Inequality: A UK government call to business action
Inequality.
It’s not just the USA.
Following the Martin Wolf article, I perused Business and Social Mobility: a Manifesto for Social Change (Incidentally this document is published not by the Socialist Workers Party but by Her Majesty’s Government).
It’s a good, short read.
The diagnosis is that Britain wastes far too-much talent because employers recruit from too narrow a pool.
The prescription is that Business (yes, BUSINESS) does need to do something about it.
The Commission wants:
- More formalised work placements for young people
- More school governors from business
- Rigorous adherence to best practice for internships
- Opening up well-structured roots into employment for the 55% of young people who are not graduates
- Widening selection beyond Russell Group universities (potentially including a ‘university blind’ application processes)
Finally, the Commission wants transparency about outcomes.
They suggest that this requires:
- A measure that adequately reflects the socioeconomic make-up of the workforce: this probably means tracking more than one thing, such as family income and educational background
- Data gathering which goes beyond the distinction of simply those who attended ‘state’ or ‘independent’ schools as this fails to reflect the intricacies of the education system
- Looking at each stage of the application process, to see at what stage candidates from particular backgrounds fall down
- Publishing the application/acceptance figures to the firm by university, so that undergraduates can see if they have a realistic chance of success
Sounds over the top?
Maybe. Maybe not.
But I am so close to collecting the winter fuel allowance and getting a free bus pass that I can remember when people thought just the same about monitoring ethnicity.