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| 52% of the current cabinet were privately educated |
Is there anyone who truly believes this is because children whose parents cannot afford to send them to private school are inherently less intelligent? The gulf between the academic achievements of children from disadvantaged backgrounds and those from wealthy families has not closed since the establishment of universal secondary education in 1944. And this inequality extends beyond private schools. The introduction of free schools and expansion of academies under the current government has generated yet another highly selective tier within British education. A huge disparity in educational attainment exists between children whose parents live in affluent localities, who can afford to move between catchment areas to ensure their children attend the best state schools, and those for whom moving will never be a possibility. Lack of social mobility for these families ensures that schools in the deprived areas of Britain are unable to lift themselves out of this perpetual cycle of poor performance.
Some very telling statistics:
- 11-year-old pupils eligible for free school meals are around twice as likely not to achieve basic standards in literacy and numeracy as other 11-year-old pupils.
- 1% (6,000) of pupils in England obtained no qualifications in 2009/10.
- 7% (47,000) of pupils in England obtained fewer than 5 GCSEs in 2009/10.
- 15% of boys and 10% of girls eligible for free school meals do not obtain 5 or more GCSEs.
(From http://www.poverty.org.uk/)
It is shocking that in a developed nation 16% of our adult population cannot read at the level expected of an 11-year-old. A 2011 study revealed that 42% of the 566 employers interviewed were “not satisfied with the basic use of English by school and college leavers.” The study also revealed that adults with poor literacy were least likely to be in full-time employment at the age of thirty and that “63% of men and 75% of women with very low literacy skills have never received a promotion.”
The Centre for Social Justice has warned of an ‘education underclass’ developing, reporting that some children from disadvantaged backgrounds start school at five “still in nappies, unable to speak or not even recognising their own name.” The centre-right think-tank blames the parents for this, but it is depressingly likely that, failed by the education system, these children will leave school with poor - or no - qualifications, and go on to send their own children to school in a similar condition. Taking a step back from the statistics, it doesn’t take a university-educated genius to recognise that equality of access to education is the key to breaking the poverty cycle. Schools should be enormously expensive for the government and completely free for all children. No one should be able to buy a better start in life.
Giving Britain’s children equal life chances is not simply a matter of providing every child with the same curriculum structure. It is about making up the gap in more quantifiable resources. The pupil premium, which was intended for this purpose, has had limited success. Though I didn’t grow up in a particularly affluent household, my parents packed the house with books and placed a high value on learning. Many children are not lucky enough have this kind of support at home. With libraries closing down all over the country it is more important than ever that children are given access to books through school, above and beyond the textbooks essential for their lessons. A recent study revealed that children who read for pleasure do better in other areas of education. All children should be given the opportunity of free music lessons from an early age, which studies have proven have a positive effect on psychological development. They should be given access to the arts, to the theatre and concerts, and to school trips abroad. These may all sound like woolly liberal delusions, but that’s because the chances are that if you are reading this, you were given these opportunities as a child.Britain’s schools have a crucial role to play in tackling the country’s obesity epidemic. The introduction of free school meals across the board would remove the stigma associated with them and ensure that all children receive at least one healthy meal a day. Free school meals for all pupils has been piloted in some of London’s poorest boroughs – and it seems to be working. School cookery lessons should focus on how to cook healthy meals on a budget, children should be taught how to grow their own food and be given the opportunity to try many different sports, spending several hours on PE every week.
Even more important is the role which schools can play in helping children make the best decisions about their future. Ofsted recently reported that “three quarters of schools visited by Ofsted were not delivering adequate careers advice.” It is hard to imagine yourself doing something if it has never been presented to you as an option. Even those state school students who get to university don’t do as well after graduating as their privately educated counterparts who are “far more able to draw upon family resources and had access to influential social networks to help get work experience or internships during their degree.” Here there is a role for business and industry in education – in providing outreach to schools and work experience placements for students from all backgrounds.
In order to bring up standards in British education, it is time to start thinking about making drastic changes to the status quo. Much has been made of the success of Finland’s education system, which ranked third in the world in the OECD’s 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and is “built upon values grounded in equity and equitable distribution of resources rather than on competition and choices.”[1] Three of the most important features of the Finnish education system are a later school starting age, smaller class sizes, allowing education to be child-centred, and the freedom for teachers to try different styles of teaching within a standardised national framework.
Finnish children, like many others around the world, start school at the age of 7 and they do not take any formal national examinations until they reach secondary school. Britain appears to be instigating the reverse, with formal education beginning whilst children are at nursery, the majority of children starting school at four and plans for the assessments of the three Rs that children currently take at 7 to be moved to the “early weeks of a child’s career at school”. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph this week, a group of 127 academics, teachers, authors and charity leaders highlighted their concerns about the dominance of formal education during children’s formative years and emphasised the importance of “active, creative and outdoor play which is recognised by psychologists as vital for physical, social, emotional and cognitive development”. Despite the success of this approach in many other countries, a spokesman for Michael Gove dismissed the concerns as “bogus pop psychology” belonging to a “powerful and badly misguided lobby who are responsible for the devaluation of exams and the culture of low expectations in state schools”.
Smaller class sizes are one of the chief benefits of a private education in this country. Britain requires significant investment in teacher training to reduce class sizes so that education can be tailored to pupils’ individual needs. Teachers should be given the freedom to explore new methods of teaching. Yet Education Secretary Michael Gove remains rigidly opposed to creative approaches to teaching, favouring instead traditional methods of learning what he sees as core academic subjects. He is woefully out of touch. Technology has moved on and children need to be given the skills to use it to their advantage. And you know what Michael? Learning should be fun. If it’s fun, the knowledge is more likely to be retained, and it is far more likely to pique a child’s further interest in a subject.
Yes, these changes will be expensive and no, there will not be any immediate benefit to the taxpayers who will fund them. There is, though, an economic argument here. The state cannot afford to continue funding welfare for the number of British families living in poverty, and has a vested interest in improving their prospects so they can contribute to the state system through tax. But more importantly, there is a fundamental moral imperative to ensure that all children have the same chances in life, regardless of their background. In the sixth richest nation on Earth there are 3.5 million children living in poverty who are far less likely to do well at school than their more privileged peers. Britain is at risk of becoming irrevocably divided along economic lines. The only way to reverse this trend is through universal access to exceptional education.
