From Precariat to Elite

[otolith]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Exactly the point I made earlier. You cannot alter your class with money, only your kids' class.

I suspect that the people who have come up with this way of categorising people would argue that what you describe there is one of the things which make the old understanding of class less useful in the modern world. I think you are describing class in similar terms to whether the locals will accept you in some inbred rural village - you can live there twenty years but you're still an offcomer. Your kids are locals, but you aren't. I think this is more interested in "where do you live" than "do the locals accept you", which is probably a more useful thing to know if the intention is to sell stuff to you.

[Prof Beard]

0000 said:

Apparently I'm Elite. What a waste of time that was.

Twincam16 said:

Problem with grammar schools was that they were at the top of a stratified school system, rather than just one of an equally-regarded spectrum of schools focusing on a particular skill area.

s/Problem with/The strength of

It's only a problem for the schools that get the dross at the bottom.

As the output of a 1960s "well regarded" grammar school, and the son of a secondary modern school headmaster, I would say the people who got failed big time by the binary system were those in the middle. Those who "just scraped through" the 11-plus were not well served by the grammar school, which saw them as "probable low achievers", and those who just failed the 11-plus were terribly dependent on the quality (often "postcode related") of the secondary school they ended up in - too many made little attempt to encourage their best pupils to strive for more. My father was a very dedicated man who worked hard to get his charges the best qualifications they could achieve - but interestingly, he sent his best 16 year-olds to the local college and hardly any ever transferred to the grammar school sixth form post-'O'level. I was lucky to be a "high achiever" and was probably well served by the grammar school, but many of my friends were badly failed by it my opinion.

[craigjm]

I come out as Elite hmmm!

Have been talking about this elsewhere and found that lots of people filling it in dont read it properly and are entering their gross salary not their net which is skewing results. If they wanted to make it more real they also need to change the home ownership question because owned or rented doesnt really cut it. What about the masses of young people who still live with their parents? there is also a huge difference between someone who actually owns their own house outright and someone who is just servicing a mortgage.