A BBC documentary in which Richard Bilton investigates how class continues to restrict access to professions and well-paid careers to a small, exclusive pool of the well-connected in modern Britain.
Having watched this programme on iplayer, I’m filled by a mixture of conflicting thoughts. For the purposes of this blog, I am leaving the question of what a ‘best job’ looks like for another time.
Firstly, I have to say, I am not hugely surprised by its findings and I doubt many people would be. However, it has given me an opportunity to think about my own experience of education and work and how I have made choices over the last few years to further that experience.
First of all, I have clearly been very fortunate throughout my early years to have been in a family which understood the value of education, even though that led to what seemed at times, a never ending, financial struggle for my parents to provide the best education they could for both my brothers and myself. I was also fortunate to have been going to secondary school, just before the ‘assisted place’ scheme was scrapped at private schools – not something my parents voted for but they realised that whilst it was there, it was worth using.
So, from the age of four, my parents paid for me to have the various dance lessons and individual music lessons (with gratefully received sponsorship from my Grandma); something that none of my classmates did and for which I was bullied as a result. And then from the age of 11 – 18 I went to the prestigious Manchester High School for Girls – again the only girl from my junior school to apply, never mind get a place.
As the programme highlights, from that point on had a significant advantage to my junior school classmates. Never one for conforming I was dragged through the process of secondary schooling, achieving almost against my will as a stroppy teenager because in ‘that sort of school’ even the failures are achieving results within the top few percent of the country! I made a few good friends, but never felt like I quite belonged there; partly to do with the amount of wealth I was surrounded by, but also an ideology geared towards ‘academic success’ and getting the ‘best jobs’.
I didn’t want to be a doctor or lawyer, or go to Oxbridge. In fact, worst of all, I didn’t know what I wanted! I just knew that I liked creating things – I loved music and art lessons, and history – when we were finally encouraged to think critically about the information we gathered in order to create an argument rather than learn banal facts that had no current impact on peoples’ lives. Unfortunately, as you may read here, I wasn’t brilliant at turning my critical thinking in a coherent written essay. I also discovered things about my personality through those ‘end of term’ days when we were put into groups of different ages across the school and given a variety of different tasks which challenged our problem solving, team work and creativity: This is where I achieved! Teachers noticed, and were kind enough to let me know, that I was very good at group work – communicating ideas, supporting team members and leading people when necessary with considerable patience and enthusiasm.
I have little way of knowing whether I would have had that space to discover those skills in a mainstream secondary school, or whether I would have felt like such a failure at the same time – as one who was always at the bottom of the class but had no idea what that meant nationally. However, I can be fairly certain that by being at that school, I was able to go on to York University and discover my calling as a musician and educationalist. I don’t believe that as a teenager I personally had the drive or determination I would have needed to achieve academically in a less competitive school such as the one my friends from junior school went to, although I did meet some of them again at University showing that it was possible for some people.
Ironically, I only discovered that ‘drive’ during my MA year when I finally saw the possibilities of education through non-formal practice: either working in the community or taking non-formal delivery into the classroom. From thereon, I feel proud of my achievements - working very hard to fund my further education, build experience through voluntary and badly paid placements and making the most of every opportunity: reflecting on good and bad experiences, observing other people, forcing myself to ‘network’ and present myself with confidence and enthusiasm even on the days I didn’t feel like it!
And all of this has led me to a job that I love – one that is about turning round this trend from which I have benefitted but chosen to use in a different way. My job is about giving those opportunities for children to discover themselves; their personality, unique skills and creativity, which can encourage them to achieve the lives they choose and aspire to. And my ‘best job’ is about making this possible for children in the most deprived areas of the North West, throughout areas of Manchester and Lancashire where I have lived and belonged.
The programme suggests that these children have even less possibility of achieving those ‘best jobs’ even than from when I was at junior school. And whilst I don’t doubt there is a worrying trend in social mobility I work daily in a sector geared towards skilling and inspiring children and against the odds of funding and political support I am privileged to see those moments when children discover a sense of themselves and their skills which are exactly the moments which have led me to be the me I am now.
I continue to hope that there are enough people working against the odds, and that the evidence from Sing Up, Creative Partnerships and many other such programmes of work is now too considerable to be ignored for any significant length of time. Let’s hope that either the government sees sense, or the political climate changes before all of this work is undermined by considerable damage to funding streams and/or the infrastructures enabling this work, which have taken years to develop.
