Grown up discussion about improving equality in education (hopefully)

[BeRoseBee]

I know everyone is tired of all the VAT on school fees threads - this isn’t one of them. Lots of threads on that if you want to discuss that.

Can we have a grown up conversation about how to improve equality in education for all? I’d like to keep it free from party politics if possible, genuine policy suggestions only please.

The Rest is Politics has a phrase I like - let’s disagree agreeably. Debate is good. Different opinions are good. Personal attacks or attacking a political party are not helpful.

I’ll start - personally I think buying educational privilege is rampant in the state sector. Wealthy parents buy houses at inflated prices in order to get their kids into the “best” state schools.

Wouldn’t equality be improved if we did away with this? If we could work out the logistics (mainly transport) why not have a random selection of state school within your local authority area? Buying a pricey house no longer guarantees your kids go to school with other wealthy kids, you’d get a genuine mix of kids from different backgrounds.

Anyone have any (constructive) opinions on this?

@Araminta1003 "But banding and ballot can only work in cities with excellent public transport all over, like London. Just won’t work in many other places."

It would with the school buses which will be part of the scheme.

@CurlewKate - they can’t even manage to fund transport for SEN children properly so where will the money come from for school buses? It just will not happen. And even rich parents will object to having to pay for a school bus once you take away their choices. It is just how things actually pan out in reality.

If your children are randomly selected for schools, does that mean they could all end up in different ones? Or they could all be in the same school in a difficult to get to place from where you live. The main idea of catchment was to make it easier for children to walk or bike to school, not to mention them having school friends who live near them.

Make the schools more equal rather than bus the children all over the place. And no I don't know how! Swap the best teachers around so not all the best teachers are in the best schools, but that's pretty unfair on teachers, having to move or travel further.

We have two (highly rated) local academy schools which operate a fair banding test. It's an 11+ style non verbal reasoning test. You can't fail it and children are placed in bands by score - 9 of them - and each band has a different offer distance.

The upshot for me was I couldn't take those schools seriously as options because there was no way of working out how likely DD was to get in. And I'm glad I didn't as she tested band 8 of 9 and so we would have had to live practically next to the schools, which we don't (I think the banding is on a bell shaped curve so the most places are offered to the middle scorers). I suppose I could have suggested she attempt to do badly in the test...

My point is such a system rolled out nationally could really cause some unintended effects. And if rolled out locally would just encourage parents to use the more gameable methods even more like buying a house next to the school, finding religion etc.

This is an excellent point and one I hadn’t thought of. A few people have also said busses crisscrossing all over the place is not a good idea for various reasons. Fair enough. Was just an idea!

My grammar did have 'late bloomers' transfer in from the local secondary modern. The whole point of Grammars was to give bright kids from poor families a leg up to achieve their potential. Our Grammars were in the local town with a fairly big catchment area covering some posh bits and various council estates, so where you lived didn't matter in terms of getting in. I don't know how common it was for wealthier people to use tutors to help get their children, but clever parents would also be able to help by helping with homework, etc. Our parents were absolutely skint and both hospital workers (not doctors), no way we could have gone private so 11+ was a good thing for us.

Well suggest the “more and better options” then? I was saying what I would like to see happen. What would you like to see happening?

"I’ll start - personally I think buying educational privilege is rampant in the state sector. Wealthy parents buy houses at inflated prices in order to get their kids into the “best” state schools."

The 'best' (whatever you mean by this) state schools still have half the funding per head than your average private school. They - on average - have double the number of pupils per teacher compared to private schools.

If by 'best' you mean 'the schools that are most successful at improving pupil attainment' - ie, the schools with the highest progress 8 scores, then the top schools in the UK are Michaela and Eden Boys school in Birmingham. 25% of Michaela's pupils are on free school meals. 30% of Eden Boys pupils are on free school meals. Both these schools take in average numbers of low and middle achieving pupils.

However, I suspect by your reference to catchment areas that when you say 'best schools' you mean schools which get great GCSE results, which of course may be as a result of good teaching, but may also primarily be because of their pupil cohort. They may also be nice places to teach and to learn, as environments that cater to middle class people often tend towards.

"Wouldn’t equality be improved if we did away with this?"

Many over subscribed secondary schools are already using fair banding and/or lottery admissions processes to try to get around the problem of selection by postcode, so while it's not perfect it's a start, at least in more urban areas where there's a larger concentration of schools within travelling distance.

But if this discussion is really about equality of educational opportunity I think it's a bit silly to be focusing on state schools when the most glaring inequity is between state and private - in terms of pupil intake, class sizes and access to resources.

"and the number of privately educated is small (and rapidly shrinking)"

Can you link to the evidence you've seen that says numbers in private schools are decreasing, because according to Civitas, the numbers in private schools are now at a record high, despite a 14 years of fee increases above the rate of inflation.

"The whole point of Grammars was to give bright kids from poor families a leg up to achieve their potential."

White working class children are vastly under represented in grammar school intake now, and children from fee paying primaries are over represented. Personally I think selection at 11 and 13 can never be made fair for children.

First off because it works on the assumption that a child is either 'academic' or 'not academic'. It assumes intelligence and learning ability is fixed. And it assumes that academic potential can be identified by a test. Testing in this way can never control for the child with a spiky profile; the child with emotional issues who performs poorly in tests; the child whose parent doesn't support their education at home; the child whose primary education has been severely disrupted; the child raised in a chaotic household etc etc.

According to research done at UCL: "While there was a slight positive effect for those attending grammar school, there was an equivalent negative effect for pupils in non-selective schools in those areas. The researchers concluded that, contrary to popular belief, educational selection was detrimental to high performers." https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/aug/no-evidence-grammar-school-systems-are-best-brightest#:~:text=While%20there%20was%20a%20slight,was%20detrimental%20to%20high%20performers.

