Education and social mobility - John Humphrys is coming on for a discussion, Fri 29 Jan, at 11.30am

[GeraldineMumsnet]

John Humphrys is filming a documentary about education for BBC2. He is embarking on a journey around Britain to meet parents, teachers and students.

His task is to examine the relationship between education and social mobility - why is it that education cannot close the attainment gap that exists between children from the poorest and wealthiest backgrounds?

Government education advisor David Woods has accused parents of being prejudiced against their local state secondary schools. Dr Anthony Seldon, Master of Wellington College, calls the current independent sector an apartheid system. Professor Stephen Ball, from the Institute of Education, concludes that grammar schools, parental choice and faith schools have all been responses to middle-class concerns.

John is coming to Mumsnet this Friday (29 Jan) at 11.30am to hear your experiences. Are you benefiting from parental choice in education? Is it at the expense of others? Does the current system put too much responsibility on parents to make the right choices? Is it too stressful? Do you feel you have to top-up your children's education eg home-tutoring, learning an instrument, employing a lawyer? Are they worthwhile investments, or necessities that cause resentment?

Please post your thoughts here. Thanks in advance.

Yes, this is why we had to move. A new school was built on a housing estate nr Bristol where a large number of children living within a 5 minute walking distance were told they didn't have a place there. This is because they didn't count the public footpath as a highway!

Our local primary school has a big problem with the local army barracks kids fighting with the travelling-community kids. Both groups united to beat up the foster care kids, so we've stopped having foster children at the moment.

We manipulate the system by sending our own 4 DC to private schools. I feel bad about it, but the other options are home ed (which we'll do if money gets tight) or being beaten up every day and learning lots of "colourful" language.

Living in a small market town, we had the choice of two primary schools: one which was over-subscribed and wouldn't offer us a place, and one which was under special measures. We were lucky enough to get our child into a village school three miles away, but the council wouldn't offer transport because there was a suitable school within our town.

I had to drive my daughter to and from school every day for three years, and because of that, I couldn't get a job. Luckily my husband could support us all - just barely - if he hadn't, we would have had no choice but to accept the place in the school under special measures. Their OFSTED report was awful.

We're now in debt, which we wouldn't have been if (a) both schools were 'up to scratch' and (b) the council had offered transport.

Soemthingnew,my field is autism do can only relate to that but I feelmany of the communications you describe would be likely to be similar.

The answer of course is yes yes yes. We know early intervention is the best chance a child with ASD has,research proves it. Absolutely it should start before pre-school. My child started pre-school with no language but we were not offered anything except a vague 'Oh he'll learn' from a HV: now we know he has ASD.

My programme is really about social mobility and what part education plays in that. Do people believe that it's the whole answer and, if not, what are the other factors apart (obviously) from upbringing and accident of birth?

Sorry, perhaps the question wasn't quite clear - I was wondering if the option will be looked at when you film the documentary? Very often elective home education is ignored in discussions about education, yet research in the USA and here (Paula Rothermel, Durham University) shows that children from lower socio-economic groups tend to achieve when educated at home. Not only outperforming schooled peers from their own social group, but frequently outperform their schooled middle-class peers. If your looking in to education and social mobilty I don't think that can be ignored.

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Absolutely not. We owned the property, we had lived in the area for over 15 years, we knew we were priced out and couldn't afford MH prices so we stuck it out for a couple of years to ensure the best possible school for DS. There are good schools where we live now but it is always a risk trying to buy into a catchment. However ghost renting and fibbing on the form are somewhat different IMO.

I am worried by what somethingnew has said. I don't think more schooling at an earlier age would be beneficial to any child. Surely, interaction with a parent / adult during thier childhood is the best way to learn. If they go to school any earlier, they may as well start once they're born!

No I don't believe that, a sper earlier post (don't worry, they get lost easily LOL) I think it is part of it but that the other aspects can completely destroy any gains made through education if left unaddresed.

I think the public highway issue is a bit of a red herring. They have to draw catchments lines somewhere after all, don't they?
Catchment areas are only an issue because school A is better/worse that school B. If they were equally good then no-one would mind.

