Not everyone has to ‘shoot for the stars’

The motivational ethos has permeated our culture. Everyone is exhorted to “shoot for the stars”. But this outlook isn't realistic. It could even do damage.

Katherine Birbalsingh is a controversial London headmistress who has pushed for higher standards in British schools. She rose to prominence after a speech in 2010 in which she claimed schools had been “blinded by Leftist ideology” which led to poor discipline and bad behavior. 

Now as Chair of Britain’s Social Mobility Commission, she argues that social mobility has become fixated on “a small minority of people from poor backgrounds getting into the best universities and elite professions”. 

Instead of thinking only of “the caretaker’s daughter going to Oxbridge”, we should seek to help all people move from at least the bottom to the middle rungs of the ladder.

Examples of this approach: someone whose parents are long-term unemployed getting a job; the son of a postman becoming a branch manager; the daughter of a care worker becoming a primary school teacher.

“We want to move away from the notion that social mobility should just be about the ‘long’ upward mobility from the bottom to the top - the person who is born into a family in social housing and becomes a banker or CEO.” Katherine Birbalsingh

“If a child of parents who… never worked, gets a good job in their local area, isn’t that a success worth celebrating? Would we really say that it doesn’t count as mobility because they are not a doctor or lawyer?” Katherine Birbalsingh

She makes the case that widening access to university has not always brought the dividends hoped for and has diverted attention from the 50 percent of people pursuing (often successfully) other routes.

Birbalsingh will release a social mobility ‘State of the Nation’ report that seeks to change the way the British government measures social mobility, tracking where people start and end in life - in their occupations, incomes, and other outcomes.

There’s no “one size fits all model of social mobility”, and there are many forms of success, Birbalsingh argues. Instead of creating pathways for a new elite, we should be creating modest but real opportunities. Less shooting for the stars, and more a steady job, house and car.