Top professions becoming more socially exclusive

This morning, former minister Alan Milburn released the results of a study for the Prime Minister on widening access to high-status jobs. He said that young people in England should have access to much better careers advice to boost their ambitions. He said the professions had a ‘closed shop mentality’ and ‘have become more and not less exclusive over time’.

If you want to be a lawyer, doctor, accountant or top civil servant, then it helps massively if your family is wealthy and you attended public school. Not exactly a revelation but the social mobility gap is getting worse according to a report by the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions.

It found that more than half of professional occupations like law and finance are currently dominated by people from independent schools – which are attended by just over 7% of the population.  

These aspirational professions are becoming more socially exclusive than ever, affecting not only young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, but also those from average income families.

The government has estimated that seven million new 'professionals' will be needed by 2020, so it's up to employers in these sectors to up their game and cast their recruitment net farther and wider.

Final recommendations are due later in the year but it's clear that the situation is not healthy and can't remain as it is. So what more can be done to reverse this trend?  

“At Digby Morgan, says director Matthew Chester, “we believe that everyone should be familiar and compliant with equal opportunities and diversity legislation and in this respect the recruitment net should already being cast far and wide. At the heart of what we’re talking about here, we feel, is the issue of aspiration and ensuring that students from all backgrounds have the requisite self confidence/belief and ‘get up and go’ to believe that they can achieve – both academically and in their career choice. Arguably, this is something that private education does well and is something that the State system should emulate and university careers services should promote amongst candidates from all backgrounds.  

“University Careers services need to play a larger and more influential part in helping to guide potential from various backgrounds to prospective employers. Gradually we are seeing a change in careers services from providing a library service to becoming much more involved in being the link between further education and employers. Employability co-ordinators in careers services could be an influential catalyst in bucking the trend and employers should make the most of getting involved with this developing opportunity to widen the social recruitment fishing pond.”

This was written by Matthew Chester, Director, Digby Morgan

Comments

Rachel Weymouth on 21 July 2009 17:29:40

This is a very pertinent topic which is starting to be addressed at a grass roots level by Universities not instantly associated with producing PS/FS graduates. They seem to be approaching this issue of employability from a number of different angles. Key to changing attitudes is reaching out to students who would not normally seek careers advice; these are often the most likely to need assistance as they may not have previously come from an educational/family back ground which encourages aspiring to traditionally elite professions. It is also vital to engage employers at an early stage so that they can interact with students whom they may not usually find in their recruitment pools in order to allow both parties to learn more about each other and break down stereotype. Through showing employers the employability of students outside of their standard sources of recruitment and giving students the belief that they are employable by employers they may not instinctively have considered, careers services are starting to make changes.