Tories introduce Education policy of the Lemming
nick cowen, 16 May 2007
Anyone hoping for a change in attitude to schools at the next election will be sorely disappointed by the news that the Tories have cloned their new education policy from Labour. In a repentant tone, David Willetts casts aside grammar schools and embraces Comprehensive education. The disingenuous reasoning behind this move: ‘We must break free from the belief that academic selection is any longer the way to transform the life chances of bright, poor kids… This is a widespread belief but we just have to recognise that there is overwhelming evidence that such academic selection entrenches advantage, it does not spread it.’
Widespread it may be despite the sustained attack on selection, but it also happens to be true. Indeed, this ‘overwhelming evidence’ seems to point in the opposite direction to which David Willetts is now facing. As Alan Smithers has pointed out, Northern Ireland retains a grammar school system and has significantly superior exam results. In 2005, 31.2 per cent of A level results were A grades compared with the UK average of 22.8. Even the overall A level pass rate was higher suggesting that the selective system offers a boost for even the less academically able students. 71 per cent of GCSE results were A*-C grades compared with the UK average of 61.2. These results show fairly conclusively that one current system of selective education benefits all pupils far more than the current comprehensive system.
Yet paradoxically, grammar schools are being phased out in Northern Ireland while David Willetts prostrates himself before this political shibboleth of comprehensive education. This is all in direct contrast to the evidence of what actually does deliver a better education to students. How many more young people’s education will be sacrificed on the altar of this ideology before this cult of comprehensive school is finally abandoned?
Of course, this is not even the worst news. Education policy is not a simple grammar/comprehensive school debate and even without giving any added support to grammar schools, the Conservatives could bring alternative ideas to the table. They could promise what Blair promised and failed to deliver: smaller class sizes. They could end the tyranny of Ofsted inspections over schools. They could make the national curriculum a little less rigid, allowing good teachers to experiment and shine once again. They could even try to introduce a system of school choice, allowing parents to send their children to independent schools using government funds.
Instead, they promise more academies, the white elephants of the Blair regime that deliver shining (and curvaceous) new buildings, but the same size classes and the same teaching. It seems that the conservatives have caught onto this craze just as everyone else begins to express a few doubts. Labour may have driven education to the edge of this precipice, but the Conservatives now appear willing to dive from it!
Surely part of the problem is the reliance on the percentage of children entitled to free school meals as a measure of “working class” entry to grammar schools?
By definition parents whose children are entitled to free meals are not working (working tax credit is not one of the benefits which confers entitlement to free meals).
This means that grammar schools may already be an excellent way of helping bright children whose parents are working-class and actually working – we simply don’t have any way of telling from the statistics which are collected.
It seems to me that we ought to be making much more fuss about the marginalisation of low-income working people who actually do lead non-chaotic lives and look after their children.
The one size fits all education ideology of Labour has been shown to be a failure. It’s the reason why exams are dumbed down (reducing to the lowest common denominator is the easiest way of achieving so called “equality”), why universities give new entrants tuition on basic maths and english and part of the reason why we have an underclass of feckless and indolent benefits dependent spongers who are replaced in the labour market by hard working immigrant workers.
Many of Labour’s own leading politicians only support this ideology in so far as it doesn’t involve their own kids! As for the notion that middle-class parents give their kids an advantage by behaving responsibly towards their education, since when has good parenting been something to penalise?