Class and Education - Lampl

[Xenia]

In today's FT:

Break down the barriers in English education

By Sir Peter Lampl

English schools are undergoing another major shake-up as Michael Gove removes them from local authority oversight and introduces a broader range of providers. No wonder, then, that the first fortnight of the new school year has been a turbulent one. Many headteachers are angry that Ofqual, the exam regulator, regraded GCSE English papers downwards midyear. Teaching unions are threatening a work-to-rule protest over pay and pensions. And many more schools have become academies, with more control over funding, governance and the curriculum.

This is the battleground of English education. But another piece of news this week was even more significant. On Tuesday the OECD reported that our schools were the most socially segregated among advanced economies. This underlines the biggest problem facing England?s schools: the close relationship between family income and how good a school a child goes to. The result is that children from poorer backgrounds have fewer opportunities to move up the ladder.


English education has improved under successive governments. Standards of teaching, and especially school leadership, are better. There have been significant improvements in London schools, particularly for some ethnic communities. But this is not good enough. We have to outpace other economies, particularly in Asia, that have improved faster. The UK languishes in 25th place in the OECD?s league tables for reading and in 28th place for maths, where Shanghai is now the best in the world. This does not reflect the position of all our young people. Rather it is a stark reminder that levels of social mobility have worsened since the 1960s and remain very low, despite government investment and reform in education.

I believe one reason for this is that governments have focused on structural reform, such as creating academies or free schools, rather than on improving teaching. Yet it is good teaching that really matters. Teachers? salaries account for four-fifths of a school?s costs and this reflects the value they deliver. Research by McKinsey has shown that the world?s best-performing education systems are those with the best teaching. The OECD now rates leadership in English schools highly, but we still have much more to do to improve teaching.

First, we need to attract more of the best graduates to the classroom. Ten years ago I helped establish the Teach First programme in England, modelled on the successful Teach for America programme. Teach First is recruiting almost 1,000 graduates this year from top universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, to teach in inner-city schools for a minimum of two years. Approximately half then leave to pursue other careers.

It has been a great success. But with 36,000 teachers recruited each year, it is only a part of the solution. In Finland and South Korea there are 10 applicants for every teaching place. Here we regard it as a success if every place is filled.

Even more important will be to improve the quality of the existing 440,000-strong workforce. Sutton Trust research shows that English schools could move into the world?s top five education performers within a decade if the performance of the least effective 10th of teachers were brought up to the average.

While improving teaching is crucial, we also have to address inequality in our education system, which has a substantial cost to society and the economy, since it prevents many of the most able children from non-privileged backgrounds from achieving their potential.

The best schools in England are world-class. But they are also socially exclusive. Seven per cent of English pupils go to fee-paying independent schools, which are out of reach for the rest of the population. Another 4 per cent attend the remaining selective grammar schools, which draw just 2 per cent of their pupils from the poorest households. The top-performing comprehensives ? mainly faith schools and comprehensives in well-off areas ? take just 6 per cent of their pupils from the poorest households. This compares with a national average of 16 per cent.

We should address this inequality in three ways. First, we should use random ballots to determine admissions to our urban secondary schools, rather than basing admissions on how close you live to the school or how religious you are. This would ensure a good social mix. Second, grammar schools should select more fairly, attract able students from poorer backgrounds and provide them with the extra help that better-off pupils get in prep schools or from private tutors.

Third, we must open independent day schools to all. Their students are 55 times more likely to win an Oxbridge place and 22 times more likely to go to a top-ranked university than a state school student from a poor household. The absence of poorer students from these universities is a shocking waste of talent.

My independent day school was totally funded by the local authority. Indeed, seven out of 10 independent day schools were principally state funded until 1976 through the direct grant scheme and local schemes.

Between 2000 and 2007, I co-funded a pilot scheme at Belvedere, an independent girls? day school in Liverpool, replacing fees with admission based on academic ability. Parents paid according to means. As a result, a third of pupils paid no fees. Academic standards improved and it was a happy place for pupils of all backgrounds. Moreover, the cost per pupil was less than at the average state school.

More than 80 leading independent day schools would back such a state-funded scheme, which would benefit more than 30,000 able students, whose parents could not afford full fees. It would require selective admissions, which political parties oppose. Yet far from creating new selection, such a scheme would democratise existing selective schools and break down the barriers between the independent and state sectors.

