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.

(that was to your post of 22.53 obviously)

It's true about not necessarily getting better teaching in grammars. I look at my dd's school - 14000r so motivated, clever, middle class , well supported girls - how hard would it be to ge most of them to a stack of As at gcse?

The shame would be if they didn't do well!

I'm sorry but the phrase 'poverty of aspiration' is just a sound bite as are these tales of famous people who have come from a council estate. People who live on a council state aren't by definition poor. My wife was brought up on a council state but she wasn't poor. That is just a stereotype. Alan Sugar left school with no qualifications but he is the exception not the rule. Does that mean that people without qualifications should all be doing as well as Alan Sugar that it's their lack of aspiration that's the problem. Whatever aspirations one might have if one is living in genuine poverty then one is going to be disadvantaged. Not just because of the lack of money but because of all the other factors that beset the poorest in our society, such as lack of parental education and social/class stigma. Yes I believe that one can change things but the fact is social class and your parents educational status is still the biggest indicator of socio-economic success. Just look at how many high court judges were privately educated. So to say to a child from a genuinely poor background that you have just as much chance as getting from A to B as somebody who is upper class and all you need is aspiration would be deceitful. It also conveniently passes the buck on to the person who by know fault of their own has found themselves in a position of poverty. That's not to say they shoudn't be inspired to succeed but if you want them to have the same chances they've got to be at the same starting position. Otherwise it's an unfair race! This government wants all children to succeed (whatever that means) but it doesn't want to decrease the gap between rich and poor. Read this to see how well they have been doing: www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/jan/27/report-britain-rich-poor-equality. These champagne socialists in the Labour party want everything, to ease their consciences by looking after the less well off whilst at the same time maintaining their own economic well being and that of the wealthy capitalists that they will eventually work for when they stop being MP's. You can't have everything! If you want educational equality you've got to start to eradicate poverty and then be patient and wait for the results to effect the next generation. Everybody wants a quick fix, an immediate result, but genuine change takes a long time and lots of hard work and patience. But nobody's got any patience particularly politicians they want short term glory with minimum pain.
P.S Sweden tops international educational league tables
P.P.S Sweden has the smallest gap between rich and poor in the developed world

Agree it is not enough to say that the
problem is 'poverty of aspiration', but it is also not enough to say that is due to poverty. It is probably more to do with the lack of opportunity. The solution is education, which enables people to grasp opportunities or create their own.

Let's make sure we have an education system that we can be proud of, no gimmicks, no buzzwords, no flim-flam, just pure quality. Create a world class education system based on high standards from the top to the bottom and sit back and reap the rewards. The real gems will be found in the back streets of Liverpool, the housing estates of Manchester, not on the playing fields of Eton. In the globalised, technological world of the future it is brains that will count, not background. I don't know what the background of the science professors at Cambridge is, but I bet there are very few old Harrovians or old Etonians amongst them. The heart and guts of this country are its people, not the handfull who go to the elite schools.

I don't care if Sir Paul McCartney, David Beckham, J.K. Rowling or top wealth creators earn millions, good luck to them. I don't want their earnings taken from them in the name of eradicating poverty. I don't want a process of levelling down just so we that we can say that the gap between the rich and the poor has been narrowed. I want a raising up, by investment in top quality education, so that the dormant talents of the nation as a whole can be awakened.

The slight obsession on mumsnet with lawyers is surprising. Let all of the high court judges come from Eton, who cares?, in the grand scheme of things in the modern competitive world they are an irrelevance, they don't create wealth. In an age of globalisation with powerhouses like China knocking on the door, who the lawyers are and where they come from matters not a jot. Let's concentrate on educating the people so that we are able to survive in an
increasingly competitive world.

Rather than wasting time and energy tilting at windmills, trying to eradicate poverty, in the manner of Don Quixote, let's instead do something practical and invest massively in a top quality education system.

Interesting rexer because I was thinking about this sort of thing last night. Is the trouble too many qualifications?