Hi, haven't followed the debate, yet, but I do have some ideas. education simply isn't universally respected, and simply, it must be.

we have an abundance of fantastic primary schools, some secondaries in whose catchments the house prices are very much higher (we moved into one for the neighbouring catchment), a very few grammars, and a few private schools.

Our primary school is large and very mixed in terms of 'class' of families. Parental involvement is encouraged. Uptake is quite good I think. So the schools here do fine and we're vitually all content.

I'm concerned that, even in my 'nice' comfortable position, that the aspirational element is not present in our schools. The inspirational element is lacking.

I don't believe it is like that everywhere. I know that there are parents with poor attitudes to schools and education who are doing abolutely nothing for their children.

It is not the responsibility of the schools to educate the parents. However someone needs to have some genius ideas about how (why and when) parents need to be educated in order to be able to support their children's learning. and to want to support their children's learning.

So I postulate that more and more money being invested in schools, which is always a good thing, should be accompanied by targetted programmes to educate/re-educate parents about the value of education. Maybe some of these apathetic parents might even have an opinion - practical skills based options from a young age as another national curriculum staple (real hands on stuff, making and fixing stuff, how things work, not 'media studies' or x-factor wannabe grooming).

This applies to making parents from every social class appreciate the value of, and support, education, in its broadest sense.

Rationalise the target and indicators. Pay teachers a salary worthy of a highly skilled profession , pay teachers a professional salary and, in case anyone missed that, pay teachers more with a salary that reflects their status as highly important professionals. Like more than lawyers and certainly more than bankers, advertisers and media careers. Teachers and teaching has to become universally respected as a professional career, and a sought after one.

I'm not a teacher, nor are any of my family so this isn't a personal plug for more wealth. Just that faith schools demonstrate the importance of the family/school interface. The positive repercussions for the nation of getting education right and integrated etc are so massively huge across the board. Citizenship, family policy etc would fall into place so much more easily. Families of faith often care and have values. I so much believe that all families, with and without religion, should benefit from an education system that sets people up for life.

On the religion issue, I live a 10 minute walk (0.7 miles) from a good city centre secondary school that gets great results. My next nearest school is about two miles away. The good school is the obvious choice on the grounds that it's our nearest, it's walkable and it's also a good one.

However, to get my DS into that nearby school, which is C of E, I'll have to take him to church (though I don't think we'd have to get him baptised) since we're 0.2 miles outside the half a mile local catchment area.

I'm currently considering whether, as a confirmed agnostic, I want to do that. On the one hand, it would offer him an insight into and cultural knowledge of the UK's dominant religion (useful for English literature, history etc). If he doesn't have to be baptised there's no onus on us to pretend a religious faith. I think this is probably how church schools worked historically - you have to go to church to get into school, therefore you go to church, therefore churches get a congregation that's tied to them economically as well as spiritually.

In my view that's the rational approach. On the other hand, it's not really in the spirit of the thing. Am still considering really. In one way, I wish there was no religious selection. On the other hand, I think it probably wouldn't be such a good school if there wasn't...

It's a hard choice to make.

nic early intervention is often done at home via portage, specialist HV etc. I agree about earlier schooling not being good but there are middle roads.

Well, if social mobilty was a possible decades ago (my father's family were 1920s London DOckyard workers and ALL five kids went on to 'almost' middle class status!) then something must have changed in the interim. What? Personally I think schools play a part but the dire schools here are ones on the edge of estates that have families with desperate problems that are not related to money. I'm an older mother - 44 with 2 girls under 4 and I'd say most of the women my age are grandparents and no one has ever worked. How does a school rescue that situation. And it's not isolated - I wish it were. That's just my experience and I can't speak for other areas.

Also agree with nic60, if the education system is failing children when they already have YEARS there, how will adding more years make the difference. Something fundamental needs to be changed, not just tweaking the curriculum, the start/finish age or the money invested in schooling. Schooling as it is now doesn't meet some childrens needs. They need an alternative, not just more of what they are currently offered.

