Why is it only the right that gets angry about how state schools fail the poor?

[longfingernails]

A truly fantastic article.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/06/christine-blower-the-nut-and-the-bigotry-of-low-expectation/

My favourite snippet:
This is what separates British left and right now. The left, in their post-Blair phase, is no longer very worked up about the poor doing badly at school. (?It may matter or it may not,? Blower said about poor children not going to top universities). The standard left response is to talk philosophically about inequality in society, as if this has the slightest bearing on whether the concept of a sink school ought to be tolerated in this day and age.

By contrast, the right are hopping mad about educational inequality. When the subject is raised in front of Michael Gove, it?s like flicking a switch. He blows his top. When I last interviewed him and raised the subject about whether it poor kids should be expected to do as well as rich, he replied in a crescendo of anger.

'Moondog - whose fault is it if the most disadvantaged people in the UK refuse to take up offers of antenatal education, support from Sure Start centres, fail to take advantage of libraries or free learning resources on the Internet? These things are there for everyone..'

Mini, that is my question!
I'm hoping someone can answer it.
What do you think?

Goverment spending can only be created by taxes in other words taking off people so if the money is taken off people how is that creating G.D.P all it is doing is robbing peter to pay paul. The only other way to create G.D.P is though quantivtive easing and hope that stimulates the economy. The downsides are inflation and devalution of currency. The average take up of F.S.M in Schools is 10% then surely a School that has 25% take up is still getting many kids from the same background however F.S.M does not include the working poor in many instances. Moondog. The problem in the public sector over many years was a lack of control on spending and a attitude of its not my money so it does not matter if we pay two times to much for the goods. What has happened with the cuts athough drastic have made the public sector more cost conscious and in time that will be a very good thing. However private companies when dealing with social problems tend to go to far over profit rather than care, you only had to watch panorama last night on how kids in care are being sent to homes that are poor or satisfactory.

"My children's state school is in a poor part of London but many of the children achieve very highly. Those who don't are usually poorly supported at home."

I can well imagine. I live in a (affluent) part of Paris, but even rich kids who are poorly supported at home regularly fail to achieve when they are contained within the state education system.

a) fsm is the criteria in the article in the OP
b) same way other schools seem to manage it? The fact that free schools control their own admissions and end up with fewer fsm kids is worthy of investigation, especially if they claim, as Toby Young did, not to be simply setting up schools for the kids of the middle classes in the area.
c) well the poor kids are unlikely to be at private school are they?

I wonder if there has been a dumbing down of the working classes or if it is just that there is a shrinking working class and that everyone is so keen to label themselves as middle class.

It strikes me that as soon as someone shows an interest in education they are described as middle class, that there is a middle class style of parenting and therefore if you read with your children at home, eat at the dinner table etc , you become middle class. So it is not that the working class are dumbing down but that we describe anyone who is not conforming to the parental ideal as working class.

Of course it is just as possible that class is an irrelevant nonsense today and we need to therefore look at an " underclass" a term I hate that has always existed and has not in fact dumbed down.

I work with lots of " working class" families or families from council estates who are very aspirational for their children.

I also work with children from homes who could easily afford to pay school fees and they choose to keep them in the state sector, so whilst I am not claiming that all of the state sector is great it is equally wrong to say it is all not working. That does not mean that we could not do more, teachers like any other professionals are always trying to do a better job.

a) fsm is the criteria in the article in the OP

Faire enough-you have a definition. Not a great one, but a definition nonetheless.

b) same way other schools seem to manage it? The fact that free schools control their own admissions and end up with fewer fsm kids is worthy of investigation, especially if they claim, as Toby Young did, not to be simply setting up schools for the kids of the middle classes in the area.

Your touching naivety in assuming that state schools throw open their doors and welcome all and sundry is astonishing. Again, I direct you to the Special Needs threads.

c) well the poor kids are unlikely to be at private school are they?

Eh??

Theodore Dalrymple is my favourite writer on the issue of the underclass.