Taken together, I believe that these measures to improve teaching and reduce inequality would transform social mobility and unleash a wealth of talent to fuel our economy. And they would put England in the education premier league.

The writer is chair of the Sutton Trust and of the Education Endowment Foundation "

[happygardening]

seeker yes Im paying into an unfair system but not to buy success sorry didn't make that very clear looking back.

[rabbitstew]

Yes, but that's just a by-product, seeker, it isn't deliberate.

When it comes down to it, we all want our children to flourish and be happy and to experience as wonderful a life as possible. When the sky's the limit, it's easy to forget that they might not have needed to go quite that high to flourish and be happy and that, in reaching for the sky, they might have accidentally squashed others into the mud.

[rabbitstew]

But it's all relative. I don't want there to be too big a gap between the wealthiest and the poorest within my own society, because I care about my own society and clearly have a slightly wider remit than some when it comes to considering what "my society" is, but I'm much less interested in how my own society obtained enough wealth to start bothering about these things, when other countries remain poor. We all profit unfairly from someone, it's just how far we can stretch our consciences. Some people, once they've started stretching their consciences find they can stretch them quite a bit further than others.

[pianomama]

You sound like you have been watching too many world dominating villans type of movies rabbit. If thats how you feel about the society in general, the only way forward is (again) - education.
Educate your DC so they will be well armed to make a real difference - how's that for a plan? They are not likely to succeed if you tell them that clever "geeks" and nasty bankers are out to get them.

[rabbitstew]

I didn't say clever geeks and nasty bankers are out to get them, I said clever geeks and nasty bankers don't appear to be very interested in the majority of people. Romanticise learning and education all you like, but someone has to pay attention to the effects they are actually having now, rather than romanticising the possible possibilities of what they are thinking about and working on - we can't, unfortunately, all be innovators and dreamers and profiteers and those who aren't need a place somewhere.

[rabbitstew]

Someone has to choose between ploughing money into a space programme or the laboratories at CERN and improving education for a greater number of people or improving nutrition, for example. We can't actually have it all, and those who go hungry and unsheltered might well not choose the space programme and CERN, even if in 200 years time ploughing money into space programmes and CERN might solve the world's problems (but then again, might not and might even cause more problems than it solves).

[rabbitstew]

Which brings us back to the question of what the majority have to go without in order to encourage the rare minority and why the majority might be willing to do that. Unless you really think we can all afford to reach for the stars, in which case why do we need private education?

[wordfactory]

I'm sure some parents pay for a private education for success however they view that.

But not all of us.

I pay for choice.

I have specific ideas about what I want my DC's education to look like. And they do too, now they're older. Yet, I know from MN that what I want is anathama to many. One poster on this thread once told me that the school I had chosen for my DD sounded like her 'idea of Hell'.

So what are poeple saying? That I should have their choice forced on me?

[rabbitstew]

And if education is so fundamentally important and choice virtually a human right, then why put monetary barriers up against other people making your choices if they want to? Because life's not fair? Because the state couldn't afford to fund it and you wouldn't want access just on the basis of desire? In which case, why complain about choice being removed being unfair? Plenty of people have poverty forced upon them, because they are not able to compete. You just have a philosophical preference for one type of unfairness over another.

[Xenia]

People will have a variety of reasons as to why they feed their children well or read to it and talk to it (or ignore it) or pay for its schooling or move from inner London to surrey to find a good state school or find God. It's good people have different reasons for thinngs but on the whole most people want to help and benefit their children and that is a moral good.

It is wrong to suggest that if you benefit your child you do not disadvantage others. if you read to it by age of 3 it will have a massively larger vocabulary than many other children. That is in a sense you stamping on the chances of other children but that is how things are. By all means also read to the disadvantaged but do not con yourself into thinking that things we do with our own children do not have the effect of putting them ahead of others. We were put here to ensure the fittest survive. It is how evolution works. Of course we have some innate values of care for others and consideration.

[pianomama]

Rabbit - I can assure you, CERN is not using money from UK state educational fund. CERN is funded by EU.

clever geeks and nasty bankers don't appear to be very interested in the majority of people - how on earth do you know what they are interested in?

And how on earth do you feel free to make statements like that?
I am sure there are a lot of super smart people out there working hard on what will directly benefit you and your DC.

[wordfactory]

rabbit then I assume you are against parents having the freedom to home educate.

