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Britain is indeed among the worst countries for certain measures of social mobility, with the parents’ wealth strongly influencing the child’s prospects of higher education and a good salary. (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2010)

http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/EDIF%202012--N9%20FINAL.pdf

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Growing up as a working-class girl in the UK

The UK has one of the widest attainment gaps in education within the developed world. This effectively means that if you are born in the UK to a family living in disadvantaged circumstances, you are much less likely to achieve your potential than your peers.

Many young people who grow up in an area that is considered a “cold spot” of social mobility – like many of the UK’s seaside towns and former coal mining communities – are caught up in cycles of deprivation. This affects their aspirations, academic self-confidence and adult life choices.

Most men work locally, while women marry local men young, have children and work part-time.

RESEARCH
Richards from Nottingham Trent University interviewed the girls about their dreams, hopes and fears for the future.They had all left primary school with dreams of adult lives involving exciting jobs and happy families. The reality was different.
Most had left school as soon as possible and taken different pathways to those originally planned, with some still having “no idea” what to do and feeling “lost”. Those who had early dreams of working in childcare, hairdressing, catering and social care had generally achieved this by attending college courses and taking local jobs.

Others, who had aspired to career paths that required university study and employment mobility – such as accountants, architects and lawyers – had often adjusted their plans as they progressed through secondary school and were now working locally.
These girls explained they felt they were not clever enough to do such jobs and were scared of moving away. All the girls I spoke with were worried about letting down their families – especially if their choices challenged community expectations of early marriage, motherhood and local employment.

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The UK has one of the widest attainment gaps in education within the developed world. This effectively means that if you are born in the UK to a family living in disadvantaged circumstances, you are much less likely to achieve your potential than your peers. And research shows it may take another 50 years to close this gap.

Many young people who grow up in an area that is considered a "cold spot" of social mobility - like many of the UK's seaside towns and former coal mining communities - are caught up in cycles of deprivation. This affects their aspirations, academic self-confidence and adult life choices.

My recently published research looks at the realities of what it's like to grow up in one of these areas. I spoke to 89 schoolgirls living in a former mining community - designated by the government to be within the UK's worst 10% in terms of deprivation.

In the community I looked at in my study, most men work locally, while women marry local men young, have children and work part-time. Travel outside the village is not usual - for work or for leisure. People go to the local town, but are unlikely to go much further - and not often to even the nearby city.

In this way, the community context has a more significant impact on girls' aspirations than boys. I found in my research that girls often just do what is expected because family ties and community expectations weigh heavy on their perceived options.

Spirals of division

For this study, I initially interviewed the girls about their dreams, hopes and fears for the future. I then returned eight years later to discover what influences had affected their decision making as they moved into young adulthood.

The research identified a complex set of challenges the girls had to manage. They had all left primary school with dreams of adult lives involving exciting jobs and happy families. The reality was different.

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Most had left school as soon as possible and taken different pathways to those originally planned, with some still having "no idea" what to do and feeling "lost". Those who had early dreams of working in childcare, hairdressing, catering and social care had generally achieved this by attending college courses and taking local jobs.

Others, who had aspired to career paths that required university study and employment mobility - such as accountants, architects and lawyers - had often adjusted their plans as they progressed through secondary school and were now working locally.

'Not good enough'

These girls explained they felt they were not clever enough to do such jobs and were scared of moving away. All the girls I spoke with were worried about letting down their families - especially if their choices challenged community expectations of early marriage, motherhood and local employment.

The role of families was important to the girls and several described how their families had found them local work. Others said their parents had encouraged them and had wanted better opportunities for them, but because the parents lacked the knowledge to support unfamiliar career choices, this was rarely productive.

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Those who did follow their dreams often drifted apart from friends and faced challenges from their families. And some only achieved success after moving away from the locality, which one girl described:

I feel distanced from the village, the community is very small and friends and family are a strong part of your everyday life. You have to accept that to go to uni, you'll have to be someone different, give up everything in a way.

