The grammar versus comprehensive war is almost over, but state education has a new set of battles to fight
I hugely enjoyed my schooling at a London comprehensive in the 1970s, and my teenage daughters love their mixed, inner-city school.
All our children should be educated together, not divided by social class or ethnic background, religion or so-called academic ability. It has been cheering to watch how the comprehensive principle - and practice - has developed and improved over the decades.
Even so, pro-comprehensive campaigners like myself are often presented as a kind of exotic bird, promoting a minority passion in the face of mainstream incredulity, if not downright hostility.
It’s rather puzzling, given that so few voices at national level call for the reinstatement of the 11-plus and none at all for the return of the blighted secondary modern. Yet during the recent riots, many in the right- leaning press were quick to blame the mayhem in our streets on comprehensive schooling.
For my new book, School Wars: The Battle for Britain’s Education, I unearthed a few answers to this long-running conundrum.
From the mid-1960s onwards, grammar schools were swept away with popular parental consent. In their place, a more optimistic idea held sway: that all children could benefit from a broad and balanced education in well- resourced neighbourhood-based schools. It still sounds like a pretty good idea.
Yet comprehensives have been consistently undermined since by a mix of ambivalent government policy, parental nervousness - particularly in big cities - and media hostility. As a result, selection in our system has intensified, not reduced, creating an over-complex, hierarchical and rather typically English mess. And it’s about to get a lot worse.
We are now at a significant moment in the history of state education. The old war between the pro-grammar and comprehensive lobby is more or less dead. We are into a new set of skirmishes within our state system - about more subtle forms of social, ethnic and faith segregation, democratic accountability, and the growing role of the private sector and potentially profit-making groups.
Everyone, from right to left, now asserts the need for “a good local school for all”. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard Coalition supporters say that “parents just want a great local school for their kids”. It’s that “just” that makes my skin prickle, as if this was a fresh idea dreamed up by privately educated policy wonks, rather than the result of a long struggle by comprehensive campaigners.
However, it is equally clear that educational elitism, or at least expressing it in public, is now a lost cause. Politicians and others must now speak the language of fairness to appear credible. That’s progress of a sort.
The less attractive truth is that Michael Gove and co are counterfeit radicals. They appear to champion all-ability, cross-class schools, particularly with the free-school model, yet see no contradiction between that and their stubborn defence of the more elite private, grammar and socially selective faith sectors.
Since 2010, the Coalition has consistently run down the achievements of many state schools, particularly those of a community or comprehensive character, largely on the grounds that these have let down less-advantaged children.
It’s a spurious charge on at least two counts.
Yes, not enough of our poorest children get into top universities, but let’s be honest about the true reasons. Poverty plays a big part in holding children back, as does an educational system that puts a rocket under the social mobility of the already highly privileged. Within a successful comprehensive, raw ability combined with sheer hard work will always win out over simple social privilege.
The second unpalatable truth is that Mr Gove’s “quiet revolution” has essentially shifted taxpayers’ money from the most needy to the relatively advantaged in a remarkably short space of time. Revenue handed to the new free schools and “conversion academies” has meant cuts across the board to those institutions serving the most vulnerable.
The Government also helps free schools and “conversion academies” to pull ahead by granting them short-term advantages in terms of admissions, curriculum and teaching freedoms. It is frankly irresponsible of the Government to introduce such divisive and deep structural reform at a time of national economic stringency, with no guarantee that new schools will work better than the schools they undermine and may eventually replace.
What would a genuinely comprehensive system look like in 2011? We could start by improving the schools that serve the majority of families, most of whom, surveys show, are largely happy with their children’s education. Part of that slow, steady change would involve the phasing out of all forms of selection, in order to help create genuinely mixed, high-quality comprehensive schools.
We have learnt a lot about what makes comprehensives successful since I was at school more than 30 years ago. Key is the presence of a high- attaining group in every school. That, and a number of clear measures to truly engage pupils and improve behaviour. Certainly, schools in the most challenging circumstances need to have the smallest classes, the best teachers and first-class resources.
International evidence shows that the most successful comprehensive systems offer all pupils a broad curriculum, including academic and vocational provision, with specialisation delayed until later in adolescence.
As for school accountability, we can learn from countries where assessment is more pupil-centred, concerned with quality of work rather than gearing everything to misleading league tables. In Finland and Alberta, Canada, teachers are not only highly trained, but enjoy constant feedback and discussion and far greater freedoms in terms of teaching itself.
Sadly, we are far from adopting these measures. Instead, we face years of dealing with fallout from the Government’s ill-thought-out reforms. Destroying - not supporting - local authority involvement, de-skilling our teachers, and setting up rival institutions that will undermine our most fragile schools can only take us backwards. What a pity, when we all agree that “every parent just wants a good local school for their kids”.
Melissa Benn is a writer, journalist and campaigner. Her book, School Wars: The Battle for Britain’s Education, is published by Verso on 5 September.
Comment (4)
I hugely enjoyed my schooling at a Secondary Modern School in the North West during the early 1970's; it was only much later that I realised that I'd had a second or third class education in comparison with my peers in the grammar sector.
