Social mobility requires more than funneling state schoolers into the professions

By Jake Hayman / @JakeHayman

This article has been amended slightly from the original.

Yesterday the Milburn Commission released its report into social mobility. The brunt of the blame for our palpably unequal society was felt by the careers advisory service, Connexions, but the charge of transforming young people with no interest in having a career into aspirant young doctors and lawyers isn’t just impossible, it’s also wrong.

We may take the apparent dearth of working class lawyers as our emblem for change, but, the answer to the problems this illustrates must be sought through a wider, cultural change. I can forgive Connexions for seeing itself as a ‘does what it says on the tin’ careers advisory service, rather than the organisation responsible for the fairness of our society, but I will not forgive the Government for losing a generation of workers because they can’t commit to a solution out of the 20 or so tidy recommendations Alan Milburn has made.

The answer lies in taking wider steps to build community, identify role models and celebrate success as defined by anyone who is able to find fulfilment in their work – to embrace its challenges and opportunities. Mr. Milburn is right, we do need a culture of role models, but we don’t just need schools full of burgeoning lawyers, we need them full of nurses and architects, journalists, plumbers and firemen. We need them full of people doing jobs which are right for them. We must create a culture of excitement about the potential in every young person so that when they seek advice they do so with a lust to find the direction that might be right for them.

In 2008, Future First was launched to create exactly that. After running a series of focus groups into how young people themselves would like to receive careers advice a new revolutionary approach to careers advice was formed. Young people want careers advice from ‘people who are actually in those jobs’, ‘people like me’ and with good technology to back it up.

And so Future First was created to establish grassroots networks of former students from any given school to come back and talk about what they are doing and how they got there. People like me. The internet will be used to network former students and aspiring job-seekers. A community is being built that taps into the wealth of localised resources that already exist but have never been utilised.

We do lack aspiration in this country but not in the way that most people presume. Yes, there are young people who feel ostracised from professions dominated by the elites, but this only tells a fraction of the story. There is a deeper, more problematic and damaging lack of aspiration, across all classes, to utilise our unique potential and find fulfilment in our work. Today’s young people are from a generation who only know people who hate their jobs and are resigned to either employment or unemployment, and no positive distinctions between the two. So long as the world of work is seen only as a necessary evil, no real progress can be made by telling them all they can be lawyers.

Careers advice should not be about getting out the Big Book of Careers and asking a kid ‘what do you want to do?’ and then helping them plot a linear path from where they are today to reaching their highest aspiration. We need to facilitate a cultural aspiration to see the world of work as one where our talents can be applied and our potential filled.

Jake Hayman is CEO of The Social Investment Consultancy and founder of FutureFirst.