"Professions reserved for rich" is the headline and the social mobility report seems to indicate thatit is ever more difficult to get into the professions - medicine, law and journalism being those cited. Shock, horror - large swathes of judges and senior civil servants were independently educated! So were quite a lot of politicians of all persuasions. Leading universities must take account of the social background of pupils, particularly those at low-achieving schools when looking at admissions, they say.
Well, that has got me going again, I have to say. Firstly, journalism, however good, is not one of the professions, and the current state of the British media puts it firmly below advertising copywriters in my opinion.
Secondly, is this bashing the public schools again? Some of them are very good, many put time into pupils who need that bit of extra tuition as they are not all that bright, so what people are paying for is smaller class sizes and better discipline. When I was at school, Eton was often described as a fee paying comprehensive, as selection was limited to those winning scholarships. What they do seem to give young people are social skills, producing vibrant and articulate young people who are not afraid to follow a less popular course (being clever, good at sport or good at classical music).
However how do you determine social background accurately? One of the best determinants of a child's academic performance is the academic performance of its parents, but universities are unlikely to get away with asking prospective candidates about the grades their parents got at A level and degree. It is also not related to the social class of the parents, which is generally determined by occupation. The Standard Occupation Classification puts Managers in a high SOC group (1, 2 and 3 - Managers, professionals and associate professionals respectively) but a manager can cover a multitude of sins, while associate professionals can also cover some occupations that do not require a degree. When I was applying for Polytechnic, my parents' occupations were respectively retired and cook, and if one takes the application of social grouping to those occupations, I would have been down in the lower brackets, even though my father was an artist (up there in social terms) and my mother was a cordon bleu chef. Occupation doesn't really do it therefore.
If we look at educational attainment, that is far more likely to be a good determinant, but until there is a good retrospective database of qualifications, it is likely to be skewed. We are frequently told that people lie about their qualifications on CVs and job applications. In any case, it won't cope with the City types for example who made shed-loads of money without having qualifications, but can afford to pay for public schools.
And what about all those exceptions - those who made good despite a "poor" background and ill-educated parents, or those who didn't benefit from their fortune of having wealthy or well educated parents?
A yong person at age 17 or 18 wants to stand for something themselves - forget their parents and the money - look at their grades, their ambition and the quality of the school they went to and its performance. High grades at a high performing school is expected and the young person deserves well, but high grades and a poor performing school and the young person deserves the best.
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