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If you really know best, Mr Balls, why are there still so few good schools?
Chris Woodhead, Chief Inspector of Schools in England 1994-200016 Mar 2009
LAST Friday I stopped for fuel in a garage in Wandsworth.
"Didn't you use to work in education?" the cashier asked. I confessed that I had. "Well", she said, "things aren't getting any better, are they? My boy did really well at primary school. Now we've been told that the secondary school we wanted for him is full. They offered him a place in a lousy school miles from where we live. He doesn't want to go. We know he's not going to make any progress there." She seemed close to tears. "There's nothing we can do, is there?"
I commiserated and, muttering that it might be worth appealing against the decision, beat a hasty retreat. But the truth is that there probably is nothing she can do. Like thousands of other London parents who have received their children's secondary school place offers this month, she has no option other than to accept a decision she knows will damage her child.
Nearly half the children in Wandsworth, Southwark and Lambeth failed to secure a place in their preferred school. Three-fifths were rejected in Slough; two-fifths in Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, Richmond and Kingston upon Thames. Given these statistics, what can any parent do?
The problem, obviously enough, is one of supply and demand. London does not have enough decent secondary schools. Ministers disagree. Sarah McCarthy-Fry, the schools minister, wants us all to know that the system of transfer from primary to secondary school has been "transformed".
The admissions code, she told us last week, has been tightened to outlaw "unfair and covert admissions practices that disadvantaged low-income families". Ignoring the fact that the number of secondary school places has remained constant while the number of 11-year-olds has declined, she invited us to celebrate a slight increase (1.1 per cent) in the number of families nationally who received an offer from their first-choice school.
She is right in one sense, of course. The admissions rules have indeed been changed. They have now been made so complex that you need a law degree to have a hope of understanding what you are meant to do. A cottage industry has sprung up offering legal and educational advice on how to lodge a successful appeal.
Many authorities now use lotteries to pick the lucky few, so your child's future may depend upon the fall of the dice. Others force schools to admit equal numbers of children of different intelligence and from different social backgrounds. No school is permitted to exercise the slightest discretion in deciding which applicants are most likely to benefit from the education it offers. The state knows best and schools have no option but to conform.
The Secretary of State for Schools, Ed Balls, told the 2007 Labour Party conference that he wanted "to break down all the barriers to opportunity in Britain". Since then his government bulldozers have been in constant action. High- achieving comprehensive schools? Balls dismisses them as elitist institutions that discriminate against working-class parents and he forces them to accept more children from disadvantaged homes. Last week he warned a conference of headteachers that they had to do more for such children.
Independent schools? Bastions of privilege, which he would, no doubt, abolish if he could. Last week, for instance, the Standard reported his absurd attack on the decision of many independent schools to introduce the international GSCE instead of the ordinary GCSE examination. The independent sector knows that the GCSE now offers no intellectual challenge to its pupils, so it is turning to a more demanding examination. Balls dismissed this excellent educational decision as a "marketing strategy" to attract ambitious parents.
He has on a number of occasions made similarly hostile remarks about both grammar schools and faith schools. We have, it seems, a Schools Secretary who wants to destroy any educational institution that achieves excellent educational results. He cannot bear the thought that some children are cleverer than others or that some parents scrimp and save to send their children to private schools.
Meanwhile, he has sought to drag city academies back into the state fold because he believes that they should not have any advantage over any other state school. Their much-vaunted independence from local authority control - always over-hyped but the only thing that made them potentially different - has been limited yet further.
The whole point of Balls's new admissions code is to spread the misery of educational underachievement. All schools, he appears to think, will become good schools if all schools are rendered as bog standard as the state can make them.
Many London parents will ask themselves how it has come to this. Why are there not more decent secondary schools, after 12 years of supposedly radical reform? The obvious answer is that Balls is simply wrong. The way forward is not to bind schools yet tighter to Whitehall but to make them independent of the state: to allow them to determine the nature of the education they want to provide and decide their own admissions policies, in order to encourage a market in education in which schools compete to win the custom of potential parents.
This is what happens in the independent sector. Not every private school seeks to attract the brightest children. Independent schools recognise that children have different educational needs and set out their stall accordingly. Why should not state schools do the same? Why shouldn't the Government give every parent an educational voucher that is determined by their child's educational needs and allow them to use it in state or independent schools?
There are only three possible answers for why ministers avoid this option. The first is that all children have equal abilities and should be offered the same educational opportunities. The second is that we cannot expect disadvantaged parents to exercise an intelligent choice. The third is that the state does, as Mr Balls thinks, know best. None of these propositions are true.
