One area the Conservatives could be particularly vulnerable is in the selection of their Parliamentary candidates. The new candidates seem to be disproportionately weighted to those from upper middle / upper class backgrounds. While that was not a problem pre-credit crunch (when most of these candidates would have been selected), I think it will be an issue now when they are trying to persuade their potential constituents that they truly understand their problems…

The affluence of the borough is not a relevant factor because the borough is not relatively affluent and the borough is not a relatively high spender on education either. It’s the quality of the schools that matter: the entrance exams for the grammar schools in the borough are to cope with what would otherwise be a problem of over-subscription.

I went through (a Russell group) uni in the late 1950s when only 4+% of the relevant age group went into high education – and before all the current concerns about degree class inflation developed. My home background certainly wasn’t affluent – we had no car or TV – and my father died while I was at uni so I completed on a full grant. The father of my ex was a guard on the railways and they lived in an old mining village in Derbyshire so there’s much nonsense talked about the insuperable difficulties encountered by the working classes going into higher education. Curiously, there’s very much less talk about affording the costly entry tickets for football matches or buying pints in the local pub. It’s a matter of spending priorities and aspirations rather than social class which matter.

About a third of George Orwell’s account of poverty in the north of England during the 1930s in his book: The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) relates to his experience of South Yorkshire. Try this section:

“The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a ‘job’ should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly.”
http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/6.html

And this is from a fairly recent news report:

“Government figures show only 15% of white working class boys in England got five good GCSEs including maths and English last year. . . Poorer pupils from Indian and Chinese backgrounds fared much better – with 36% and 52% making that grade respectively.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7220683.stm

In short – yes. A cluster of outstanding selective grammar schools in the London borough where I live – which demonstrably isn’t relatively affluent – results the borough regularly ranking at or near the top of the league table for Local Education Authorities in England based on average attainment of candidates sitting the GCSE exams.

On the evidence, the presence of the grammar schools in the borough raises average achievement in the GCSE exams across all schools in the borough. Far more affluent parliamentary constituencies rank poorly in the LEA league table. As the borough is not a high spender on education, the explanation for the borough’s ranking at the top of the LEA league table must be attributable to the quality of its cluster of selective schools and not its affluence or high spending on schools.

Sheffield Hallam and other places in Yorkshire feature on this Daily Mail list from 2007 of the 100 most affluent constituencies in England which takes no account of differences in local housing costs:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-477325/League-Wealth-Tables.html

The London borough where I live doesn’t even get a mention in that list of affluent constituencies even though it regularly ranks at or near the top of the Local Education Authorities (LEA) league table for England.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7827275.stm

The sensible conclusion to draw is that what matters is the cluster of outstanding selective grammar schools in the borough, not how affluent the two Parliamentary constituencies in the borough rate. Many, far more affluent constituencies rank poorly on the LEA league table. How come if affluence is the explanation for good schools?

Btw as I learned after my son had gone to uni, Chris Woodhead – the infamous chief inspector of schools when Blunkett was education secretary – went to the same school down the road. Woodhead often makes the point that schools with broadly similar socio-economic catchment areas achieve very different exam results.

The official figures on income distributions in London boroughs shows that the borough in which I live has a distribution which matches the incomes distribution for all London boroughs – in other words, the borough is no better in affluence than the average for London. Besides that, the percentage of residents with graduate qualifications is above the national average but below the average for London boroughs. A lively local grievance is that only 38% of the pupils at the local cluster of outstanding grammar schools actually live in the borough – the other 62% live in other boroughs. I can post the supporting links.

And btw, in comparison with other London boroughs, the borough is a relatively low spender on education.

There is much enduring mythology about the “poor” north and the affluent “south”. Try this:

“The richest people in England live in the north, not the south-east, once house prices are taken into account, a study has calculated. The study, from Barclays Private Clients, looked at people’s wealth in England and Wales after the cost of living – including house prices – were taken out. It found that eight of the 10 wealthiest places were in northern English counties.

“Tatton in Cheshire, home to David and Victoria Beckham, as well as ex-Tory MP Neil Hamilton and his wife Christine, topped the league.

“The study found the actual average wage in Tatton was £29,303. But that was worth a ‘real’ average income of £41,506 once the cost of living was taken into account, it said.

“Hallam in Sheffield came a close second with an average ‘real’ income of £41,289.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3025321.stm

It’s you whose talking out of yer arse you drooling imbecile & the figures in the ‘History & Policy’ link demonstrate it.

You went to a grammar school so I’d expect you to defend them,what do you expect from a pig but a grunt?

You brother couldn’t go cos “the lab govt of the day abolished the 11+”,do you actually know who created the most comprehensives? Margaret Bloody Thatcher as Education Secretary.

We didn’t have ‘citizenship’ classes at my school and even though it was the 1960s there were no cliched “trendy ’60s teaching ideas”.What we did have was a bunch of old fashioned, disinterested & bored teachers many of whom were sadists. Some taught us by rote, we just copied down what they said.

Pupils were quite regularly physically assaulted by teachers and many of them had their own idiosyncractic punishments; e.g, the woodwork teacher had the ‘Bacon Slicer’ where instead of whacking you on the arse with a blackboard ruler he’d bring it down hard in a chopping motion. Canings were frequent and on once occasion three lads were publically caned in front of the whole school, and even in the ’60s canings in ‘public’ were outlawed.

These ‘good old fashioned teaching methods’ that Tories look back so fondly on gave us “no direction, no aspirations and no education worthy of the name”, it was made abdundantly clear that manual labour, or low-grade office work was our future, the girls could do office work and maybe eventually settle down as a housewife. Oh yeah, we did have one other option: we could join the bloody army.

