Why would anyone consider going to Rugby school better than the mixed local comp?

[Charis2]

I read this article in the standard earleir, and just thought what is this headmaster on? Why is this scholarship presented as such a huge honour for the boy, when in fact it is a way of the school paying to improve its results by taking in some of the best sixth form students without fees.

What "lifechanging" opportunities does he expect he can offer, which Hassenbrook acadamy can't?

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/needs-pic-teenage-footballer-wins-70000-scholarship-to-boarding-school-that-invented-rugby-a2953791.html

Headmaster Peter Green said he hoped Michael and other Arnold Foundation scholars would have a “ripple effect” on their communities when they return home.

He said: “We might be able to be transformative and transform their lives. Then when they go to university, and after, they can start to transform their own local communities. It’s not about parachuting someone out of that. We want to keep their association with where they are from.”

What a snob. Does he think the staff at Hassenbrook only teach poor peoples maths and physics, and the maths at Rugby is somehow a better class of maths? perhaps he thinks the laws of physics perform better there too?

I hope this lad has fun, but I don't think for a moment his life is going to be in any way better because he spent two years mixing with rich snobs rather than normal people.

I agree with you on this one Bertand. It's what I am trying to say, but apparently am doing a bad job of it.

Up untill the 1960's Betrand yes. Once we had the Labour Government ( a grammar school boy at its head) things were different, there was more meritocracy because of the war.

There was an economic boom that opened up opportunities to many people who couldn't get a look in previously.

No, there had been long booms before, but the difference was this time that there was a boom along with whole swathes of society moving. Also the disparity between rich and poor was closed by taxes on wealth and high rates on higher level pay.

There was a lot more at play than just the economics.

So longtime are you saying that grammar schools are the cause of so many people moving into the middle class? That's where this little offshoot conversation started. I personally think grammar schools are not a bad thing, but I don't think they were the cause of social mobility. An enable factor, but not a cause.

I think there was a dearth of labour like after the black plagues in the middle ages and that working people had more bargaining power than usual for a golden window. There seems to have been a shift back to capital that I don't think education on its own can fix.

Grammar schools were the preserve of the lower middle class- there were cheap private schools for the upper middle class. There are lots of examples in literature of the one looking down on the other- and the upper classes looking down on both!

Grazia,
Is not the point that cultural capital is not simple to get (caveat I have admitted on other threads my understanding of this is imperfect at the very least.) So to take a simple example from your list and paraphrase, "dress for the job you want and not the job you have today" is a phrase which has long been used in business. This isn't approaching "having a feel for the game". Which is why I think it is a hard question. Not that some steps cannot be taken along the way.

Cultural capital is a fascinating issue and obviously it depends on jobs as to whether you need it. I assume my son's ability to get on with anyone and find a topic to talk to in common with anyone helps with his duties as post man and he's pretty good at talking to lonely old ladies. My lawyer daughters need the more conventional kind.

I agree that elements of it are hard to pick up just from copying and listening to others on youtube and the like but it's not impossible to do. Also some people change more than others and can adapt chameleon like to their surroundings. Plenty get on fine from continuing exactly how they always were too.

Historically we had some people getting on in the Victorian age - all those mill owners and self made men but labour was very cheap. Then come 1914 Russian revolution etc workers stopped being happy to work for a pittance and board and lodging any more and it got harder to have loads of servants and cheap workers probably culminating as illustrated in all those 1970s comedies of people out on strike all the time and perhaps the year we have 99% upper rate tax in the UK and then we had our continuing slow decline of empire from the days when the sun never set on the British empire and large parts of the planet were colured pink (ours). Labour is still fairly expensive these days as it is not a free market and we don't allow all the immigration that is out there waiting to be here and prepared to work for very little.

" Secondary Moderns supplied the blue collar workers, Grammar Schools the managers, minor public schools the bosses, and the major public schools the ruling classes. "

That is so true. My mother was a grammar school girl in the 1940s, and their "careers advice" was that they could be teachers, nurses or librarians

So more things we need definitions of. I'm still looking for a definition-or at least a definition appropriate to this thread- of "able".

"Cultural capital" seems to be an issue too- if some think it can be acquired by copying UTube videos.

