where everyone should be able to “get to the top” regardless of background, responding to Sir John’s lament that the dominance of privately educated people in public life was “truly shocking”. Mr Hague said on Friday it was “disturbing” that social mobility had gone into reverse over the past three decades.

Disparity between children is already showing when they enter school aged four or five, according to the indicators. The “school readiness” gap between children eligible for free school meals and all other pupils rose slightly from 18.4 per cent to 18.8 per cent between 2010-11 and 2011-12, with just under half of those receiving free school meals achieving a “good level of development” compared to 67 per cent of all other pupils.

Meanwhile, the gap between more advantaged groups and the rest of society entering the professions has remained unchanged at 23 per cent since 1996 to 2009, according to the most recent figures from Whitehall.

The coalition has introduced 15 hours a week of free childcare to 130,000 two-year-olds from the poorest families from this September and will double this to include just over quarter of a million disadvantaged children from next September, a policy that it hopes will help narrow the gap.

But there are some glimmers of hope in the data. The attainment gap between disadvantaged children and other pupils at the age of 11 has narrowed from 20 per cent to in 2010-11 to 16.8 per cent in 2011-12 and the gap is also narrowing for those aged between 16 and 19. That suggests that a £2.5bn pupil premium scheme, which channels extra funding to needy pupils, is making a difference.

Simon Burgess, director of Bristol university’s Centre for Market and Public Organisation and a professor of economics, said the indicators nudging up or down did not reveal very much about the long-term trends in social mobility: “These give sparks of hope but you shouldn’t get too carried away. Long-term change is essential.”

Mr Milburn, who chairs the government appointed Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, told the Financial Times that he was pleased the prime minister had waded into the debate.

“There’s been lots of talk. Now it’s time for the government as a whole to put its muscle, not just its mouth, behind the issue,” he said.

“It is a corrosive idea to say that nothing can be done about this, that it is impossible that global forces are beyond the reach of government, employers and anyone else. Government can set the debate and have a profound effect.”