James Turner considers why access initiatives shouldn’t just look at the same old professions.

Access to the professions has become a hot topic over the last few years: the Trust’s own surveys of the backgrounds of leading professionals and the work of Alan Milburn’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission have focussed the national gaze on the preponderance of privately educated people in the top echelons of society.  There is a Social Mobility Business Compact and just this week, PWC announced that it will no longer look at applicants’ A level results in its selection processes for jobs in an effort to widen access.  As we head to the ballot boxes today, it will be interesting to see how many of the MPs elected today will be from independent school backgrounds (for the 2010 intake it was one third).

But much of this focus has been on older, traditional occupations: law, medicine, accountancy, finance.   One reason for this is that these professions are much sought after – Sutton Trust summer school courses in these subjects are always the most oversubscribed and many young people from poorer homes understandably still want to work in these established and lucrative jobs. Another is that these older professions generally have an access issue, drawing their intakes and their high fliers disproportionately from more privileged backgrounds. That is why we have long supported Pathways programmes in law, and more recently in medicine and real estate, to help low and middle income young people to get to the first rung on the ladder.

But what about the new professions – in, say, technology, bio-engineering, coding, web design?  While some traditional professions are on the wane, these new careers are in the ascendancy, becoming more and more central to our lives and demanding more and more talented staff.  Famously, many careers which now employ thousands of people weren’t around five years ago.  Importantly too, it may be that success in some of these fields does not rely as much on the executive and soft skills that are often associated with the better-off and those from the top public schools (although these are always going to be important).

There are some great initiatives in this area: Code Club is getting in early by supporting primary school children in programming, and the new FE college, Code College, is one example of tailored provision later on.  But there are relatively few access programmes out there in this space.   We don’t know yet whether the access issue in these areas is as marked as in older professions – it is hard to define some of these emerging sectors, let along get data on those taking new positions and the big guns. What is clear, though, is that the prospects for these jobs are great and increasing – and those prospects should be shared among low and middle income youngsters too.

So, what is the Trust planning in this area? Initially our hope is to expand our Pathways model to STEM fields. This will encompass more traditional areas – such as engineering, where more skilled graduates are in high demand – but also areas like programming and software development.   Crucially we plan for it to start earlier than some of our other initiatives – not least so that students make the right A level choices. We are also open to innovative ways of delivery.   A good STEM degree from a leading university is probably still the surest way into many of these burgeoning industries — but prestigious degree-linked apprenticeships and high quality school leaver schemes demand more attention.

So – when the dust settles after today’s Election – as well as looking at where the next Prime Minister went to school, and how many of the Cabinet were educated at Oxbridge, we should also spare a thought for the backgrounds of the next great web entrepreneur, those in Silicon Fen or in Tech City.  They are equally important to our future.

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