Moondog, you'll find a reference to the 47% approx half way through this

"Big government? slashed the debt

The UK?s sovereign debt varied up and down prior to the mid 20th Century, mainly according to the costs of wars against the other big powers. In the initial and classical capitalist period, there was little or no state welfare, and the income and wealth of the rich was barely taxed; British sovereign debt was over 100% of GDP from 1750 to 1850, spiking at 250% of GDP in 1815 following the war against France. During the late 19th Century and until 1914, the national debt continued to fall fairly steadily, even though this was the period in which the beginnings of the modern public sector emerged and expanded, with for example free and compulsory schooling for children, the road network, sewage, the water supply, gas and even telecommunications being arranged by the state at national or local level. Subsequently, the cumulative effect of two world wars and the intervening massive economic crisis sent UK?s sovereign debt back up to two and a half times GDP at the close of the Second World War.

It was then that what could be decribed as ?big government? was established in peacetime conditions. The utilities and much of industry was nationalised (with compensation paid to previous owners), and the main institutions of the welfare state were set up and expanded- to the extent that by the mid-1970s, government-managed expenditure (including transfers, ie benefit payments and interest) was almost half of national production, and state spending on investment and services- ie, excluding transfers- had risen to 27% of GDP by 1975- compared to between 10% and 12.5% during most of the years between WW1 and WW2.

Yet at the same time as this huge growth in ?government?, the sovereign debt was reduced so rapidly that between 1946 and 1975 it fell from 252% to 45% of GDP" 21stcenturysocialism.com/article/sovereign_debt_is_a_capitalist_issue_02079.html

Now, government spending accounts for around 47% of GDP and yet debt to GDP is around 85%. In short we have a "big" spending government and they have nothing to show for it except rising debt.

Basically the government is now spending money, be it welfare, health, education, R&D or defence etc,.....and this money is finding its way into the hands of private businesses and individuals. I could explain further why that money never finds its way back into government hands, workers pockets or R&D and investment into production. You're probably already yawning

On the contrary. I find this stuff fascinating.
Thanks for the link. Will watch once I have finished supervising the latest piece of idiotic homework and calmed down.

Exactly what The Spectator's Ross Calrk has been saying this week then?

I don't have a problem with the acquisition of knowledge, what I question is A)who's knowledge B)how useful is it to those coerced to attain it c)who gets to decide what is useful

Taking history as just one example, history is assumed to be a jumble of happenings that spontaneously happen without any reference to what went before. History is taught as though it were a collection of random events unconnected to the material conditions. Why? I believe this is because we like to think that people shape the world with their ideas. Ideology and culture take precedence over economic/material realities. History itself shapes the way people view their own social conditions. The likes of Gove with his emphasis on facts over enquiry prevent critical thinking in favour of creating state sanctioned group think. Nationalism is manufactured through history teaching and is extremely useful to the state.

Moondog, re b) and c), what I'm saying is that in any given area there are fsm kids and these kids have to go to school. So if in these areas you have a couple of comps and a free school, and the comps have loads of fsm kids and the free school doesn't, you can assume that the comps are taking at least their fair share, and the free school isn't.

Unless the free school is slap bang in a suspiciously middle class area. But if they are, what is Gove doing approving that given that he is supposedly passionate about free schools and poor kids?

oh, and someone mentioned up thread about the dumbing down of working class culture. I agree this has happened. I would though put forward the argument that this is state sanctioned and manufactured through popular culture, TV, Music, tabloid news, fashion, art, (list is endless) There are quite obvious ways in which this dumbing down actually benefits the wealthy social power brokers who make party donations, take state welfare to shore up their businesses, write the news stories of the day, report on the radio and take up almost all public space, employ people and appropriate the product of their labour only to sell it back to them, provided they can get credit!

Agree with you Mini that dumbing down is a useful political tool.
Your paranoia about history and history teaching is unfounded.
Everyone has a different slant naturally-and not always the one you think.
As an example, the elite in the French Caribbean are taught about the history of slavery in a very different way to that which you would expect.

So Noble, assuming free school is in a place packed to the gills with deserving great unwashed, how would you, as head of said free school ensure you got your share quota of poor kids?

If the area is chocka with fsm kids, then they should apply to the school. School is not a Surestart centre where you don't have to go. If the local kids are actively choosing to go to a different school, and snubbing the Free school, then questions should be asked why, because that would be odd. If the kids are applying and not getting in, then the admissions need looking at. If a school was in an area with loads of black families and yet was short on ethnic minorities, then that would be worthy of comment.

I think I read Toby Young's school came under fire when it came up with a planned catchment area that was a very odd shape and avoided quite a few poor areas.