You only have to look at the numbers of disappointed parents across London this month to know that the state does not know best. Twelve years of Labour centralism have not delivered higher standards in our secondary schools. I can't see Mr Brown changing tack now. I'd like to believe that Mr Cameron, if he wins the next election, might.
* Chris Woodhead was Chief Inspector of Schools in England 1994-2000 and is now chairman of independent schools operator Cognita.
Reader views (9)
If you know better, Mr Woodhead, how come that after so many years in education, Britain has not grabbed more of your enthusiasms and your recommendations?
Remember, Wandsworth - like yourself - was at the front of the Thatcher revolution.
The council even closed a viable girls' school in Clapham in the name of its political ideology. That asset might now be offering some places to disenfranchised Wandsworth children.
Soon after spending roughly £500k on replacing rotting windows, they sold the land for semi-gated luxury housing and flogged off the old Battersea County Girls' School for an absurdly low figure, to a prep school.
Somehow, Woodhead and Wandsworth seems a peciliarly apposite combination.
- Harry T, Balham, London, 17/03/2009 00:13
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Let's see, if everyone has vouchers and can't "top them up" then private schools close down because the reason they are successful if because they have parents that support their children through their education and better resources paid for by the fees.
But is anyone going to shut down private schoools? No, so upper middle class parents and the rich would use vouchers to subsidise their private education.
This would then result in more able and bright students to desert the state sector leaving those in the most need of support in more ghettoised schools which would have even less funding than they do now.
It's a great idea if you don't care about anyone that has less money than you... except those getting an even worse education are more likely to drop out and end up in youth crime which is what the same people who think this sort of voucher thing is a good idea go on about all the time.
Actually, most state secondaries give good education even in the inner cities. Research by the OECD states the number one factor in achievement in education is parental involvement and support. I went to a "bog standard" school which the Sun once labelled "the most violent school in Britain" yet I went to university because my parents encouraged me. There is the odd exception but most schools are actually good and it turns you into more of a "leader" going to this sort of school than attending any number of posh private schools.
- Saunaing Tic Gill, London, 16/03/2009 17:50
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The situation is not helped by league tables. Even one of Wandsworth's most over-subscribed schools is abandoning compulsory modern languages because poor results could drag down the % of A-C grades obtained and thus harm the school's relative position! This would be unthinkable in any other European country. Comprehensives also fail to stretch brighter pupils. Once the child is up to C grade standard, the school often loses interest. If "grammar streams" were introduced in to every comprehensive school and they were obliged to hire well-qualified teachers (with proper degrees at 2(1) and above, as in Finland), private schools and grammar schools would soon be on the back foot and the system would be improved for all. This would mean more money for teachers of course (since supply would be restricted) so hopefully even the teaching unions would be in favour. Balls' main interest seems to be in dragging all state schools down to the lowest common denominator, increasing the divide with the private sector more and more.
- Ivan, Wandsworth, 16/03/2009 17:19
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Wealthy parents "who don't need it" are already actually subsidising the state sector by paying massive school fees out of income taxed at the top rate! Bring back the grammar schools and build even more. Give parents more power, not less power. Take education out of the hands of Left Wing civil servants and empower parents and teachers. It cannot be any worse than this government mandated mess!
- James Macleod Ritchie, Oyster Bay Cove, 16/03/2009 15:04
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I'm glad you reminded people of Mr Woodhead's financial interest in slagging off everything that the state sector does; for a former chief inspector of schools, this is a pretty tasteless thing to do, even when the criticisms have some basis. He has always ridden the wave of fashion with dexterity: when he was teaching back in the 60's he was all for the trendy , let-children-find -out-for themselves stuff that he now decries.
- Mdj E10, london uk, 16/03/2009 14:42
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A voucher system would transform the education landscape. There are all sorts of ways of addressing Robert C's concerns.
- Bloke, London, 16/03/2009 14:18
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All left of centre parties when assuming power become right wing authoritarian rulers overnight. There have never been any exceptions to this rule from Lenin through Castro and now Venezuela. The Uk ploughs the same path and they all fail.
The left-wing mindset is born from exam failure,resentment and self-loathing. When power is achieved we get what has happened in the UK.
- David Lewis, Witney, Oxon, 16/03/2009 13:47
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We have to smash this labour system of educational conscription into the underclass.
- Jamal Akhbar, Edinburgh, 16/03/2009 13:28
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The more you think about it, the more education vouchers seem to be a good idea to get us out of this state-controlled mess. But with one proviso: parents must not be allowed to top up with extra funds. Otherwise this will simply become a subsidy for wealthy parents who don't need it.
- Robert C, London UK, 16/03/2009 12:29
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