It used to be that you could join a company as a tea-boy and work your way up to be chairman: if you could do the job then you got promotion. It was, as you say, a long term thing with no quick fixes in sight. This was in the days when you spent all your working life with one employer and it was in both parties' interest for the employer to nurture its workers.
We now have the situation where you can only apply for jobs if you have the right qualification. Never mind about experience and actually being able to do the job - if you haven't got the piece of paper then you don't even get to interview. We also have the situation where people flit between jobs more and employers are reluctant to put money into training up (what will become other companies') employees. So if you didn't do it 'right' in the first place (when you were a non-conforming teenager) then it is even more difficult to recify matters later in life when you mature a little.

So, if you have exam certificates it is wonderful but if you have not then it has turned into, to use a phrase from economics, a 'barrier to entry'.

Thank you, Pluto, for your post about Kent.

We live in Kent, and although our DC1 is only 7 I am already getting a bit nervous about the Kent test. The fact that this exam is taken in September makes things extra-specially scary: basically, the summer holiday before the test will be a write-off if we are to believe the stories about tutoring and cramming. I strongly believe that moving the timing of the exam has (deliberately?) played into the hands of those who can afford extra tuition.

I feel that the system of rich people being able to buy a 'better' education for their children perpetuates the class divide and does this country a huge disservice.

In any case, from what I have heard from privately-educated friends and in-laws, the education provided by even the most prestigious (i.e. expensive) private schools is not all that special, and career advice is negligible. They do tend to have nice sports facilities though.

Moving the Kent test was a disgrace. It makes it even more difficult for the archetypal bright child from a disadvantaged home to pass. AND it means that the children spend even more of year 6 divided into sheep and goats. Grrrrrrrrr!

seeker - I couldn't agree more re:slective schools (grammar or private for that matter).

Regarding "poverty of aspiration" I'd like to know what exactly is out there to aspire to if you are not particularly academic, particularly if you are a boy from a poorer background. What reasonably paid manual work is there for you when you leave school?

I think much of the problem (not that I can think of a solution) is that there is buggar all. Few boys can expect to be able to leave school with few/no qualifications and then find a job that in a few years time will pay to set up home and perhaps start a family. Not so long ago not having a raft of certificates wasn't such an issue, basically. Its no wonder that these (mainly I imagine) boys are disengaged, disillusioned and disenfranchised.

This is where vocational schools would come in. Give non-academic children (girls too!) a good grounding in the basics (English, maths, geography, ICT - but all this with an emphasis on practical use) and teach them a trade. If they want to leave school at 16, at least they will have picked up some useful skills.

Otter - to answer your very much earlier question (sorry) - 0% of children in the Netherlands are privately educated. State schools throughout.

LimburgseVlaai, from your description the Netherlands' model sounds far better, with the caveat that no child should be denied the right to study literature (for example) because they've been deemed as being "not academic" at 12. However there's little point in training pupils for a trade if there are no trades to join. Or at least if you believe there are no trades left for you to join then you can be forgiven for wondering if there's any point in studying.

Trouble is so many schools are crap. Poor teaching and low aspirations. And these schools tend to be in places where people are under educated already. Only way is to test all children and find out strengths, and then play to them. Also emphasise reading more. Make absolutely sure everyone can read by 7 or so (appalling indictment of schools when children can't read properly), make sure all children meet authors and writers and are read to at school and have time to enjoy reading. Books are the magic door - not the internet.

Mumarch - I worked briefly in a secondary school (well actually I was doing a PGCE but chose not to become a teacher). I was appalled by the standards of literacy I came accross - perfectly bright 15 year olds who could barely read, let alone write. Their primary schools (and families) had failed them and there was little room in the secondary curriculum to help them to catch up.

This was over a decade ago - I wonder how things have changed since then?

Completely agree with you about books - I spend a lot of time trying to explain to ds that the Internet is fabulous but is also full of absolute tripe. I suspect that this isn't just a class issue though.

I think Otterinaskoda is right, there is no point because the jobs are not there. It is a whole different topic, but they have been deliberarely dismantled and will probably never come back again

But claig - we will always need bricklayers and car mechanics and TV repairmen and plumbers and hairdressers and cooks and and and... Those jobs still exist.
At the moment a lot of them are done by non-British people, partly because there is a skills shortage in precisely those areas, and partly because the whole emphasis on academic qualifications has meant that 'manual' jobs are devalued (both in terms of pay and in terms of status). If you recognise that these jobs demand skill and expertise, they will go up in value.