Haha at idea of people actively avoiding free school and your skewed logic.
So if not enough of them for your liking, radar twitches. They have not come! Why?
It must be due to sinister forces at play. Tripod shaped catchment areas and so on.

Do you then tell them they must come to fulfil the quota of bisexual one legged Albanian travellers as decreed by your council.

What if demand exceeds supply?
What does that tell you?

Surely you would be concerned if you set up a school for the local community and any sizeable part of that community was actively choosing not to attend.

As has been said on this thread, if the purpose of free schools is to provide a quality and aspirational education for the poorest sectors of society's , it is a failure if they choose not to attend or you set your catchment to exclude those students.

If the purpose of free schools is to save wealthy parents from having to pay school fees, they may not have failed. .

Well if at least three quarters of free schools have lower intakes of fsm than is average across their area, then why wouldn't your radar be twitching?

From the article I linked to above
"According to the data, at St Luke's, a primary school in the London borough of Camden, the percentage of pupils registered as eligible for a free lunch is zero. The average proportion of children claiming the benefit in state primary schools across Camden is 38.8%.

At Nishkam free school, a primary in Birmingham, just 6.4% of children are eligible for free lunches. Across the city's primary schools, 33.2% of children are entitled to the benefit. At Bristol free school ? a secondary school ? 8.8% of children are eligible for free school meals, while across the city's state secondary schools, 22.5% of pupils are entitled to the benefit."

I'd be interested to know why.

free school

'it is a failure if they choose not to attend'

Are you suggesting that people a. do not exercise free will or b. cannot be trusted even if they do?

There are many state schools in Britain whose pupils are predominantly non British. Are people querying why this is the case? Of course not, for fear of being branded EDL supporters or worse. People blindly close their eyes to the fact that, quite rightly, people always have chosen where and where hot to send their children.

Choice-branded as a wicked thing.
Insane

One of the problems with having so many choices and so many different types of school with varying ethos and curricular, plus wide differences in academic attainment, is that only savvy MC parents research all of the available information. Many disadvantaged working class children are literally dumped in the most conveniently situated school for various reasons, ranging from travel logistics and costs, parental laziness to ignorance. But of course these parents are the product of state education themselves. Maybe having facts parroted at you 9-3 pm everyday ensures that parents only work with the very brief information they are offered, rather than research their options. Alternatively as I suspect many feel that school is a necessary sufferance that didn't do them any harm but equally no good. They are ambivalent because their lives are largely mapped out through lack of opportunities and social mobility.

So you commence your argument suggesting there are too many choices to make but end it saying people in question do not have enough choices. Again. Eh?

Is everyone to suffer because some can't or won't make choices?

Helpful link

Surely if you set something up and and you intend for a group to attend and they don't there has been a problem.

I am not saying choice is wicked , I chose not to send most of my children to a grammar school, I chose to send most of my children to the local comprehensive .

The point I am making is that only some are in a position to make choices. I am not against choice but then I am in a position to make use of that privilege, others aren't and quite likely their children won't be either.

So are you saying those that can make a choice shouldn't be allowed to because others can't make a choice?
Aris, why do you assume there is a chosen demographic (unless you are opening a madrassah perhaps).
Is it not a case of throw open the doors and see who will come (in manner of Kevin Costner in that appalling baseball film)
Isn't deciding who you will have beforehand (from whatever caste) social engineering?

I firmly believe in meritocracy yet a quick glance around the top table of top jobs (CEO's, politicians, judges, barristers, journalists, doctors and even Olympic medallists) shows that those who are privately educated are massively over-represented. 7% of our children are privately educated yet they take something like 70% of top jobs. This is little short of a disaster. Our state education system is locking the majority of our children out of a wonderful future and leaving them unable to reach their true potential.

Education is too important to leave to politicians with their short term priorities.

If private schools are somehow doing the job of educating children better than the state is, surely there's an argument for more private schools. If state schools were privatised en mass and parents issued with a voucher for their child?s education, surely the market would be a better system of separating the wheat from the chaff.

Similarly, the competing number of examination boards which allow schools to choose the easiest qualification for their charges to attain makes no sense. If politicians do have a role in education, it should be to mandate the complexity of the universal examinations (and, in doing so, setting the curriculum) and then leaving schools to 'get on with the job'.

Indeed JP. Something is rotten in the state of education. Yet, rather than address it, many believe in clinging even more firmly to this failing model. Where is the social justice in that?