Different lives

Most of the girls had chosen not to tell teachers about their career ambitions or any problems encountered at home and in school, through fear, embarrassment and lack of trust. Teachers were viewed as living very different lives to the girls and because they did not understand the complex challenges pupils faced, often gave inappropriate advice. Many of the girls also reported not feeling valued or respected in school by their peers and teachers.

Many of the girls also did not understand what was required of them to achieve their aspirations and had chosen exam subjects based on the teachers they liked. They also wished they had been more conscientious. Their teachers and parents had encouraged them to work harder, but they had not realised what this meant in reality.

What all this shows is that schools have an important role to play in closing this achievement gap. But studies suggest that teachers don't always fully understand how different life experiences interact to affect disadvantaged pupils' attainment. This needs to change.

Ultimately, pupils need to be able to trust teachers with their aspirations and talk about the problems they face - it is only then that their dreams can start to become reality.

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What it's like growing up as a working-class girl in the UK

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The UK has one of the widest attainment gaps in education within the developed world. This effectively means that if you are born in the UK to a family living in disadvantaged circumstances, you are much less likely to achieve your potential than your peers.

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Research from University College London that found £12,200 a year is the average spending on a privately educated primary pupil, compared with £4,800 on a state pupil. For secondary, it’s £15,000 compared with £6,200.

Society has got more unfair, and the gap between the rich and poor is a lot greater than it was even 30 years ago. We’ve got to move back instead of going further in the direction of austerity, which seems to be punishing the poor.

To make things worse, an analysis of Department for Education data reveals that schools with the highest numbers of pupils on free school meals are facing the deepest funding cuts: in secondary schools with more than 40% of children on free school meals, the average loss per pupil will be £803. That’s £326 more than the average for secondary schools as a whole. And primary schools with high numbers of working class pupils are expected to lose £578 per pupil.

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Black Britons and those of south Asian origin face "shocking" discrimination in the labour market at levels unchanged since the late 1960s, research has found.

A study by experts based at the Centre for Social Investigation at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, found applicants from minority ethnic backgrounds had to send 80% more applications to get a positive response from an employer than a white person of British origin.

A linked study by the same researchers, comparing their results with similar field experiments dating back to 1969, found discrimination against black Britons and those of south Asian origin - particularly Pakistanis - unchanged over almost 50 years.

The research, part of a larger cross-national project funded by the European Union and shared exclusively with the Guardian before its official launch, prompted concerns that race relations legislation had failed.
Racial bias in Britain - what it feels like | Kamran Ahmed and others
It echoes findings published as part of the Guardian's Bias in Britain series that people from minority ethnic backgrounds face discrimination when seeking a room to rent. In a snapshot survey of online flatshare ads the Guardian found that an applicant called Muhammad was significantly less likely to receive a positive response than an applicant called David.

Prof Anthony Heath, co-author and emeritus fellow of Nuffield College, said: "The absence of any real decline in discrimination against black British and people of Pakistani background is a disturbing finding, which calls into question the effectiveness of previous policies. Ethnic inequality remains a burning injustice and there needs to be a radical rethink about how to tackle it."

The researchers sent almost 3,200 applications to both manual and non-manual jobs - including software engineers, marketing, chefs and shop assistants - advertised on a popular recruitment platform between November 2016 and December 2017.

The study, which will be launched at the British Academy, London, on Friday, included 33 different minority ethnic groups, belonging to five broad groups. Additionally, two minority ethnic groups - Nigerian and Pakistani - were designed to have sufficiently large numbers of applications for separate analysis. Different ethnicity applicants were randomly assigned to different job vacancies - only one application was sent per post - and the number of callbacks/invitations for interview compared.

On average, 24% of applicants of white British origin received a positive response from employers, compared with 15% of minority ethnic applicants applying with identical CVs and cover letters. All of the minority applications clearly stated that they were either British-born or had arrived in the country by the age of six and had obtained all their education and training in Britain.

