Social mobility and perils of connections

12 April 2012

Social mobility is one of those things that everyone in politics professes to want more of, but as Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is finding to his cost, it pays to be careful how you go about achieving it.

His campaign against those who use social connections to help their children get work experience and his attack on the City as a place where contacts get you jobs took an early tumble when this paper revealed that his own father had helped him get a job in a bank. Mr Clegg says that the practice was of its time and wrong. If it is, then it is a fault of which people from every background are culpable.

The Cabinet is full of examples of individuals, including David Cameron, who got ahead with help from family and friends. Trying to abolish the practice is doomed to failure or hypocrisy. How many MPs use the services of unpaid interns? Only the well-off can afford to work without pay. Mr Clegg makes much of abolishing the practice of granting internships on the basis of personal recommendation in Whitehall, yet this is not a notable problem in the civil service. Outside it, informal placements on the basis of who you know are a fact of life.

This is not to say that Mr Clegg is wrong to focus on improving social mobility, which stalled under Labour. But there are better ways to go about it. Education is the most effective instrument of mobility; raising the standards of state schools in deprived areas, which the pupil premium is designed to achieve, is the best way to get poor children into good universities. That was one thing grammar schools managed to do.

Yet as the Russell Group of universities has pointed out, many state schools have failed their pupils by directing them towards soft, non-academic subjects, rather than offering them single sciences, classics and languages, which would equip them to enter the best universities. Meanwhile the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that training in social skills such as time-keeping should be taught, to raise mobility. It also points out that employees with good literacy and numeracy get higher rewards here than in many other countries.

Mr Clegg is right to want to close the gap between social groups. Trouble is, he has identified the wrong end of the problem. Give unprivileged children a rigorous education and they will get their own feet in the right doors.

This vote matters

The referendum about introducing a modest form of proportional representation in Britain - AV - is now less than a month away. It has not yet become a subject of heated public debate - but it should. As we report today, if AV were introduced it could have a marked impact on the outcome of elections in London. The New Economics Foundation has found that no fewer than 10 seats in the capital could change hands under an AV system. In a closely fought general election, these could make all the difference.

The issue is so important that this paper is hosting a debate on it this evening which will address the subject through lively controversy. One of the most interesting features of this subject is that it cuts across the usual party divisions. This is an issue that really does deserve full debate, because it could change our politics for ever.

The Dispossessed

This paper's campaign on behalf of London's most vulnerable groups was recognised at last night's British Press Awards. But this campaign, of which we are very proud, could only have been possible with the support and donations from you, our readers. Thank you.

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