The Social Mobility Commission (set up in 2010) has just reported that there has been little progress in social mobility since 2014.
What it didn’t say is that there was much more upward mobility in 1946 than there is now. It’s a disgrace.
When I Grow Up is a practical experiment in social mobility. In this enchanting programme, six seven- and eight-year-olds from different backgrounds try their hands at posh jobs - working for an artisanal chocolate-maker, an estate agency and, in tonight’s opener, Hello!, a magazine dedicated, as its editor Rosie Nixon tells us, to taking its readers “inside the lives of the rich, the famulous, the fabulous and the royal”. Famulous is good, isn’t it? Similar to emulous, I expect.
The programme-makers assure us that the programme has been made expressly for these children “to open their eyes to possible future careers”.
Actually of course, though that may be a helpful side-effect the purpose of the show is quite different: to show how early class and educational advantages and disadvantages become significant in determining life chances.
In this aim, When I Grow Up succeeds absolutely. Cute though it is to see kids attempting adult jobs, this documentary is not merely winsome but it has a hard core of political intent. Faiza Shaheen, the Corbynite candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green and director of CLASS (Centre for Labour & Social Studies), keeps popping up to emphasise that.
For what it’s worth, the Apprentice-style assignments the kids are given tonight are hosting a Hello! Theatre Club evening, overseeing a Myleene Klass photoshoot, and reporting on a ceremonial visit by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall to a village in Wales. The children do a great job. Praising their work, Nixon gushes: “I don’t think our readers will actually realise it was seven- and eight-year-olds that were behind these pieces!” (Unless that has always been their assumption?)
The standout among the children is brash, articulate Charlie. “I’m good at teamwork but I know how to take over things nicely, when I do need to take over something,” he says. “It’s very important to me that I look good — my hair is my top feature, my teeth are second.” When Charlie selects the pix to illustrate the theatre club night, five out of seven feature himself. He bosses the other kids, successfully pushing to the fore with the adults too. Asked at the end what he has learned, he says that “it’s all about teamwork and that you have to use other people’s ideas and not just your own”. His parents explain they are responsible for Charlie’s focus: “We perform and we achieve and we’re individually very goal-oriented.”
The real star of the show, though, is Isabella, from none-too-privileged Middlesbrough. She’s a gem. “I just love reading — Great Expectations was really good,” she says. Her shopworker mum admires her so much.
Nixon makes Isabella editor-in-chief and she does it brilliantly. When shy little Ryley from Blackpool, dominated by Charlie, loses his confidence and wants to quit, she builds him back up so well, telling him: “We need you, we can’t do it without you — you’re a hard worker, you’re not somebody who’d let us down.” Isabella has really made him feel important, says Ryley.
I’ve had editors less able and responsive than Isabella. Almost all of them, actually.
