The fact that Nick Clegg has a point about the culture of “who you know” in work experience is very well illustrated by the way that, shortly after making it in Parliament, he was being heckled from the back benches for having himself benefited from an internship at a Finnish bank, arranged by his father.
Really, Mr Clegg should have seen this coming, and made a virtue out of it. After all, he is in very good company. David Cameron began his own political career with a stint of work experience provided by the Conservative MP Tim Rathbone, his godfather. Ed Miliband began his in the office of his father’s friend Tony Benn.
In the greater scheme of things, no individual case constitutes a major crime against social mobility. All three of the above, though, should serve to remind us that the Deputy Prime Minister is quite right to note that internships and work experience “can rig the market in favour of those who already have opportunities”.
Those who find it easiest to secure desirable experience in the workplace are, indeed, invariably those who require it the least. For the children of professional, well-connected parents, horizons are already broad. A week in the offices of, say, a law firm may only serve to point them in the direction of one sort of affluent success rather than another. For a child who knows nobody who works in an office, meanwhile, a week in one can change a life. Inevitably, though, such children have little notion of how to secure work experience in a top profession or, very possibly, much real understanding of what one is.
While easy to identify, however, this is a problem far harder to solve. While brave, Mr Clegg’s assault on the middle-class, backscratching nature of work experience was, outside the Civil Service (which will now be required to advertise internships online), inevitably low on substance. Its centrepiece is a voluntary business compact, asking signatories to ensure fair access to internships, and offer a modest wage.
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This may make some small difference; more likely it will discourage many companies from offering work experience at all. It is not universally true that businesses exploit their interns for cheap or unpaid labour, or that they necessarily find such placements helpful for recruitment. Many, in fact, derive little or no benefit from opening their doors to unskilled, unproven interns, beyond a vague sense of having performed a social good. The more formal and bureaucratic the process becomes, the less inclined they may be to bother.
At best, then, targeted work experience will only ever be a minor and unsatisfactory answer to problems of social mobility. A better strategy could be to concentrate less on getting people into offices, and more on getting people out of them.
Mentoring, unlike work experience, is easily targetable at those communities and schools that can benefit the most. It also provides a direct link between underprivileged teenagers and those in a position to grant them the internships that otherwise they might never think to ask for.
At present, few professional mentorship programmes exist, and those that do are ill documented. Undeniably, they represent a far greater time commitment for any business or professional than merely making a spare desk available. Still, if there is to be a Big Society answer to a lack of social mobility, it is hard to envisage a better one .