LimburgseVlaai yes you are right those jobs will always exist, but the problem is that there will eventually be so much competition for those jobs that the wages will drop and it will become increasingly hard to make a good standard of living. The old factory jobs are all disappearing, even the call centres are being shipped out. There will be too many young people chasing too few jobs

Did you see the episode of Grand Designs where an elderly couple had a 'Huf' house erected by a team of German builders? Those guys were proud of what they did, they were good at it, and the result was amazing. Those builders were the product of high-quality vocational education.

agree 100% the German vocational education is excellent, and also from what you have said about the Dutch system they must also have a very high standard of vocational education. What is the unemployment rate like in Holland, and what are the wages like for the vocational jobs?

You're right Limburgse in that we will always need skilled manual workers. But I'm not sure we'll need enough to compensate for the decimation of the manufacturing sector.

I've been trying (and failing) to find longitudinal data on qualifications held by socio-economic group because I'm not convinced that class inequalities have widened as much as we believe (I'm well prepared to be corrected though). Which isn't to say that inequalities shouldn't be addressed - I just suspect that their impact is that much greater.

I had a quick look on the web. Unemployment in Holland in 2009 was just under 5%. This was higher among young people. Wages is more difficult to answer - taxes are generally higher. Many tradesmen do supplement their income by moonlighting; this is almost standard practice.

"the whole emphasis on academic qualifications has meant that 'manual' jobs are devalued"

I totally agree limburg. The education system is trying to gentrify everybody. Instead of professionals & skilled tradesmen we now have professionals & imported, trained-at-someone-else's-expense, cheap labour - the nonacademic are left behind with nowhere to go.

hmm, good figures, maybe you are right, maybe it does really work. The only thing that worries me about it is the typecasting of people at such a young age. Is there no opposition to the policy from the Dutch people at all? Do the Dutch worry in whose interest the policy is, or are there no concerns about it?

This is from an article on the Teleac site - equivalent of the Open University - about what they call a 'failed experiment':

"In the 1970s, the Dutch Left felt that education would be a means of reducing the distance between different groups in society, by allowing children from disadvantaged backgounds to pass into higher education.

This would be achieved through the 'middle school', a type of school for all children aged 12-15, as an extention of primary education.

Middle schools would finally break through the class system in education. Regardless of differences in background and ability, pupils would spend the first 3 years of secondary school following the same curriculum in the same schools.

Through middle schools, the choice of subjects and professions could be delayed and children would be able to make more informed choices later on.

The idea of middle schools died a gentle death."

So to answer your question claig: The Dutch tried a comprehensive school system but it failed. There are always voices calling for the removal of the educational class system, but they are generally silenced by pointing back to the middle school experiment.

Holland is a fascinating society, there are many laws that are so different from ours e.g. euthanasia, drugs, pornography etc. and I didn't know about this education policy. It would be fascinating to look at Holland in detail if I ever get time. Am I right in thinking that the only opposition would possibly come from the left, and that the right is for the policy?
Also I love Amsterdam, and when I go there people tell me that Amsterdam is a different country to the rest of Holland. Is there a difference between how the people of Amsterdam see the policy and how the rest of Holland looks at it?

LimburgseVlaai,
thanks for adding this interesting perspective, you have convinced me that it is worth looking at, and I agree with you that Cameron should study it to see if there is anything that he can take from it.

I think it would be difficult to implement it here in the way the Dutch do, because the people here are not even prepared to accept the 11+ system. But if it was made voluntary and a pilot was done where parents could choose to send their children there, then that could be useful. If it turned out to be very popular then it could be expanded. It is a bit of an idealistic dream to assume that everybody will benefit from just an academic path.

claig, I don't like the 11+ system. This is influenced in part by my mother's experience - she was a very bright woman who was let down by the tripartite system, but I'm also thinking about my ds (9) who I doubt would pass an 11+. He's dyspraxic and writing is a big issue for him - he is getting support (although precious little from school) and I expect him to do well academically in his own time. I also believe that even if he wasn't struggling, that I'd want him to mix with children with diverse strengths.

I think I'm in a minority, though. Perhaps within education there'd be opposition but the Daily Mail would love it, surely?