If you work in the civil service and are from a working class background, we want to hear your stories

The civil service’s fast stream recruitment programme has come under fire after figures showed it disproportionately attracted and favoured applicants from fee-paying schools.

Civil service fast stream favours private school applicants, says MP Read more

The Cabinet Office figures show that in 2013, 20.5% of fast stream applicants were from private school backgrounds, compared with 23.5% of successful candidates. In 2016, although the proportion of applicants had fallen to 18.9%, the amount of successful candidates from private schools had risen to 28.6% of the total.

Such criticism is nothing new. In 2016, a report found that just 4.4% of the graduate scheme’s successful applicants came from a low socioeconomic background. One civil servant who grew up on a council estate told us in 2016 about her sense that she wasn’t good enough to be on the fast stream: “It is a difficult place to start working when you feel your face does not fit. Eventually I did find that not all of the civil service or the fast stream is comprised of privately educated white men, but it did take time before I felt like I belonged,” she said.

But the latest criticism comes at a time when the Cabinet Office says it has been working hard to improve the diversity of its recruitment processes, opening fast stream assessment centres outside of London and replacing verbal and numerical reasoning assessments, which favour candidates from wealthier backgrounds, with situational judgment tests. Two years ago, the government’s talent action plan outlined its ambitions to make the civil service the most inclusive and representative employer in Britain.



Civil service fast stream 2017 – in numbers Read more

We want to hear about your experience. What’s it like to work in the civil service if you’re from a working class or lower socioeconomic background? Has anything changed in recent years with regards to social mobility? Did you feel the recruitment process was fair, and are there opportunities for you to progress within the service? Would you recommend it as a career to others from the same background as you?

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