The class system in Britain is alive and well despite increasing numbers of working-class students going to university and a rise in living standards since the war, according to a new study from Dr Will Atkinson in the Department of Sociology.
Research presented to the British Sociological Association's annual conference in Cardiff today [Friday 17 April] shows that although the classes have changed in Britain, strong differences remain between them.
The research counters recent academic work that suggests that social mobility, an expanding university sector, greater life choices and increasing job flexibility have all made class less relevant in 21st-century Britain.
Dr Atkinson, who carried out the new study, conducted in-depth interviews with 55 people aged 18-56 in Bristol from a cross-section of society. He found that those whose parents had a limited amount of money, education and social connections had had a much narrower choice during their lives.
He found that the working-class people he interviewed were disadvantaged in getting into higher education because their parents had had less money to spend on private education or supplementary tutoring for them, and were less able to cover their university fees.
This was consistent with the fact that although the expansion in university places over the past 20 years had allowed the number of working-class people at university to rise, they were under-represented as a proportion of those attending.
The study also found that those with working-class parents missed out on the help and guidance with schoolwork provided by the well-educated middle-class parents, and therefore tended to value more practical skills such as woodwork and sports, and did not do so well at school.
Those people whose parents were middle-class were more likely to develop a love of learning and ability to handle abstract academic learning because of the extra time and money their parents devoted to their education. They tended to do better at school.
A few of the working-class interviewees were upwardly mobile, but they tended to have parents who were from the more privileged sections of the working class or family members who had already gone to university and could pass on guidance.
The differences between the classes persisted after education. In society generally over the past 20 years there has been more flexibility in the labour market with people changing jobs more often, and with more chance to work abroad but the study found that the classes were divided in the way they took advantage of these new opportunities. People from middle-class backgrounds were more likely to consider and pursue jobs abroad and they found it easier to retrain into new careers because they were better off and better educated.
Those from working-class backgrounds tended to live close to where they grew up, with little interest in living elsewhere, and to work in manual occupation such as lorry driving and plumbing. When they chose to, or were forced to, leave a job they tended to find another of the same type and not retrain for new careers, because of lack of money and skills.
'The precise characteristics of the classes in terms of occupations, educational experiences and work life experiences has shifted with the social changes of the late 20th century,' said Dr Atkinson.
'But the fact that some are better educated, with more choice in their lives and with more money still persists, and this maintains class differences that are as wide as they were in the 1970s.'
Dr Atkinson claims that his findings help explain why only 13 per cent of those from working-class backgrounds go to university, whereas 44 per cent of those from middle-class backgrounds do.
They also help explain why 40 per cent of people leaving the UK to live abroad are in managerial and professional jobs while the rest of the working population account for only 25 per cent of emigrants.