Education superclass?

[Amber2]

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/iainmartin1/100245274/it-is-much-worse-than-sir-john-major-says-a-new-superclass-is-being-created-in-london/

This is interesting coming from John Major ...sounds like more lobbying along the lines of the Sutton Trust but do people really think it's much worse than it ever has been..? and this is do with with the inexorable rise of London...and the global money flowing in there...and so to creating an elite superclass of private schools also ...not just any old private school but a small handful of elite ones, applications to which have reached record numbers, presumably more and more from London and from overseas with over inflation rises in fees pricing out the traditional middle classes that used to be able to afford these schools.

I think that the problem I have with the idea of an "education superclass" is that it isn't about education at all. The quality of education offered by the likes of Westminster and Eton is matched by some other independent schools and many of those schools send hoards of students onto Oxbridge/RG Universities. It is the access to parental contacts and the "because I'm worth it" attitude that comes from parents and peers. I think that it clusters around those schools, but it isn't quite created by the school itself.

breathe ...not my post you are referring to, but rabbitstew's....

breathes I think that is part of it, yes.

These schools do not manufacture Major's 'superclass'. These kids are already that when they join. School simply continues the process seamlessly.

The education system simply mirrors society.

Rabbit: one is my mother tongue, I learnt another 3 at school and the other 2 at university (not reading MFLs). I could have got away with just two, but my parents encouraged me to widen the scope and supported further extracurricular languages. But my point is that I went to a very normal provincial state school in a EU country not especially known for the brilliance of its schools. My school mates ranged from the son of the station master to the daughter of the baker to the sons of local hoteliers and doctors. I doubt that an English kid going to an equivalent school in, say, Brighton, would have the same opportunities and the same breadth of social experience at school. That is the real problem.

breatheslowly - I agree that some UK state schools, possibly many when it comes to the exceptionally bright, do not give the most able the opportunity to excel. I just think that is the case in a lot of countries, not just the UK and I am rather doubtful that someone achieving in the top 1% of their own country's exams would have a clear picture of the true state of their own country's education system. It's like someone from the old Communist elite who went to the best schools in Moscow and on to Moscow State university assuming that the whole of communist Russia benefited from such an education, or someone from the top schools in Paris thinking the French education system provides the same standards wherever you go.

I also agree with your view that the idea of an "education superclass" isn't so very much about education at all, but attitude, self-centred self-belief, and the fact that the more of such people in positions of power, the more it all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because they think they are the best, so look for more of the same whilst simultaneously bemoaning the lack of anything like them that comes from somewhere else.

But SuiGeneris - you are describing self-education and parental influence.

Surely self-education and parental influence can happen anywhere? What did your actual school do for you? You haven't described anything about yourself and your schoolmates that makes your schooling sound any different from the schooling my children could receive at their local school (not in Brighton, but in a normal provincial state school...). Perhaps you just aren't living "provincially" enough?

rabbit self belief might get you so far in life...

But it aint gonna make you fluent in several languages.
It aint gonna get you a first in economics from the LSE.
And it aint gonna bring in investors from mutinational consortiums!

wordfactory - try the difference between reasonable intelligence and self-belief and high intelligence combined with self-doubt. I think you'll find the intelligence factor is important, but it is the self-belief that is vital for the sort of success you describe - more important than the 6 languages.

SuiGeneris, you make a very good point. The lack of languages skill in UK students are dragging them down on the global level. I know many children in International Schools can easily speak 3 to 4 different languages from young age. Those children will be the one that take up all the jobs in the future. An example, I know a boy who is 7 and speak 5 different languages to good standard, a Portuguese mum, and Chinese dad, the boy speak fluent Portuguese, Chinese, English, and learning French and German from school.

Oh I don't deny that self belief is a powerful thing.

But I think it's quite wrong to think these young people are just bluster and inflated self confidence (though that's an appealing idea).

Many of them are highly intelligent, well educated, hard working and motivated as well as confident.

In those circumstances, I think it's hard to expect firms to recruit candidates that might be as intelligent and hard working but are less well educated and confident.

Yes, I agree, lack of effective language teaching in the UK is a problem and has been for an extremely long time without any apparent success at resolving the problem. It is easier in a way for non-English speaking countries to do the big sell on young people when it comes to learning foreign languages, because English is still sufficiently dominant in the world of business and entertainment that it makes sense to at least learn that, and once you have one other language under your belt, others come more easily (in my experience). If you already speak English, it is just harder to choose which other language to learn first, and if you can't even choose one, you're not going to move on to any others.

Ok. School was rigorous, had high expectations (including a talk on our first day as 14 year olds telling us it was our duty to make the most of our time at school as we were the people who were going to be in positions of responsibility as adults) and pushed us to do things we were not good at. So I was good at languages, history etc, not so good at maths and physics but had to do all until 19 and had to achieve high marks in all. All teachers agreed only lack of application would explain less than good results across the board.

