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Uh oh, the education wars are in full cry. There must be an election coming. David Cameron wants state schools in “leafy suburbs” (code for ones with lots of middle-class pupils) to do better. New Labour wants to take away the barriers to accession to the top universities and the professions for children from state schools.
Each has their electoral target group firmly in their sights. Mr Cameron is plucking purposefully at the anxieties of Middle England. Gordon Brown's social mobility push this week is focused on the parents who fret that however hard their child works, the hidden barriers of class and opportunity deficit will hit those who cannot afford a private education.
Mr Cameron has a good sense of the frustration felt over schools which coast along as merely “good enough” but are neither inspirational nor excellent.
One consequence of Labour's focus on raising minimum standards is that it expects parents to be thrilled by the rise in five A-C GCSEs. Few of us are.
Relatively little focus has been targeted under Labour on future achievers and how well they are served.
Caught between arguments over grade inflation and patchy teaching, a lot of state school talent is wasted or fails to reach its potential.
The Gove/Cameron combo is naturally “brazenly elitist”, as the Tory leader puts it, about high standards and thus likely to attract support from educated professional parents. However, the New Conservative squeamishness over class makes it vague about whether it is or is not committed to social mobility, other than as a catch-phrase.
Real social mobility does require a broader lens and wider thinking. Hidden barriers to success are about more than exam grades.
I once advised a state-school pupil preparing for her Oxford interview and coached her on her arguments and understanding of her subject. She was then asked to apply her knowledge to newspaper coverage of climate change. The poor girl crumbled in panic because she had rarely read a newspaper — there were none in her home.
That's just one example of the way school and family experience can affect outcomes. It is one thing to relish tradition and fine dining in a college or at the Inns of Court if it is already part of your world. Quite another if it is unfamiliar and a bit scary and it seems easier to take the next step down.
Labour instinctively grasps the social mobility problem, even if its education record leaves a pretty poor reckoning.
Its recommendations this week that universities and the professions seek to reduce the barriers to state-school entrants do recognise an unfairness which is often disguised or ignored.
So it is shockingly limited of Martin Stephen, high master of St Paul's, and other public school heads to say steps to help those from less fortunate backgrounds entails a bias against their pupils (who have rather a lot going for them, I'd say). “If they cannot get into university on their own merit, we have to ask ourselves what those 13 years have been used for?” says Stephen.
Merit is the weasel word here. Was I as well-prepared a candidate at 17 applying from a provincial state school to Oxbridge as his pupils? In many ways not.
A really meritocratic system must take into account the potential of pupils and not just judge their education up to that point. The question for governments today is how to encourage real meritocracy.
Yes, there are limits to this. Tutors already tell me that they have to spend a lot of the first year helping students to catch up with basic knowledge which should have been taught at their schools. I'm the last person to say universities should lower their standards.
But why are universities not encouraged to build on existing schemes to familiarise able candidates from less well-off backgrounds with what will be required of them? Why should there not be more programmes, summer schools and support aimed at those who did not draw the Golden Ticket in the education lottery?
King's College London, for instance, provides a foundation course for would-be medics who lack the high science grades for a medical degree.
Jesus College, Cambridge, tries to find potential engineering and science applicants in the North-East. If this is the much-derided “social engineering”, give us more of it. When we move close to, or pay for, the best schools for our children, what are we engaging in but social engineering on our own terms?
Universities should not be under the whip hand of government but they are recipients of tax money and they should be encouraged to expand the best of their own ideas to widen access, without diluting their quality. The Conservatives need to think more deeply about this.
Schools reform will take us some of the way. But we get to know the hidden as well as the open codes of life by experience. Michael Gove, for instance, has written in the past of his own distrust of professions which have their own cabals. What does he suggest should be done about it in government?
Work experience places are traded more calculatingly than ever as favours among friends. An acquaintance recently described his office as “traditionally a third grammar school and two-thirds public school”. Any comprehensive products? He struggled to think. Surely the odd one slipped through? “Yes, but not around my boss,” he said.
The wider the educational attainment gap, the worse the problem becomes. Private schools are, overall, so successful that their alumni are everywhere, from the upper echelons of the Labour Party to the Mercury awards — an astonishing number of rock bands have been formed at a posh school.
Some of this is beyond the gift of politicians to address. Only the foolish want a new class war. But we deserve an education system which is not a house-price lottery or one in which excellence is provided overwhelmingly in the private sector.
As Labour's day wanes, the Tories need to show that they really are on the side of able people still held back by invisible but daunting hurdles. Until they do, I wish they would stop talking about social mobility at all.
Reader views (2)
If this makes it I will be amazed. Get shot of the lot of these so called mp's. You really wanna know who runs this debarcle; then we have to not vote at all during the next election. Hopefully then we can see who the real decision makers are. People of Britian dont be fooled the truth is out there. I sadly cant find the words to explain what it is I am attempting to get across. Just remember that you and me the tax payer are being royally screwed by these so called upper classes.
Bunch of parasites that they are. Revolution now!!!!
If you want to support this regime where your rights are being eroded in favour of some greedy capatiilists then vote. otherwise dont and see what happens.
Noble ideals
- Disgruntled, Yorkshire, 21/01/2010 01:33
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I hate to point out that there is some parental responsibility involved here. If people want to have children, don't you think they should have some responsibility in trying to engender an ambition for education, hard work and self improvement? Yet again it is suggested that the state should make excuses for those of a "disadvantaged" background. I know plenty of people from those types of homes including myself, who at the age of 10 or 11 could understand that life wasn't going to hand you the chances unless you actually worked. Those who didn't understand that at that point were frankly never going to make it in a rigorous academic environment anyway. Push your children to achieve and they will. Leave them in front of the TV while you ignore them and you'll have a second generation of losers, and a third and a fourth. Why do I have to pay for them to have a succession of underachieving costs to society?
- Jon, london, 20/01/2010 12:50
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