Tuesday 21 July 2009

End old-school-tie elitism over jobs says Alan Miburn

A report into social mobility said top professions such as medicine and law are increasingly occupied by people growing up in affluent families, the BBC said.

Alan Miburn, Former minister and Chairman of a study on widening access to high-status jobs, said bright children from middle and working class families are missing out on professional jobs because of continuing “elitism”, Gavin Cordon wrote on Press Association.

The study found out more than half of all the top professional jobs were still taken by candidates who were independently schooled, even though they accounted for just 7 per cent of all schoolchildren.

The study continued failure to break this pattern will mean the opportunity of achieving the most significant wave of social mobility since the Second World War will be lost, said Press Association.

In an interview with the BBC, Alan said young people in England should have access to much better careers advice to boost their ambitions.

Mr Miburn said: "We have raised the glass ceiling but I don't think we have broken through it yet."

He said the professions had a "closed shop mentality" and "have become more and not less exclusive over time”.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Mr Milburn called for "a second great wave of social mobility" like that of the 1950s and 1960s to match a projected growth in the number of managerial jobs.

He added it is not Britain does not have talent; to coin a phrase that Britain has lots of talents.

However, Daily Mail journalist Quentin Letts told the BBC that Mr Milburn was presenting an "Edwardian" view of the class system.

He argued: “If you only brought back selection into state schools and you had grammar schools again and you had a decent education system, people would be able to power though this.

“We have a country in which a former circus manager's son, John Major, became prime minister - don't talk about glass ceilings.”

The study was originally set up by Gordon Brown to examine the barriers to entering the professions, according to Press Association.

In more than 80 recommendations, it will argue enhancing social mobility must be the top social priority for any government, now and in the future.

The report will also show jobs currently from a relatively narrow section of society will increase in the future, up to nine out of 10 new jobs will coming from these professions.

According to the Press Association, the report will disclose the typical professional of tomorrow will be growing up in a family that is better off than seven out of 10 families in Britain, while occupations such as the law and finance are still dominated by people from independent schools.

Currently 75 per cent of judges and 45 per cent of senior civil servants were independently educated.

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