How to get on without really trying

What can the schools or Youth Employment Service do for the ambitious child from a poor background? All the sociological evidence suggests that a working‐class background is still a formidable obstacle to upward social mobility. The children seem as aware of this as the social scientists. A London Youth Employment Officer told me that high ambitions expressed by school‐leavers on written questionnaires are almost always replaced by down‐to‐earth job requests in interviews.