I think the use of polling like this is it is a corrective to the simplistic idea that reducing the overall number will see the government that does it greeted like a liberator. But equally think it is a public policy failure for any one occupation is too dependent on workers from outside the UK. - ThreadSky

stephenkb.bsky.social • 5 days ago

I think the use of polling like this is it is a corrective to the simplistic idea that reducing the overall number will see the government that does it greeted like a liberator. But equally think it is a public policy failure for any one occupation is too dependent on workers from outside the UK.

Reposted from Sunder Katwala (sundersays)

What would public choose on social care workers coming to Britain?

Increase the numbers: 44% (18% a lot, 26% a little)
Maintain current levels: 27%
Reduce the numbers: 22% (11% reduce a lot, 11% a little)

Focaldata for British Future (2nd - 6th May 2025)
www.britishfuture.org/white-paper-...

Comments

stephenkb.bsky.social•5 days ago

Mostly in a UK context that public policy failure is 'wow maths teaching in the UK is bad'.

chelseachemist1.bsky.social•5 days ago

Trying to explain to Singaporeans that the grade boundaries for a pass mark on a higher GCSE maths paper tends to hover around 25-30% was a task and a half. The lowest any of them predicted you’d need for a pass was about 60%, with a boundary that low an appreciable fraction of entrants don’t hit it

lewisbaston.bsky.social•5 days ago

Yikes. This was something in my half-informed way (something about PISA rankings) I was prepared to be nice about the 2010-24 government about. Was I wrong?

stephenkb.bsky.social•5 days ago

Numeracy among kids is much better, and one way that is the case is the GCSE Maths paper is a really elegant bit of “how do we make this thing we treat as This Person Is Numerate Enough To Have Any Job also useful as an actual qualification”.

chelseachemist1.bsky.social•5 days ago

No they’ve definitely improved childhood numeracy, the “problem” is the working age population that has comparatively very poor numeracy. I’d happily bet an average 6-7 year old Singaporean is wiping the floor with the average working age Brit in maths terms

petejmoore.bsky.social•5 days ago

WHAT

chelseachemist1.bsky.social•5 days ago

You have to remember that your average working age adult has the mathematical ability we’d roughly expect from a decently performing 9 year old child, it’s not an understatement to say a large proportion of the British adult public are basically functionally innumerate

chelseachemist1.bsky.social•5 days ago

If you wanted a grade 4 (which I consider the lowest real pass under the current system) for edexcel GCSE maths higher paper last year you needed 42 marks out of 240, so 17.5% got you a pass on their paper

patchthompson.bsky.social•5 days ago

If only there were a government with a huge majority that might attempt to correct this public policy imbalance rather than...do whatever it is doing now?

johnspringford.bsky.social•5 days ago

Agree very much on care work, but I'd make that a 'public services occupation'. For academics/scientists dependence on an international market is a good thing. For some manual occupations I suspect it's inevitable, and enforcement of labour market rules can still make that win-win.

stephenkb.bsky.social•5 days ago

But UK academia ISN’T dominated by immigrants, it sells a lot of product. This isn’t the same thing!

johnspringford.bsky.social•5 days ago

Depends how narrow you go with occupation. 'Research scientist' vs. 'scientist who does research and teaching' vs 'teaching'.

stephenkb.bsky.social•5 days ago

But as I say in the next post down, that IS a reflection on UK public policy.

stephenkb.bsky.social•5 days ago

Not all UK public policy is immigration! Even most immigration policy is not best thought of that way.

sundersays.bsky.social•5 days ago

I think similarly about students. Let's compete for a good share of the global market without making our domestic provision of local public goods dependent on growth and political conditions in Nigeria, China as well as India

deargodwhatnow.bsky.social•5 days ago

Given the insane level of turnover in the care sector, the idea that migration is a long term solution is questionable anyway tbh

stephenkb.bsky.social•5 days ago

Honestly I don’t know what you even mean here - the insane level of turnover is an indicator that pay & conditions need to improve, but that the people in it can and do get other jobs says nothing about it as a long term solution.