Minority ethnic applicants, including white minorities, had to send 60% more applications to get a positive response from an employer than a white person of British origin. While applicants originating from western Europe and the US were treated almost as well as the majority group, people of Pakistani origin had to make 70% more applications. The figures were even higher for those of Nigerian, Middle Eastern and north African (MENA) origin, at 80% and 90% respectively.

Dr Zubaida Haque, the deputy director of the race equality thinktank Runnymede, described the findings as shocking. They demonstrated that "it's not just covert racism or unconscious bias that we need to worry about; it's overt and conscious racism, where applicants are getting shortlisted on the basis of their ethnicity and/or name", she said.

"It's clear that race relations legislation is not sufficient to hold employers to account. There are no real consequences for employers of racially discriminating in subtle ways, but for BME applicants or employees it means higher unemployment, lower wages, poorer conditions and less security in work and life."

The researchers said the high levels of discrimination from countries with a sizeable Muslim population echoed "strong anti-Muslim attitudes recorded in recent surveys".

Dr Valentina Di Stasio, co-author and an assistant professor at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, said: "The persistent gaps in callbacks found for more visible and culturally distant minorities, regardless of the occupation considered or the information included in the application, suggest that employers may simply read no further as soon as they see a Middle East-sounding or African-sounding name."

As past field experiments did not include people from MENA countries, it could not be ascertained whether the level of discrimination against them had changed over time. Additionally, the historical comparison could only be done for non-manual jobs, due to insufficient past data on manual jobs.

Nevertheless, the authors described the evidence of enduring discrimination against some minority ethnic groups as striking given the passage of the Race Relations Act 1976 and that many of the earlier studies included applicants born abroad with some foreign education.

They said that while surveys had found declining racial prejudice among the public, the lack of change in the workplace reflected the continued presence of "employer stereotypes about the linguistic and work-related skills and motivations of minorities".

There were hints that discrimination against applicants of Indian origin may be in decline but the researchers said the sample size of people with Indian names in their study was too small to draw firm conclusions.

Responding to the results, Matthew Fell of the Confederation of British Industry said: "Any bias is bad for business. Companies must act now to eradicate all forms of discrimination, including any bias in recruitment."

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy also stressed the benefits of diversity, adding: "Last year, the prime minister launched a series of measures to help employers identify how to tackle ethnic disparities in the workplace, including a new race at work charter and a consultation on mandatory ethnicity pay reporting."
Topics

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Minority ethnic Britons face 'shocking' job discrimination

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Black Britons and those of south Asian origin face "shocking" discrimination in the labour market at levels unchanged since the late 1960s, research has found. A study by experts based at the Centre for Social Investigation at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, found applicants from minority ethnic backgrounds had to send 80% more applications to get a positive response from an employer than a white person of British origin.

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Barry Sugarman (1970) argues that middle-class and working-class children are socialised into different norms and values. Middle-class children are encouraged to plan for the future (deferred gratification) whereas working-class children are encouraged to live for the moment (immediate gratification). Deferred gratification is a big part of studying and training for a professional career.

Bonney, E., Cleasby, E., Keeley-Holden, S., Simpson, C. and Tate, R., 2016. A-Level Sociology. CGP Ltd.

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Immediate reward or delayed gratification - More Than Beauty Marketing

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The banking sector is another industry struggling with class issues, as many top banking graduates have missed out on positions because they lack ‘polish’. Various graduates with first-class degrees have claimed they’ve missed out on a job with excuses given including ‘looking uncomfortable in a suit’ and ‘having the wrong aura’.

These can be attributed to class perceptions which set up barriers for non-priveleged individuals. It’s not every banking institution though, Saffron Building Society and many others are all-inclusive, but the problem does persist elsewhere. Hopefully, the government will introduce and begin to enforce stricter class discrimination acts in the future to eliminate such barriers

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The same report discovered that over two-thirds of the job vacancies in legal and city firms were filled by university graduates who had been to private or grammar schools. Considering around 90% of all children go through the state school system, there is clearly an uneven trend going on, with class discrimination playing its part.