I think there is a real need for proper vocational education delivered when children need it most - early teens I think.

I used to teach (before I had kids) at what was pretty much the last vocational school in Scotland. We had boys from age 13-ish who were able to spend a day a week at the local college doing auto-engineering and construction, girls doing care and hairdressing, both doing catering (the gender split was rather obvious!!)

Sadly the school closed as a cost cutting measure and merged with the local comprehensive, where "timetabling restrictions" meant this could no longer happen.

There really needs to be a lot more flexibility in the system to allow appropriate vocational training for children who would benefit from it. When I see my former pupils now being nurses, fixing our car, cutting my kids hair, one of them was a nursery nurse at my older daughter's nursery - these kids came from homes with no jobs at all, long term sick/unemployed parents, and they have prospered and done well from the education they were able to access. I do despair for children like these, trapped in academic hell and unable to branch out.

Attitude and self-confidence v v important IMO. Take my DH's family (mum, aunts and uncles): all left school at 16 or 18, but they ALL went on to do degrees as mature students (at various times, pre/post kids etc.). All 5 of them. But only 4 now work in a professional field - and the one who doesn't is the one with little self-confidence.

Education could play a huge part in social mobility. One of the great things now is that even if you do flunk out of school at 16, there are degree courses readily available as a mature student. I know many people who have gone that route.

But where there are parents who don't have the understanding that they need to engage with their children, and they have the tv on all day every day, so their children can't speak when they start school (obviously I don't mean SN children) then 6 hours of schooling a day aren't enough to bridge the gap.

If parents have their own problems and don't listen to their children read their reading books, then they aren't going to be good readers. If they can't read well then they can't self-educate, plus there probably aren't any books at home.

Define social mobility please.

Aspiration and showing children/young adults what there is out there in the world is totally crucial.

Good careers advice, and doing the things that pushy, well connected parents do for their children to get children experience of different jobs.

Clear admissions policies to university for over subscribed courses so that applicants know that they are expected to have done work experience/volunteer work/have read the papers/watched Newsnight for 5 years. These unwritten rules are what cause the most motivated teens to fail to get places as they don't have the 'knowing' adult guidance

I was lucky - although not university educated, my parents encouraged me all the way. But they didn't know who to call to call in a favour to get me work experience. When I finally got in to one place, I discovered that every other summer student (and there were maybe 200), had a family connection to the place in someway or another.

I agree weggie,and I would like to see it valued as well as just available.

And on social mobility: my parents are Oxford graduates, of their four children, so far one has gone to Oxford, one to London, one to Durham, and the other's currently applying.

I think the support that you get at home is important - and it's difficult for parents to know what support is required if they haven't done it themselves.

Parents who've had that background also have the benefit of knowing people who can advise, just because they were in the same year at uni and have stayed in touch.

I think it's important to remember that this debate is not necessarily about educational standards, or the school admission system and the inconsistencies therein, but about social mobility via education.

However uncomfortable it may make us feel, we need to examine and acknowledge the real reasons why so many middle-class parents are so desperate to keep their children out of schools that are perceived to be 'bad'. I'm sure they believe that the teaching is often excellent, the ethos sound, and the facilities/resources good. But the other children....

No-one wants to send their child, aged 11, into a lions' den. Bullying, violence, disruption to lessons, children who turn up having slept in yesterday's clothes, with no food in their stomach, truancy, a complete lack of respect for teachers and the education experience, from the pupils and their parents, indeed, a complete lack of respect for any form of authority. Parental apathy, children who have been brought up to believe that disagreements are solved through violence and intimidation rather than informed and reasoned debate, an overwhelming number of children, in some areas, who do not speak English, (putting an impossible strain on teaching resources), gang culture, and a 'rights without responsibility' culture.....need I go on?

Until the environment offered in 'failing' schools become less 'challenging' and intimidating for well-behaved children who just want to learn, concerned middle-class parents will continue to vote with their feet. Well, their Ussein Bolt sprinting trainers, actually!