deargodwhatnow.bsky.social•5 days ago

100,000 care workers came into the system in 2023-4, is the idea that most of them will move into the general workforce and be replaced by more of the same? That's definitely a model, but it's not really a care worker visa at that point I guess?

stephenkb.bsky.social•5 days ago

The care worker visa is a dreadful policy - an ill-conceived attempt to use methods designed for credentialed workers to fill a labour shortage. In part because “anyone who comes to work on a care visa should die working in social care” is not desirable.

deargodwhatnow.bsky.social•5 days ago

Also facilitates a hell of a lot of fraud and or abuse

stephenkb.bsky.social•5 days ago

Yeah. Labour are right to have scrapped it, the problem is that as far as I can see their replacement is…nothing at all? Vacancies to be filled by wishing very hard?

wrathofgodbot.bsky.social•5 days ago

Reckon you could get a lot of political gain by *aggressively* clamping down on rogue operators and loudly blaming the Tories

quarkquent.bsky.social•5 days ago

Amazing we are now in an intellectual space where one needs to say “indentured labour is generally a bad thing”

ubfriccardo.bsky.social•5 days ago

Maybe that's a better name than Blue Labour...

quarkquent.bsky.social•5 days ago

How long would people be forced to work in care before the debt of immigration is paid off? 10 years? 20?

theangelofhistory.bsky.social•5 days ago

What’s your definition of “long term” and how does it fit in with things like “inflation” or “gilt rates” and how those things tie in with election timetables?

Are you basically saying your raison d’etre is to move to a Japanese labour model at any cost and assume the electorate allows this?

stephenkb.bsky.social•5 days ago

Also, the thing which would guarantee French style integration outcomes would be “a static workforce, largely drawn from overseas”. The breakroom is a really important engine of integration!

theangelofhistory.bsky.social•5 days ago

There’s a lot of goal posts moving isn’t there “people climbing the value chain by ceasing to be care workers is proof they never should have been allowed in” is quite the take

@deargodwhatnow.bsky.social should just say he wants Gastarbeiter for the jobs British people don’t want to do

cymrufod.bsky.social•5 days ago

The perma 'campaign mode' for an election four years away feels akin to someone prepping for a job interview four days away by downing an espresso every hour to keep themselves sharp.

stephenkb.bsky.social•5 days ago

Love this analogy.

cymrufod.bsky.social•5 days ago

In four years, this policy will have zero electoral impact.

A structurally dysfunctional care sector, which in turn creates a dysfunctional health system however...

Yeah, not a winning position.

padders123.bsky.social•5 days ago

Would love to see this poll with a screening question that only let people respond if they can correctly estimate the current numbers within +/- 5%.

chelseachemist1.bsky.social•5 days ago

At a stab in the dark I reckon you’d be talking of screening out 80+% of respondents. Generally the public are pretty clueless when it comes to numbers, classic example being Dan Neidle had some great polling showing people think we spend more on MPs expenses (150M) than the state pension (150B)

sundersays.bsky.social•5 days ago

What is the rationale for those being the only views worth heeding when seeking public consent? We have got info on perceptions of scale & composition.

sundersays.bsky.social•5 days ago

Will be releasing some of that next week

sundersays.bsky.social•5 days ago

We improve people's guesses here by constraint of making them allocate 100 across categories. People forget otherwise & overestimate more
https://bsky.app/profile/sundersays.bsky.social/post/3l4hotxkl7e2h

padders123.bsky.social•5 days ago

People can only properly consent to something if they are properly informed about what is the current position. For comparison - we shouldn't say to someone take this weight loss drug without explaining what their current weight is.

padders123.bsky.social•5 days ago

Your research does sound really interesting through - really fascinated if people are more pro or anti immigration if they know more about the actual picture. Would also be interesting to see what level of knowledge the public has, a lot of previous studies suggest it's not good...

alonlevy.bsky.social•5 days ago

It reads to me as a poll about how sympathetic these jobs are, regardless of opinions on immigration - I doubt the numbers on bankers come from voters really wanting to protect the jobs of British-born bankers.

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