Category Archives: Social mobility

‘Ramen noodles budget’: EU moves to end exploitation of unpaid internships

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Unless from a wealthy family, internships for many mean chipping away at savings and cutting back on essentials

By day, he was mostly an unpaid intern, getting a glimpse of day-to-day life in university research as he networked with potential employers.

Nightfall would often send him rushing to his second shift; this time, at a library in the suburbs of Paris as he strives to pay his bills.

What we see is that, many times, they [internships] are actually replacing entry-level jobs

Tea Jarc, of the European Trade Union Confederation

Unpaid internships have really become a barrier for the social mobility of young people

María Rodríguez Alcázar, of the European Youth Forum

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Students should be told of university course job prospects, says commission

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Social Mobility Commission says students should be informed of ‘earnings implications’ of course choices

Students should be given more details about how the courses they study after leaving school might affect their employment prospects, it has been suggested, as figures show near-record numbers of 18-year-olds applying to university.

A review of research into the employment effects of higher and further education by the government’s Social Mobility Commission showed wide variations in earnings, with some courses failing to boost salaries, while the most lucrative courses for graduates often admitted few students in England from disadvantaged backgrounds.

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Muslims’ high unemployment rate ‘not due to cultural and religious practices’

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Study challenges idea poor outcomes are due to Muslims’ so-called ‘sociocultural attitudes’

Poor outcomes for Muslims in the British labour market cannot be explained by sociocultural attitudes, such as commitment to traditionalism, a study has found.

The research, published in the peer-reviewed Ethnic and Racial Studies journal, confirmed the existence of a “Muslim penalty” in the employment market but rejected previous suggestions that it was due to cultural and religious practices.

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London state school pupils train to take on private schools at rugby fives

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Bold experiment uses sport to boost social mobility while bringing organised games to state schools

St Paul’s and Winchester are facing a new rivalry at fives – the handball game that for hundreds of years has largely been the preserve of the most rarified public schools.

Children at Stoke Newington school in Hackney, east London, are leading a new wave of state school rugby fives players who have started training to take on their privileged counterparts in matches that will reach across one of the UK’s most entrenched social divides.

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Social mobility prospects for young people ‘disappearing’, says research

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Chances of homeownership and higher incomes undermined by pandemic and cost of living crisis

The postwar dream of doing better in life than your parents has faded, with the UK now a country where opportunities for upward social mobility and economic advancement are increasingly limited, research has claimed.

It contrasts with the golden age of social mobility enjoyed by the UK in the early years of the Queen’s reign when an expanding economy allowed a generation to take professional jobs and own their own homes.

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Restrict phones to improve child social mobility in UK, says commission chair

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Katharine Birbalsingh tells school leaders’ conference ‘all the problems start on smartphones’

Schools and parents can improve the social mobility of disadvantaged children by restricting access to smartphones, the chair of the government’s social mobility commission has said.

Katharine Birbalsingh told the Association of School and College Leaders annual conference: “If we genuinely want things to be fairer, and we want our disadvantaged children to be socially mobile, the best thing I can do for them is getting them not to have a smartphone.”

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Majority think Covid has increased UK social inequality, survey shows

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Social Mobility Commission says results show need for urgent action to stop gap growing even wider

Over half of the public believes the coronavirus outbreak has driven greater social inequality in the UK over the past few months, according to a study by the government’s independent advisers.

The Social Mobility Commission said its annual survey of public attitudes revealed 56% of adults believed social inequality had increased during the pandemic. A quarter said Covid had made no difference to inequality and 16% were unsure.

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Raising the bar: Hashi Mohamed’s journey from child refugee to top lawyer

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He defied a life of poverty and hardship to reach Oxford and become a barrister. Now Hashi Mohamed has written a book which aims to rethink the stalled project of social mobility


• Read an extract from Hashi Mohamed’s People Like Us

Hashi Mohamed is a 36-year-old barrister. He has the accent, a mentor once told of him, of someone who’s “been to Eton” and the confidence of a natural orator. If you had to place him within the complex matrix of the British class system, you’d probably say he was the son of wealthy Africans who attended an independent school and Oxbridge.

In fact, Mohamed is a Somali who was born in Kenya, where he lived in a rundown part of Nairobi with his four siblings (another having died), his mother (who also had six children from a previous marriage) and his travelling salesman father. When his father died in a car accident in 1993, Mohamed and three of his siblings were sent to England as refugees.

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