One of the problems is that many legal and city bosses will claim that they always want to hire the best candidate, not be forced to meet a quota. Plus, it can be harder to prove that someone missed out on a job due to class, rather than age, gender or race.

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The Equalities Act 2010 was introduced to make discrimination illegal within the workplace and when recruiting for new staff. This only covers discrimination based on age, gender, race, marital status, disability, religion, expecting or having a child and sexual orientation. Class and economic status are not included, meaning that technically there is nothing illegal about businesses not hiring people due to such circumstances.

There has been some pressure put on the government to reform the Equalities Act to include social class or economic status, but so far it has not gone through. While there are of course many firms that do not discriminate openly when recruiting about class, there is a lot of unconscious discrimination that goes on.

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Over 52% of HR managers and directors believe social class inequality occurs in the workplace, with 79% believing an unconscious bias to exist in recruitment and promotion opportunities.

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Does Class Discrimination Exist in the Jobs Market? | AllAboutCareers

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Upper class people are more likely to behave selfishly.
The higher a person's class, the more likely they were to tell lies in negotiations and cheat for money
Higher social classes more likely to lie, cheat, cut up other road users and not stop at pedestrian crossings.
STUDY 1
Researchers from University of California concealed themselves close to a crossroads in the Bay Area of San Francisco and spied on drivers who were expected to stop and wait their turn before driving on. Whenever a car arrived at the junction, the scientists ranked the driver's class on a scale of one to five according to the model, age and appearance of the car.

On average, 12.4% of the observed drivers failed to wait their turn and cut in front of other road users. Those in the less classy cars cut people up less than 10% of the time, but drivers in the most prestigious cars did so around one third of the time.

The researchers next recorded whether drivers stopped for a person who tried to walk across the junction using a pedestrian crossing. Drivers of the cheapest and oldest cars were most likely to slow down and give way, followed by those in average quality cars. But those in the most prestigious cars drove on regardless of the pedestrian around 45% of the time.
STUDY 2
In one study, 105 volunteers were asked to read eight stories that implicated a character in taking something that wasn't theirs, and comment on whether they would do the same. Their endorsement of wrongdoing rose with socioeconomic class, as ranked by income, education and occupation.
STUDY 3

Another study had volunteers play a computer game that simulated five rolls of a dice. The participants were asked to write down their total score, and told that a high score might earn them a cash prize. Even though the game was rigged to give everyone a score of 12, more upper class than lower class people reported higher scores.
STUDY 4

In a crucial last experiment, the scientists primed volunteers into seeing greed as good. They asked them to write down three ways in which it was beneficial, before answering questions on their likelihood of performing unethical acts. This time, the lower and higher classes scored the same, because those on the lower social rungs behaved worse after being primed.

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Upper class people are more likely to behave selfishly, studies suggest

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Higher social classes more likely to lie, cheat, cut up other road users and not stop at pedestrian crossings, say researchers

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Even within a comprehensive school, when they’re all in the same building, the working classes are still getting less education than the middle classes, just as they had when my dad was at school at the beginning of the 20th century.

England does not have an education system that is serious about realising the potential of all children, with those on free school meals and receiving pupil premium 27% less likely to achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C including English and maths. Four-fifths of children from working-class minority ethnic families are taught in schools with high concentrations of other immigrant or disadvantaged students – the highest proportion in the developed world.

According to a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Half of all free school meal children are educated in just a fifth of all schools.

Research suggests it is the wealth and inclination of parents, rather than the ability and efforts of the child, that have the most bearing on a child’s educational success today. “If you’re a working class child, you’re starting the race halfway round the track behind the middle class child. Middle class parents do a lot via extra resources and activities.”

Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/nov/21/english-class-system-shaped-in-schools