It’s schools, not Italian menus, that bar way to social mobility

Just imagine a 48-yearold woman believing she was once turned down for a job because she did not order her food in Italian during an interview over lunch.

Imagine that woman believing this failure to request spaghetti per

favore revealed her working-class origins and cost her the position.

Imagine that this woman is now the Education secretary, presiding over the launch of a social Mobility Index of employers, to encourage companies to hire candidates from a wide range of backgrounds. Just imagine that, Justine. Of course, Miss Greening means well in helping the social Mobility Foundation to urge employers to provide opportunities for poorer, working-class applicants.

It is, after all, a laudable initiative — even if it is far removed from the brave new dawn recently promised by theresa May’s Government. Plans to overturn a ban on new grammar schools have been abandoned, after the Prime Minister calculated that the policy was likely to be defeated in the Commons.

And if not there, then almost definitely in the House of Lords.

All utterly depressing if you happen to believe passionately, as I do, that grammars are one of the best routes to social mobility this class- ridden country has ever produced.

As a bright pupil from a scottish council housing estate, it was my dream to attend one. unfortunately, I entered secondary education in scotland after 1971, when streaming and selective education were abolished and all state schools became equal in terms of status, curriculum offered and examinations taken.

From that point onwards — until Mrs thatcher tipped the balance back in the Eighties with parental choice — the only thing that streamed in scottish schools were noses.

For better or worse, we were all in it together; a great stew of corporation kids with second-hand books and few other options. I’m grateful for the education I did receive, but sometimes think I have thrived in spite of it, not because of it.

And a lot of Left-wing grandees must surely agree. Particularly women such as Labour shadow cabinet members Diane Abbott, Emily thornberry and Baroness Chakrabarti, as well as Guardian columnist Polly toynbee, who all champion the comprehensive system (for others) but sent their own children to private or selective state schools.

to give their little darlings the best chance to succeed, while the less advantaged struggle to shine at bog standard comprehensives. the hypocrisy is gasping.

that’s why I want far, far better prospects for pupils today than the Education secretary wringing her hands and suggesting that lack of middle-class poise in a lunchtime trattoria could mean the end of a career before it even started.

One could argue that Justine is a shining example of social mobility. the Rotherham-born steelworker’s daughter went to a comprehensive, studied economics at southampton university and, before entering Parliament, worked for several accounting companies, including PricewaterhouseCoopers. Now she is in the Cabinet! Well done her. Yet a long time ago, Greening (left) felt ‘unfairly judged’ in a restaurant while being taken out to lunch by two junior managers from an investment bank. she recalled: ‘I remember trying to work out whether I should order the meal in Italian . . . or whether I should read the English translation underneath. In a split second, I decided I’m a non-pompous person, I will just read the English. And I could tell with the body language that I had just failed a test.’

What rubbish. Miss Greening can have no real idea of why she was not given the job, but rather arrogantly assumes it had nothing to do with her ability or qualifications. Yet she insists she is a working- class casualty who has ‘received the sharp end of unconscious bias’ because of accent or behaviour.

An Education secretary falling victim to the fashionable malaise of victimhood? God, please, no. things are bad enough without that.

APARtfrom anything else, it’s not a social gaffe to order in English in an Italian restaurant in England with English translation on the menu. It would be rather Hyacinth Bucket to do otherwise.

All this does is show up Justine Greening’s own insecurity and class prejudice, while propounding the conceit that the working classes are oiks who can’t be trusted not to eat their peas off a knife or send the vichyssoise back because it is cold.

that is not to say that people don’t make crass class judgments — this is the land of the permaprinked pinkie, after all — but I know posh folks with table manners like pigs and working-class strivers who can speak Italian with the fluency and grace of a contessa.

If Justine Greening wants to help those from disadvantaged backgrounds get into top universities and firms she should turn her attention to the basics — the sodding education system.

that is what is important, not knowing which spoon to use for her coffee-flavoured custard dessert. Or tiramisu, to me and you.