If we could work out the logistics (mainly transport) why not have a random selection of state school within your local authority area? Buying a pricey house no longer guarantees your kids go to school with other wealthy kids, you’d get a genuine mix of kids from different backgrounds.

There would have to be sibling priority - which would further complicate the system - as two or more kids at different schools needing pick up/drop at same time and often with different Teacher training days adding to days parents need to have child care for and events to attend.

it's a bit silly to be focusing on state schools when the most glaring inequity is between state and private

There are huge spending difference between LEA about what per pupil is spent in state sector.

We are in one of the lowest spending LEA with corresponding low results - when they upped spending in London they saw results rise.

Difference in what school offer can be huge while still being in state sector - 94% of UK kids are in state sector I think frankly the attention should be on these kids and school not on small minority who will always have some additional privilege.

Smaller classes sized in state sector especially in primary - sure start centers and early years services brought back and funded as money spent there is a cost saving overall - more radically a look at perhaps advancing due to ability not birth year and whole exam system.

I agree. Start later, but have adequate early years provision until 6 or 7, then from about 14, tailor education as @TeenDivided said, with a more varied provision. Personally, I would get rid of GCSES and have a programme of learning which includes compulsory maths and English but different types of qualifications, like Functional Skills in one or the other, and a suite of vocational or academic study options. They can be formally examined at 18 and by that time, they would know if they were suited to University , work or apprenticeships. But yes, proper funding is the key, all the way through.

Also look at the funding models for state schools. With the demographic changes, schools are having their budgets cut, even though they were already underfunded, still have to pay for staff if there are 25 kids in the class instead of 30.

There is also an obsession with grammar schools and University in this country because people assume their kid would be going to the grammar school, and other people's children would be fine at the secondary modern. The 80 % of children who went to secondary moderns were not adequately educated, were streamed at 11, again not allowing for any late development, and not able to access the quality of teaching available to the grammar school kids. What about the 50% of children who dont go to university? Again, "other people's children " so who cares?

Additional funding should come from a broad and stable tax base, and there are a variety of ways you can do this - extra % or two on VAT, increase income tax by increasing additional middle tax bands (20 to 40% is a bit of a cliff edge ) are two obvious options. They wouldn’t be popular, though, as although we all want better services we expect someone else to pay for them.

we also need to solve our productivity problem in the uk, as a growing economy would generate revenue for the state as well.

i understand the populist appeal of squeezing people perceived as ‘rich’, but it is both risky and mathematically infeasible to place financial responsibility for the state sector on the backs of 6% of children in education.

ISC reports a decline of 2.7% this year, biggest annual decline since 2011

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/11/private-school-enrollment-decline-labour-vat-plan/#

In my opinion, the main thing that needs to be sorted is behaviour. If that is fixed and poor behaviour isn’t tolerated then more students have a better chance of learning. In other countries, those who don’t behave get sent off to a compulsory referral unit and all learn together there. There are currently no consequences for poor behaviour and we just have to accept that those who don’t want to learn, selfishly ruin it for the rest.

We have got the highest tax burden for about 70 years. Only growth ideally from better productivity can really solve that one.

By best I was talking about exam results which I believe is how a lot of people judge these things. I put quotation marks around it because I don’t think they should publish league tables for various reasons. Including some of the ones you mention.

The highest tax burden in 70 years, with the money not being used on public services. We cannot have growth without a trained and educated population, and jobs that are worth doing. We cannot have growth with 7 million people on waiting lists, many of whom cannot work.

I agree. I think we have a cultural disdain in this country for education and educators. It's part of the reason why poor children communities do so much better than poor British children. They dont have the same attitude towards education and teachers.

Also, I completely agree that inequity in education is most blatant in the private sector but as several people have pointed out it’s around 7% of kids that are privately educated. So I don’t agree that a discussion of the 93% is “a bit silly”.

Because of over spending, we actually pay more in interest on the country's debt than on the education budget. There's where a chunk of taxpayers' money is going. Bad decisions and poor control by past governments.

The language is quite explicit in allowing the legal 'discrimination'

It is unlawful for maintained and independent schools to have admissions criteria that discriminate against a child on the grounds of the child’s religion or belief. However, faith schools are exempt and are permitted to use faithbased oversubscription criteria in order to give higher priority in admissions to children who are members of, or who practise, their faith or denomination irrespective of designation. This exemption only applies if a school is oversubscribed.

and this

Under the Equality Act 2010 (EA 2010), faith schools are permitted to take into account religious considerations in employment matters relating to headteachers and teachers, in accordance with the School Standards and Framework Act 1998.

I hadn't realised that there were this many of them and they can still create new ones.

In January 2023, there were 6,806 state funded faith schools in England (around 34% of all state-funded mainstream schools).The majority were primary schools; 6,177 or around 37% of state funded mainstream primaries.21 The 629 secondary faith schools made up only 18% of all state funded mainstream secondaries. The proportion of state funded faith schools has increased slightly over time (from 35% of primaries and 16% of secondaries in January 2000).

37% of state primaries and 18% of state secondaries - why are more people not angry about this?

Quoting the OP as the conversation has moved on a bit, but I don’t think any student should be forced to travel unnecessarily long distances for the sake of ‘equality’ for others. If you’re in a city it might not be a major issue but growing up I lived in the sticks and had a 1.5 hour bus journey to school, and same again home. It was exhausting (particularly during exam periods and growth spurts) and I remember regularly falling asleep on the bus.