Yes Grazia some professions are better at protecting "their bowl of rice" than others. I have a college friend in Wash DC. He remarked recently that his job (looking up citations for legal briefs) would have gone to India long ago if the bar hadn't lobbied to make sure that the work had to be done by someone who has passed the bar. He totally felt that his job was being protected by his "union": the bar. He clearly saw that his training (juris doctorate) was not really necessary for carrying out his day to day responsibilities.

If I've got some of the phrasing wrong here, forgive me. I am certainly not a lawyer. But I got the gist of what he was trying to say. You'd expect lawyers to be good at defending their patch. Not everyone is quite so articulate or educated and therefore their jobs are more easily exported.

There is certainliy a lot of legal export. A Tesco delivery man (mmigrant) was talking to me about his on the side legal outsourcing company in India actually, last year. I am delighted when duller legal tasks are contracted out as are many lawyers as we can then do the more interesting stuff.

In fact it's India which is most protectionist - one of the only legal markets on the planet where they will not let foreign law firms set up.

It's been a big issue with doctors actually - if only let those who get the best exam results in you get a load of nerds who don't look people in the eye and cannot chat to aunt Jane about her hobbies. You need people with both academic skills and good people skills.

I'm just thinking that a lot of even traditionally professional work is under wage pressure from foreign competition/analysis automation. So, for me, I think the trend of stagnating wages in the first world is here to stay for the foreseeable future. I think this trend is unrelated to grammar schools. Revive them, get rid of the remaining few, it won't matter much. Social mobility is driven by much more than just the structure of state education.

More selective education, not less, is the way to tackle foreign competition. People will require ever more skills and greater specialisation which is very hard to deliver in large generalist schools.

From an economic point of view, wages in real terms lowering is more to do with the rewards for capital rising.

Both in the states and here there were closer controls on this in the middle of the 20th century. In both countries it was scrapped in the 80s.

By the wealthy, of the wealthy, for the wealthy.

Both in the states and here there were closer controls on this in the middle of the 20th century. In both countries it was scrapped in the 80s.

I do agree.

I would argue that labour rates for the unskilled are quite high. It's the semi skilled and skilled wage rates that have fallen, especially if you look at the hourly rate.

Getting back to the education slant on this discussion. I don't think grammar schools would spark a new wave of social mobility in and of themselves. Thinking that saddles education with more than it can carry on its own.

I do think grammar schools are an efficient way to teach children, though. In any operation, the more you streamline and standardise whatever you are handling, the less the operation costs. If the main problem with state schools is a lack of funding, they would be more effective with the same money if the children were sorted into similar ability groups.

Given the funding constraints, imposed politically by the tax payer, it is a choice between something softer and more human, or something more effective.

And if we look at fee paying schools as a relatively free market that is how they have organised themselves - with some for only children who are super bright, plenty in the middle and a good few who do good work with not very bright children and of course some which are useless schools and go bust.

I don't have a problem with big gaps in income between high and low paid people as long as the low paid can eat, are warm and are housed.

"they would be more effective with the same money if the children were sorted into similar ability groups."

What, the way they are in the vast majority of comprehensive schools?

Most comprehensives aren't big enough to have enough scale within their ability groups.

"Most comprehensives aren't big enough to have enough scale within their ability groups."

Well not to have an entire set of "breezing through GCSEs doing no work at all" types, no. But I question whether there are a set of them in any other sort of school either. My ds's secondary modern has 7 sets in year 10. I am baffled by people who only want their child educated with others of exactly similar ability. In the same ball park, certainly. But it seems to me that, certainly in arts and humanities, not being up there with the very top doesn't mean you can't have ideas and contribute to interesting discussions and bring your own perspectives........The parents of very able children sometimes seem to be a bit in awe of them. As if they are very precious and need to be kept away from the nasty rough not quite so bright children. Which I don't think is good for either group. There was a gloriously honest poster once who actually said she didn't want her child queuing for lunch in year 7 next to anyone who got a level 4. She was a pretty extreme case, but there is a touch of that in many, I fear

It's not just the "sets." It's getting the curriculum mix covered and matching teachers to students.

No point in having sets if they don't teach them what they need to learn......