Where have all the yuppies gone?

Dec 17 2007 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

ASK anyone who has lived through the past 30 years or more and they will concur that life in Britain has changed by an astonishing amount. Most of the old certainties have gone, yet one aspect which has remained entrenched and seemingly immovable is the stark gap between rich and poor, which is as rigid as it was in the 1970s.

The collapse of Britain’s indigenous heavy industries, the rise of service industries, the dot.com revolution and changing life patterns has failed to make in-roads on these inequalities.

This is also in spite of the Government pouring billions of pounds into education and health to try and mitigate these conditioning factors.

There is no evidence children born into deprived homes are any more likely to escape the poverty gap than they were 30 years ago, claims a report from the London School of Economics for the Sutton Trust charity.

Just last week, a further £1bn was pumped into improving the education, health and welfare of poor pupils as part of the Government’s Children’s Plan.

By the time a child is seven years old, bright children from poor backgrounds will be overtaken at school by less gifted pupils raised in the wealthier families. Once again, the UK again commands its increasingly familiar place at the bottom of the international leagues tables, this time for social mobility, as children face “stark inequalities” from birth, says the report.

Equally gloomy is the realisation that the Government has focused educational resources over the past decade on to the poorest sections of society, including a new series of Sure Start Children’s Centres, increased investment for schools in deprived areas, and cash to persuade poorer students into university.

Unsurprisingly, it was revealed that middle-class teenagers have benefited the most from a recent expansion in higher education.

Taking an overview of research papers published over the past 50 years, the survey discovered that there was a sharp fall in social mobility between 1958 and 1970.

Although the class divide has not worsened greatly since then, there is no evidence of any improvement in this situation, say the researchers.

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, claims that these survey results are so alarming they require an independent inquiry into breaking down the UK’s class barriers.

“Shamefully, Britain remains stuck at the bottom of the international league tables when it comes to social mobility,” says Sir Peter.

“It is appalling that young people’s life chances are still so tied to the fortunes of their parents and that this situation has not improved over the last three decades.

“This is an issue which requires action on a broad front over a long period – it is too important to be used as a political football.”

Former education secretary Alan Johnson claims that government reforms from 1997 resulted in children having a much better chance of escaping the limitations of their backgrounds.

In contrast, the report refutes this. It is emphatic that “parental background exerts a significant influence on the academic progress of recent generations of children”.

Of course, the first question to ask is about whether public money is being used effectively. Is it expanding an army of bureaucrats, or actually tackling the problem at grass- roots level?

My personal feeling is that there is a deep-seated undervaluing of education in this country. Youngsters seem to suffer not only financial poverty, but poverty in their aspirations.

Travelling around on public transport during daytime, as I often do, there seem to be so many able-bodied young people just drifting aimlessly around, obviously unemployed. Clearly, in some areas, there are no jobs available for them to do. The numerous industries which once soaked up so many manual workers have simply disappeared over the past three decades.

These were probably fairly dull jobs, but at least they provided a structure for adult lives. The North West has changed from being a patriarchal society to a matriarchal one since the collapse of the region’s heavy industry and its attendant apprenticeship schemes. There is no longer any specific role for working-class men.

We now have evidence of the child poverty trap, but seem no closer to resolving it.

peter.elson@dailypost.co.uk