I too realised quickly realised I’d be a “manual worker for the whole of (my) working life.” So after a series of bloody awful jobs I, to use the vernacular of the day, ‘dropped out’, I moved to London, squatted and it was sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll for me (with added politics, we thought we could change the world in the ’70s).

My “knowldge-free education” also left me with a “complete lack of confidence in his own ability” and “a burning sense of resentment.” But I had no illusion it would “all fall into (my) lap”. I’m from north Manchester, very few people from there have any “sense of entitlement”.

I eventually got out of this when during a stint in a drug treatment service, they discovered I had a high IQ (I think IQ tests are bollocks but that’s another argument). I did an “Access Return to Education” course, went on to get a History degree and then a Masters. Then I got some decent jobs.

Yes it is “very easy to slag off grammar schools” it’s very easy cos they are so divisive promoters of inequality that’s why so few remain (around 130).

The alternative is to get rid of the remaining grammar schools, withdraw state funding for faith schools (the faiths can pay for them themselves), abolish the ludicrous academies and withdraw the charity status and other breaks of private schools. And, as David Blanchflower said last week, rich private school pupils can pay the full whack for any university education, it is after all their families ‘choice’ to pay for a better education, this principle can be extended to universities too.

It’s only when the middle class and the working class are all in the same boat that we will get a decent state school education system for all.

In general and for its time, the 11+ was a very powerful route for social mobility for many but it’s application was uneven in several respects. Firstly, the local success rate depended partly on the number of local grammar school places available. Secondly, success also depended on all sorts of personal and neighbourhood factors such as family aspirations and the influence of peer group values on youngsters.

Famously, some academically very able youngsters failed their 11+ exams – eg Nobel laureate Sir Peter Mansfield FRS.

The then high-Tory Leicestershire County Council made a (pioneering) decision to change over to comprehensive schools in 1957, the first of which – Oadby Beauchamp College – opened in 1958. In part, this Leicestershire Plan for Comprehensive Schools was probably motivated by political necessity: the county’s population was growing relatively fast at the time and the increasingly middle class electorate would not have tolerated 11+ selection for the limited number of grammar school places available.

The City of Leicester – where the council was often Labour controlled – retained its selective grammar schools through to local government reform in 1974. By the early 1970s, about half of all the maintained secondary schools in the country had gone comprehensive.

The London borough where I live regularly ranks at or near the top of the local educational authority league table for England, based on average attainment in the GCSE exams at 16, because the borough is fortunate in having a cluster of outstanding maintained selective grammar schools. Entry is by competitive entrance exams at 11 but there is a choice for parents as to whether their children – boys and girls – take the exam or elect instead to go to a local comprehensive school.

The fact is that this arrangement produces the best average attainment in the GCSE exams in England across borough schools year after year – which is why the borough ranks at the top of the LEA league table. Also, at least three of the schools in the cluster – two boys’ schools and a girls’ school – regularly chalk up better average A-level results than Eton – while another three schools are almost as good.

Should we start a war on white people because they dominate Parliament, the media etc?

Targeting groups based on their skin colour is wrong. Similarly, targeting groups based on their wealth or income is wrong. The politics of hatred (which is what war implies) can only go horribly wrong.

Social mobilty and grammar schools: MYTH.

http://www.historyandpolicy.org/badhistory/badhistory_05.html

I went to a secondary modern, and left at 15 in 1970, universty was not even on our radar. I didn’t even have any O levels. Only one kid from our year went on to university and he had to be whisked off to the local grammar schools to do his A-levels. The rest of us wanted jobs, mainly so we’d have money in our pocket and could buy a bike or car. My first job was apprentice lathe operator in an engineering factory on £8-10 shillings a week (£8:50p).My dears! The cooling fluid got *everywhere*.

Do you know how many secondary modern kids (where more than 70 per cent of children in England & Wales were educated) got to university in 1963?

ONE.

And it wasn’t the working class that brought about comprehensive education; it was middle class parents whose kids had failed the 11 plus.

It was not till I was 30 that I realised I had any intelligence, and went on to get two degrees (still got no O levels), but by the time I had got them it was too late to make any sort of ‘career’.

This may appear ‘off topic’ but I believe education is one of the principal components of any class politics. Faith schools are selection by stealth and any Tory government will only increase selective education.

As for the there’s ‘no class war’ merchants, look at Warren Buffett the investor, businessman 2006 quote:

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Or

‘Black man got a lot of problems,
But he don’t mind throwing a brick.
White people go to school
Where they teach you how to be thick’

Same today as it was over 30 years ago. If you got the money and the right background you get the education. If you haven’t you don’t. And it affects the rest of your life.

Those who are intelligent and imaginitive would do.

You might just as well ask (and it would be equally unfair to do so) “can MPs from poor backgrounds really understand foreign affairs, and the workings of the economy?”

The basic issue is simply whether the ‘posh and well-educated’ begin to really comprehend the daily problems facing the less well-off.

And who, on the Labour benches, really comprehends the daily problems facing the less well-off?

Front-benchers on both sides are very well off, with their top decile salaries supplemented by a generous expenses system and gold-plated pensions backed up by taxpayer money. When Gordon, son of the manse, brought in his tax on pension dividends he accelerated an already worrying trend among UK employers to close their secure final salary schemes (which are a godsend to those ‘less well-off’ families in order to provide extra security for retirement) and move to defined contribution schemes (in which the value of your annuity depends on how the roulette wheel of the stock market is doing at the time you retire).

These are the sorts of struggles that less well-off families have and you cannot point to MPs on either side of the house and say “these guys know my problems”. That’s why I don’t get class war tactics. All sides of the house are detached from the issues facing ‘the common man’.

Such a credit to Labour isn’t it!