IT'S not what you know, it's who you know. This, crudely, may be the lesson to draw from former minister Alan Milburn's report this week on social mobility - something of which Britain hasn't got a lot.

Milburn bemoans the fact that affluence buys attainment. Middle class parents can opt for private schooling or move into the catchment areas of the best schools. When it comes to the world of work, professions such as medicine and law are dominated by those from better-off families because of a `closed shop mentality'.

"We have raised the glass ceiling, but I don't think we have broken through it yet," says Milburn, who chairs the government's panel on social mobility.

Is it just me, or is this no surprise whatsoever. Life isn't fair. Never was, never will be. Some things no government can change, unless they plan to sit in on every job interview ever conducted. Think of it not as a glass ceiling but as a ladder; those who climb the ladder always choose those who follow.

Of course the middle classes dominate the professions. Those with the wherewithal to buy private schooling may not necessarily purchase better teaching, but they will get smaller class sizes, and, perhaps more importantly, they will put their child in the company of children whose parents have had similar success in life. From that first school trip through to the end-of-school prom, it's a lesson in networking.

It is surely no surprise to a politician - a calling where networking is so vital - that parents can buy a leg-up in life. And once given that leg-up, the old school tie continues to works its magic. Even today, three quarters of all judges and almost half of all senior civil servants are independently educated.

I was a product of a direct grant grammar school - the long-defunct system whereby selective schools were funded partly by fees and partly by central government. Medicine and law - preferably at Oxford or Cambridge - were held out as things to which we should all aspire. But at least that school was filled with boys from a broad spectrum of society, all there on their academic merits. Today, almost every pupil in that same school, now independent, is there at a cost of £7,500 a year - a system of selection rather cruder than any 11-plus or entrance exam, I'd say.

Mind-broadening

Many of today's senior politicians are products of the wave of social mobility I witnessed. Milburn - who at 51 is the same age as me - was raised on a council estate by a single mother, but enjoyed the mind-broadening experience of a university education in the halcyon days of student grants and free tuition.

Today we have the bogus egalitarianism of New Labour's ridiculous pledge to put 50 per cent of all young people through higher education, coupled with a system of student debt which is surely off-putting to children from less well-off families. Tuition fees at Oxford University may next year treble to £10,000 a year. Many potential students will run a mile… not exactly the social mobility Milburn has in mind.

So what do we do about the attainment gap between rich and poor? Milburn proposes giving parents a right to choose a better school, and for their preferred school to get extra funding over and above the cost of educating that child. So better schools would get more pupils and more money.

But does this not depend upon all parents being every bit as resourceful as those middle class parents already paying school fees, moving house to get into the right catchment area and even discovering God if there is a good faith school nearby?

Let's forget about government pledges to do this and that to even out educational attainment, and accept that a lot of the opportunities and aspirations we have in life come from our parents. Some parents with not two ha'pennies to rub together will fill their kids with ambition, and, conversely, the offspring of high-achieving professionals may end up as complete deadlegs. The best education may open some doors, but you have to walk through them on your own two feet.

No amount of social engineering will alter these facts. And, from a government which has spent 12 years failing to create a more fair society, a promise of equality of opportunity in the professions would be yet another in a long list of empty pledges.

Why heart op Hannah is a true teen

LAST year, 14-year old Hannah Jones stood firm against doctors' efforts to give her a heart transplant, even when Hertfordshire Primary Care Trust threatened legal action to allow her to be treated.

Having been in and out of hospital since the age of four, Hannah, who has a hole in her heart, did not want to go through any more operations.

Now, months after the threat of legal action has subsided, Hannah has changed her mind. She will have a new heart after all.

It is, hopefully, a happy end to the story. But how typical of a teenager. Tell them what's good for them and they will fight you with every fibre of their being.

Leave them to it and they change their mind in their own sweet time.