It wasn't the 'grammar versus comprehensive' war that was won, it was the 'Secondary Modern versus comprehensive' war that was REALLY won. The rose coloured glasses of the mainly middle-class kids who went to grammar schools have always mattered more than the majority of the mainly working-class kids who were factory educated as factory fodder. Saying goodbye to the grammar & Secondary Modern schools was based on ideas of 'fairness' in our society and masses of evidence.
Today we fight a war of the market-sector-driven-schools verses the education-sector-driven schools with either
1. elite independent schools verses the state schools
2. Free (market) Gove driven schools verses locally successful comprehensives
3. Academies sponsored by dodgy dealing sponsors verses locally successful comprehensives
4. so-called (laughably) 'elite' exams like IB or IGCSE verses excellently well representative exams like GCSE & A-level.
This new war isn't being fought based on ideas of 'fairness' in our society and masses of evidence. This war is being ideologically driven by half-educated people like Gove. Gove has studied terrorism and is keen to use it's methods to terrorise teachers, parents, children etc into following his market-culture-mantra.
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14:29
2 September, 2011
Brooke Bond
Gove is an expert on doublespeak. He says he wants to give schools independence but then gives himself unprecedented powers through the Education Bill, including telling teachers how to teach. He says he wants English schools to have teachers with top degrees - then allows free schools to employ unqualified teachers. He says schools must not teach creationism as a scientific theory, then his department allows a school whose sponsers espouse creationism to move to the next stage in the free school application process. He says he wants his policies grounded in evidence, but ignores what the OECD has to say about disadvantage, excessive emphasis on exam results in England, and the uncertain nature of the evidence about user-choice and pupil performance. The OECD has said that the 2000 PISA results for England can't be used for comparison purposes, but Gove uses them almost every time he opens his mouth.
And Gove is quite happy to let a high-profile free school ignore department advice. The DfE recommends that governing bodies take cost and availability into account when devising a school uniform policy - but many uniform items for the West London Free School must be purchased from the same outlet that supplies uniforms for Eton and Harrow.
Perhaps the school's motto should be changed to "No Asda blazers at WLFS".
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17:36
2 September, 2011
Retired123
Doublespeak? Have you heard Goves latest offerings?
Have a look: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14748268
If this wasn't so serious you could laugh at the man openly for connecting all the 'evils' of the world & blaming them entirely on teachers while proclaiming how he, and he alone, can save us all from his made-up terrors! The man is a joke, but he has real power & a mindless Daily Mail audience who actually BELIEVE in him. The guy is dangerous.
In a wide-ranging speech (ie rambling waffle) at Durand Academy in south London, Gove said: "We still, every year allow thousands more children to join an educational underclass - they are the lost souls our school system has failed. It is from that underclass that gangs draw their recruits, young offenders' institutions find their inmates and prisons replenish their cells."
So teachers create an 'educational underclass' & these people go on to cause gangs, riots etc..............Does he have one bit of evidence for this statement? No.
Showing a complete lack of understanding of what goes on in schools he continued: "We cannot say often enough that what we saw this summer was a straightforward conflict between right and wrong." He also added: "To investigate where the looters came from is not to make excuses because of background... It is to shine a light on failures that originated in poor policy, skewed priorities and the deliberate undermining of legitimate authority."
So the riots was a SIMPLE right vs wrong dilema eh? I think the only simple thing here is Gove actually.
Asked if there was a connection between educational failure and the rioting, he said: "I think there is a link...........We have a group of people in society whom we have failed... we have failed to provide them with the structure, values and educational opportunities that they need.........We can't wash our hands of the situation that gave rise to what went wrong."
I note he offered ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE TO BACK HIS CLAIM THAT THERE WAS A LINK BETWEEN EDUCATIONAL 'FAILURE' & RIOTING!!!!!!
Gove announced that he would be requesting that the government's behaviour adviser, Charlie Taylor, should look specifically at the sanctions that schools, the police and courts are able to use against truanting pupils and their parents. I presume he see's a link between truancy & rioting even though the riots took place in the school vacation and mostly involved adults over the age of 18.
Gove is basically mad. For more evidence see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LpPym_4wc8
The is a HUGE difference between asking the B**sta*d Tories to face up to their responsibilities AND defending the actions of the rioters. I do not defend law breaking but I UNDERSTAND why they did it.
You cannot close down discussion of WHY something happened just because you don't like the answers & it is pathetic to imply that people are sticking up for rioters just because they point out the dangers of following B**sta*d Tory policies.
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10:35
3 September, 2011
Brooke Bond
Nick Clegg defeats bid by Michael Gove to let free schools make profits; see http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/sep/03/nick-clegg-michael-gove-schools
What utter madness...............Gove had been hoping to allow free schools, funded entirely by the state, to make profits in the second term of a Tory-led government.
Previously the Tories have denied that they were planning to allow profits to be made within the state sector by businesses taking over the schools. The admission comes as the first batch of 24 free schools open their doors this week with pupils returning from holiday. Lies, lies, lies instea of education, education, education!
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22:03
3 September, 2011
Brooke Bond