CLASS CEILING; Rich still get top jobs.

Byline: JAMES LYONS 

WE could laugh at the class system in the 60s, but then it appeared to be crumbling.

Now, after a damning report concluding that the rich have tightened their grip on top jobs, it appears ordinary families' dreams of social mobility have been dashed.

In class terms, not much has truly changed since those Frost Report sketches more than 40 years ago.

Then posh John Cleese towered over middle class Ronnie Barker, who looked down on flat-capped Ronnie Corbett, who got a pain in the neck staring up at both of them.

Hilarious...then. Less amusing now after the publication yesterday of a study by a cross-party panel chaired by former Labour minister Alan Milburn. It found children from poorer homes are increasingly shut out of high-earning professions such as medicine and the law.

Of his report, Mr Milburn said a "closed shop mentality" saw professions getting "more and not less exclusive" and added: "We've raised the glass ceiling but I don't think we've broken through it. Britain has lots of talent. What we have to do is open up opportunities to all."

The ex-Health Secretary said the aspirations of the post-war decades when more people did escape poor backgrounds had to be revived for old school tie elitism to end. Mr Milburn called for universities to take more students from poor homes and to offer cut-price degrees to those prepared to live at home.

He demanded a better careers service and claimed a shortage of good schools restricted poorer pupils while pushy middle class parents got their children into the best ones. But the senior MP sparked anger by calling for a voucher system, a policy bitterly opposed by teaching unions and many in the Labour Party.

Under it, parents who took a child out of a badly performing school would get a credit worth 150% of the pupil's education costs to spend with a state sector rival.

Opponents warned this would widen the gap between good and bad and pave the way for the Tories to give vouchers for private schools. Chris Keates, of teachers' union NASUWT, said Mr Milburn's questions were right "but a number of the answers wrong".

PM Gordon Brown's spokesman said Mr Milburn's proposals would be "given a fair wind".