In 1955 he entered the Rothschild bank in Paris where, again without professional qualifications, he rose rapidly to become director general (1959).
In America pay for men with only a high-school certificate fell by 21% in real terms between 1979 and 2013; for women with similar qualifications it rose by 3%.
At Penrice's plant in Osborne, for example, the workforce has shrunk even as their qualifications have risen.
Despite having steady jobs, solid qualifications and rising salaries, most local banks ignored them as either too small fry or too high-risk.
Since 2000 the number of teaching assistants – who tend to be lower paid and have fewer qualifications – has risen from 79,000 to 243,000.
One of the leading exam boards, Edexcel, has said the number of students studying its vocational qualifications has risen from 66,000 in 2003 to more than 700,000.
Entries to the ECDL – which requires pupils to use Microsoft Office software such as Excel and PowerPoint – have rocketed, with the number of qualifications awarded rising from fewer than 2,000 in 2014 to more than 30,000 a year later.
The number of teenagers taking certain vocational qualifications has risen dramatically in just two years.
By the mid-1990s, the level of qualifications had risen so that about 30% of young people were participating in higher education.
In this process, despite women's relatively higher education, better job qualifications, and rising participation in the workplace, as much as 80% of women focus on their household and family commitments as their natural and single social activity [ 55, 56].
