Nothing demonstrates the failure of the government’s educational policies better than the fact that the only way they can think of promoting social mobility is to try to “hobble children” who have the “slightest whiff of privilege about them”, says Rowan Pelling in The Daily Telegraph. The government’s White Paper on social mobility sees “attack dog” Alan Milburn chairing a review on working-class entry to the top professions plus “iniquitous” internships, which favour the children of the rich and well-connected. There’s also a proposal – dubbed ‘socialism in one clause’ by one excitable cabinet minister – from Harriet Harman to impose a statutory ‘duty’ on the public sector to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
There’s actually plenty that is sensible in the White Paper, says The Times, notably the proposal to pay teachers working in the most deprived schools an additional £10,000, but “lurking in the document is a battle-cry for a return to class warfare”. Restarting the class war is “the last refuge of a Labour government freefalling without a parachute”, says Max Hastings in the Daily Mail. Labour knows that the middle-class will never forgive this government for destroying its savings and creating economic misery, which is why it is showering “money and blandishments on those towards the bottom of the scale, who might yet be persuaded to vote for it”.
Sure, we all want social mobility, but it will not happen because Gordon Brown imposes university admission quotas on the children of parents who are “deemed excessively middle-class”. It will happen, however, when state schools once again produce well-mannered, disciplined, literate and numerate children. In the 1950s – “a golden age of opportunity” – almost 40% of those born to the poorest parents grew up to become higher earners. By 1970, and ever since, only one third achieved this. “It cannot be coincidence that, in between, Harold Wilson’s government abolished grammar schools.”
Precisely, agrees Melanie Phillips, also in the Daily Mail. One of the reasons that these controversial internships have mushroomed is that with “crashing academic standards producing absurdly vast numbers of top grades”, employers rely on them to identify the best candidates. Maybe, says Johann Hari in The Independent. But the people who get those internships – and can afford to work unpaid for months at a stretch – are those with rich parents and good connections. This isn’t just bad for the people shut out; it’s bad for the professions and the country. “Talent is distributed throughout the country.” If the playing field can be levelled, for example with government subsidies, so much the better.
“Moves to make the privileges enjoyed by middle-class children more easily shared by others are always rebuffed with fury by potential losers,” says Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. It is obvious that if more comprehensive school children go to Oxbridge and the top professions there will be fewer places for private school pupils. But something has to be done. The fact is that in Britain, “birth is destiny for almost everyone”. The most socially mobile countries are those with the most equal distribution of wealth – the Nordic countries and Japan. And that is why Harman’s law gets to the “root of the question”. Maybe, says The Daily Telegraph, but you can’t legislate against class inequality in the same way as, say, race. Her proposal is “hokum”.