It's certainly not a choice open to many.

Are you suggesting that every child in the UK be forced to attend state school?

[rabbitstew]

Xenia, if we were here to ensure the fittest survive, we would abandon our own children if they were not among the fittest. At its absolutely most cynical, enlightened self interest tells us to take others into consideration, because one day we may need them to take us into consideration. It also tells us that if a minority piss off a majority too much, then however superior the minority are, they may still be physically outnumbered, or have all they hold dear trashed in revenge.

[rabbitstew]

pianomama - I can assure you that the UK is still part of the EU.

[rabbitstew]

pianomama - I'm sure there are people out there working desperately to help others, actually. However, I am expressing what I think the thoughts of many people are - people have become cynical and every time I turn on the news these days, I am pushed a little more in the direction of thinking that it is the cynics who are gaining control, not the idealists. I hope I'm wrong and believe I'm wrong until I pick up a British newspaper and look at its headlines.

[rabbitstew]

wordfactory - I am currently not for or against anything, I am just looking at what appears to be the reality and thinking what a mess it is.

[rabbitstew]

And that I'm not clever enough to sort it out - I feel like a helpless puppet on the sidelines, watching the arguments bat to and fro and wondering whether it's OK just to get on with my cosy life and do what I think is best for me and mine and hope someone clever comes along to sort out everyone else.

[GnomeDePlume]

I dont want wonderfully inspiring teachers for my DCs. I will settle for competent and well managed. In my DDs GCSE years she has had to put up with:

• regular losing of course work
  
• teacher who handed out classwork and left the more able students to explain it to the less able while she got on with marking HW for her preferred subject
  
• teacher who was asked to leave at the end of the first year of GCSE as he was incompetent (admitted by deputy head)
  
• teacher who was known by the school to be incapable of controlling a class and who eventually went postal and had to be removed from the class
  
  I did raise these with the Head who was damply apologetic and said that if only he had known he would have done something. He did not like me pointing out to him that it was his job to know. It was a very short meeting.
  
  It is a disgrace that this school is allowed to continue in this vein. I cant afford to move, there isnt another school.

[Xenia]

We are programmed to love our own though so we are unlikely to be throwing them out and seeking better ones. There is nothing wrong with wanting the best for your own so they do better than others. Of course many of us do a lot of other things to help other people but the idea that you favour your own is how we surive, we protect them rather than send them off to creches after birth like the oiriginal Israeli kibbutzim.

[rabbitstew]

Xenia - I think my life and choices would be much easier if I thought like you. You are a very lucky woman. The more I think, the less I'm certain of!

[wordfactory]

If you put others before your own, you feel like a failed parent and you may make your DC feel unimportant.
If you put your own above others, you feel liek a failed member of society and you may make your DC selfish.

Can't win .

[happygardening]

I dont feel like a failed member of society and my DS is not selfish. I take the view that if I don?t send my DS to his independent school the school will not shut down someone else will go instead and it also won?t make any difference to those who are receiving a rubbish education in the state sector. So it might as well be my DS who benefits from the wonderful broad education that they offer.

[Shagmundfreud]

"There is nothing wrong with wanting the best for your own so they do better than others."

The brightest children from the most supportive families do very well in the state system.

They get good GSCE results and are overwhelmingly likely to go to university.

But this isn't good enough for families that pay to go private. They want their children to have more than all the other children have and to have better chances in life. Even though they already have better chances than the vast majority because they have supportive, educated parents.

Parents who are buying privilege for their children need to be clear that their actions perpetuate a system which is not based on primarily on merit and potential, but is based on the ability to pay.

[wordfactory]

But shagmund isn't true of a thousand things we do for our DC, all of which result in their gaining an advantage over others?

How do we decide which are morally acceptable things to do, and which are not?
Why is paying for an education beyond the pal, when, for example, providing home cooked organic meals is not? The later is certainly not an option for many.

[Shagmundfreud]

Happygardening, I am convinced that if all children were educated in socially mixed state schools then the standard of education of the most disadvantaged students and probably the majority of the others would be improved.

Disadvantaged children drag each other down. Able students improve the quality of education for other students with whom they learn.

Schools which are disproportionately full of children who are disadvantaged are difficult places to teach and to learn. The converse is true.

That is why wealthy parents and church goers who deliberately seek out socially and academically exclusive schools for their children are perpetuating inequality.