How a complacent elite and years of school failure have dimmed the bright lights of opportunity
Social mobility is one of the defining qualities of an open, democratic society. We like to think we live in a country where success is not merely a matter of birth and breeding, and where every man and woman can rise as far as their talents allow.
For decades after World War II, many people believed that the class prejudices of the past were dying out.
In an age of full employment and expanding opportunities, we seemed to be building a genuinely meritocratic Britain, governed by self-made state-school pupils such as Jim Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
Political elite: With their privileged background MPs should be doing more to ensure that those with talent are able to progress in our society
But how times have changed.
For now, a devastating report by the Commons All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility has exposed the sad death of opportunity in an increasingly class-bound Britain.
To anyone who believes social mobility is the fuel that drives a truly free, enterprising and productive society, the report makes shocking reading.
According to MPs, Britain has the worst social mobility rate in the Western world. They quote figures showing that, shamefully, half of all British youngsters’ prospects are predictable from those of their parents — which effectively means they are no longer getting on and making their way in life on their own merit.
By contrast, only 17 per cent of Australian children and 15 per cent of Danish children follow so closely in their parents’ footsteps.
Even American, French and Italian children, it emerges, are more likely to lift themselves out of poverty.
Two other aspects of the Commons report stand out.
One is that inequality is ingrained at such a shockingly young age. By the age of three, British children are already defined by their class.
It seems we are destined to become our parents: Half of all British youngsters' prospects are predictable from those of their parents
Depressingly, three-year-old children in poor households have a smaller vocabulary, are less likely than others further up the social scale to be read to by their parents and are even less likely to go to bed at set times.
The other disheartening — though not especially surprising — revelation is that in many ways, Britain is actually going backwards thanks to the wreckage of opportunity in the past few decades.
In recent years, politicians of both main parties have queued up to boast about their achievements at getting so many teenagers to university, with New Labour loudly trumpeting its target of encouraging 50 per cent of school leavers into tertiary education.
Yet the shocking truth is that the gap has actually widened.
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In 1981, the richest fifth of Britain’s teenagers were three times more likely to go to university than the poorest fifth.
Two decades later they were five times more likely to go — a sign of the growing gulf between rich and poor.
What makes this so depressing is that half a century ago, Britain really did appear to be an increasingly meritocratic country. In the Fifties and Sixties, ordinary families’ lives were transformed by mass affluence, state education and full employment.
For bright, working-class children who passed the 11-plus, grammar schools offered an invaluable hand up the ladder.
And although the alternatives — the much-criticised secondary moderns — were far from ideal, Britain’s booming manufacturing industries meant there were always plenty of jobs and opportunities for those who either did not want to go on to university, or were not suited to doing so.
The contrast with today’s Britain could hardly be starker.
Today, more than a million people under 25 are out of work, while the gap between rich and poor often seems a chasm.
Many ordinary people feel the dice are loaded against them even before they start school, let alone before they enter the job market.
As they tighten their belts and sacrifice their ambitions, they find themselves being led by a Coalition Cabinet of millionaires, most of whom went to private schools and inherited their wealth from their parents.
That there are so few self-made men and women in the highest echelons of government is nothing short of a national embarrassment.
Refocus: The government needs to give more funding into training programs for more manual skills in order to reduce the number of people unemployed
And precisely because they have been so fortunate, ministers ought to feel an overwhelming moral obligation to help those less privileged than themselves. Of course, it is ridiculous to imagine that the Government can simply wave a magic wand and conjure up a world with equal opportunities for all.
Blair failed to close the inequality gap despite putting billions into Sure Start centres and New Deal projects
During the New Labour years, for example, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown threw billions at Sure Start centres and New Deal projects — to help working-class children and the young unemployed — yet the gap continued to widen.
According to Mr Blair himself, his great goal was ‘to put middle-class aspirations in the hands of working-class families and their children to open up opportunity to the many and not the few’.
On the surface, this seemed a natural aspiration for the leader of a self-styled people’s party.
Yet the shocking reality is that behind the rhetoric, inequality under New Labour actually became worse than ever.
Even as Mr Blair was wining and dining the international super-rich, his own voters were falling ever further behind.
All the same, our privileged politicians could make a start by ensuring that all children have the chance to go to a good school with strict discipline, high standards and a genuine respect for old-fashioned educational values.
As long ago as 1964, Labour’s Harold Wilson promised ‘grammar schools for all’ — which, like most political pledges, was not worth the paper it was written on. But it is high time that promise was put into effect.
Every child deserves a fair start in life — and a decent, rigorous and disciplined education is the very least parents should expect.
Next, the Government should abandon the long-running and totally misguided fixation with stuffing our universities with young people — many of whom, instead of doing genuinely vocational subjects, waste three years studying subjects such as sociology, cultural anthropology, or, God help them, celebrity journalism.
David Beckham: A great footballer, but a useless university degree subject. We must re-focus on training for much needed skills instead of token degrees
Not everybody should go to university. Yes, there must always be places for the most talented people, regardless of their background — although the foolish policy of positive discrimination risks turning university admissions into second-rate social engineering.
But the truth is that we in Britain ought to be making things, rather than wasting time on balderdash like David Beckham Studies.
For far too long we have looked down on technical qualifications. If we once again want to be a manufacturing economy, we should follow the example of the most enterprising and industrious people in Europe, the Germans, and invest heavily in technical schools, apprenticeships and business partnerships.
The Treasury should be doing more to encourage small businesses and budding entrepreneurs, the wealth-creators on which our economy depends.
And, equally important, it should be doing far more to help young families desperate to get on the property ladder.
The notion of Britain as a ‘property-owning democracy’ has been part of Tory rhetoric since the Twenties.
Most experts recognise that home ownership is one of the keys to a stable, prosperous, hard-working society — and a means for those with talent and dedication to advance both socially and materially as they move up the housing ladder.
And yet in the past decade, home ownership among people in their 20s has steadily fallen.
Pipe dream: Many young people find it impossible to get onto the property ladder and for many, owning their own home is now seen only as a dream
Today, many young couples simply cannot afford homes of their own. At the very least, therefore, the Government ought to abolish stamp duty for first-time buyers.
Of course, all of this would merely represent a start.
No one should pretend that we can reverse the decline of social mobility overnight.
Official figures show that inequality has been growing for more than 35 years, and it will take a long time to turn back the tide. But that does not mean we should not try — for if the gap continues to widen, then anger and frustration will continue to build.
In essence, this issue boils down to two things: schools and jobs. For too long our political masters have been failing on both counts.
But who has lost out? Not the politicians, whose cosseted lives seem increasingly remote from the experience of most ordinary voters.
The losers have been millions of ordinary British families, their frustration growing as the bright lights of opportunity fade into darkness.
It is high time we turned the lights back up.