Yes, of course having parents who encouraged studying rather than, say, spending afternoons playing computer games, helped a lot. But the original point was that to find a similar school for my DCs in London will require shelling out 15k per DC per year. That entrenches privilege.

wordfactory - I don't believe I've ever said these people aren't intelligent...

Rabbitstew: self belief and six languages are not mutually exclusive. You need self-belief to up sticks at 16 and move abroad for a while to improve those languages. But my point is that that self-belief is not the sole preserve of Westminster alumni.

Hmm. I always pushed myself to do things I was not so good at. I actually find it an irritating personality trait, because it is bordering on perfectionism and I discovered in the world of work that perfectionism and profitability are enemies - you have to care a bit less in the real world.

SuiGeneris - complaining about state schools is an odd way of making the point that self-belief is not the sole preserve of Westminster alumni!

Xpat is spot on, You have no idea rabbitstew..times have changed, the London market is truly global now, esp. in London. Take some of my friends/colleagues in Europe- children in top schools in Europe or UK - speak French, German and English really fluently (through school, parents, and exchanges) and spend summer learning Russian or Chinese too immersively, going to UCL or LSE to do Economics and then armed with a 1st going to the US for post grad or MBA, then perhaps coming back to London to get a job. We know, that these are who our children will be competing against and London being the international city that it is will continue to draw them in their thousands. They will have a network of fellow students as long as your arm and contacts from several international internships as well as parental. This will build their network for their future career in years to come. By comparison a "provincial"education with a bit of GCSE French thrown in will be just that , (whatever your self-belief and not sure how you put self -belief across in a CV)...not an international one of the type above that will be required to even get an interview for graduate entry positions at those magic circle city law firms or banks or multinationals.

SuiGeneris - I think what you really mean is that the school you went to suited your learning style and personality. It could have been hell for others. I went to a grammar school with a similar attitude and was happy as larry there. I was actually rather surprised when peers told me how much they hated it.

Rabbit: yes, of course it did. I loved it. But it also gave me opportunities that few UK children seem to get. Which is why I think there ought to be more schools like that here. Probably I mean grammar schools (never seen one, but I think my school would have been, mutatis mutandis).

Sorry Dotmania - I was absolutely responding to rabibitstew.

I agree that the lack of language skills in UK students is a problem. And I am not sure that even elite UK schools really do languages in the way that some other education systems do. GCSEs in languages seem to basically prepare you to be a tourist in another country, but certainly don't go anywhere need fluency. Children need to start languages early and teaching needs to immerse them as far as possible. Secondary schools can't really change this on their own. The whole system needs to change as secondaries take children from a mix of primaries/preps and need all of those primaries/preps to start languages differently to make a cohesive system.

I am not sure that an intellectual elite exists in the same way in the UK as it does in some other cultures. A friend from another European country described his teen years as including going to the theatre every week. I come from what might seem to be an academic/intellectual background in the UK, but we certainly didn't have that cultural upbringing.

Wordfactory is right that the most successful do have a combination of traits - "Many of them are highly intelligent, well educated, hard working and motivated as well as confident". They have that, plus open doors into all sorts of careers through networking.

What might be less visible is that there are loads of minor public schools out there which are less academically selective but getting on for as expensive as the elite academic schools. My experience of them is that they do churn out pupils with self confidence too. However many of those pupils are missing one or more of the other traits. Some are lazy, some aren't particularly intelligent (being less education might flow from either of these). The lazy generally don't get far without parental support. The less intelligent can often be quite successful in non-mainstream ways, perhaps showing entrepreneurial flair and combining this with parental capital to build up successful businesses. While they might never get into a RG university and will never end up in the political elite, their background, education and resulting confidence does bring them success that an average state school and average parents won't facility in the same way.

mutatis mutandis...you must be a lawyer Sui!

Sorry, dotmania - I do have an idea. I prefer provincial and know perfectly well a bit of GCSE French is not the same thing. I worked as a solicitor in a City law firm and to be utterly honest with you, I didn't really like the people I worked with very much, because their attitudes to life were so alien to my own - too much neurotic competition and unpleasantness, getting excited about the size of transactions and the hours billed and whether you were bringing more money into the firm than X, Y or Z, obsessing about getting children through private school entrance exams, rarely if ever seeing your children during the working week but calling up the Nanny to ask to talk to them before they went to bed, drinking to excess... I was delighted to find a way out of it, have children and never go back, because it made an optimistic person rather cynical about how the world or work actually works and whether you can actually retain any principles while working for others, wishing I hadn't seen behind the scenes and wondering what on earth possessed me to follow my peers down that well trodden route.

breathe

Agree about the cultural upbringing...my friends in Europe who have these multi-lingual type of children take them to the best opera in town on a school night with tickets costing £££ (in Euros) each ....for the experience....they see it as all part of their education. It doesn't stop at school.

rabbit how long ago was that? And how long did you last?