Tangentially, this piece is interesting…

Whatever these external factors may be, after only 10 months of life, the environment has started to wrap its fingers around the raw potential of our genetics. Squeeze too tightly, and we languish at the level set by our socioeconomic status.

So, surely the solution is to have academic selection (so that pupils aren’t handicapped by being in classes of mixed abilities) but also to tackle the root cause of the problem which starts in nurseries and primary schools.

I’d suggest you amend to include an argument about school sizes… State schools are simply to large. In 1966 average size was about 400 pupils now its over a 1000,, 1400 is not unusual. Make comprehensive schools smaller…

A properly funded and administered state school and university system would educate children and adults to the limits of their intelligence, the huge problem with public schools (apart from their tax dodging) is that they educate pupils to the limits of their parents bank balances which has resulted in this abysmal front bench of utter thickos. I don’t know whether public school standards have dropped or whether their alumni who entered government were always this dim but were able to rely on a competent civil service to prevent them ballsing things up too badly. In any case the upper echelons of the civil service are now a revolving door to the corporate crooks from whom government procures services and is (sadly, notionally in most cases) meant to regulate. Consequently we cannot afford to have these nicely spoken idiots actually trying to run things.

Public schools appear to me to be a device whereby wealthy parents can have children without the inconvenience of them cluttering up the home and, however malformed and twisted they are by the experience, its products gain a rock solid place in the old boy network and a totally unjustified sense of their own abilities and value as human beings.

As a product of a grammar school myself, I’d agree with pretty much everything you’re saying. But is that in itself enough to reject grammar schools outright?

Whilst they do undoubtedly trend distinctly middle-class, they offer immense advantages to those working class kids who do get in, particularly in the realm of university admissions. My grammar school competed toe-to-toe with the top private schools in terms of the number of pupils who reached Oxbridge, and while it did have a large and generally leafy catchment area, the school itself certainly provided some value-added in this area.

The old grammar school model won’t work, but a new one might. Perhaps we need to think about trying to reduce the benefits of class from the entrance exams – and if we want that, then we have to do the thinking, because grammar schools themselves won’t break a formula that works for them.

Perhaps some variant of grammar school themes within schools, so that you lose the social dislocation the system otherwise introduces, but keep the focus on pushing forward academically able students.

Perhaps you need some new gifted and talented programme, with support provide to promising pupils from all schools but centrally administered and taking into account demographics.

Whatever it is, you need something to give a leg-up to working class children (and yes, middle class children whose parents can’t afford private schools.) Otherwise the top universities will continue to be stuffed full of the social elite, because they have the best exam results and interview best, which means the best graduate jobs and the entry levels of the professions will be similarly unrepresentative.

And if the future establishment came from the top of society and have stayed there, they’re a lot less likely to care about reducing the impact of class in our society than a grammar school boy made good.

Selective education won’t remove the malign impact of class. It’s not even close to a full solution. But getting a few more working class kids into the establishment is a lot better than getting almost none.

“I haven’t seen an advanced screening. ”

OK….

“viewers can expect an argument in favour of the return of grammar schools as means of restoring a lost golden age of meritocracy”

Why not wait till you actually see it before writing a pointless puff piece for LibCon?

FFS can’t you wait before jumping in with your usual inane nonsense?

I’m not sure there’s a “one size fits all” solution. I am another grammar school product – the catchment area was the stand-alone city of 75k, and the (Labour) LEA took the view that grammars should take 25% of kids (there was also a small entrance for 15-year olds). Other LEAs took very different approaches: Kent and Surrey were – and perhaps still are – known for their belief that the State sector is merely there to keep off the streets the kids of parents who don’t care about them.

In some places the arguments EC-B advances in [5] will hold water; others might prefer a tertiary system (as Leicestershire pioneered in the 1950s but later IIRC abandoned, I know not why) or the provision of Sixth Form Colleges (as Cumberland did at one time). The problem with these was apparently getting people to teach non-academic 11-15 year olds who really wanted to be on the street hustling… can’t say I’d fancy it personally.

I think that Grammar Schools are the correct place for very intelligent or highly intelligent children that love to learn.

I believe this because most of the secondary schools in my borough and neighbouring boroughs appear to have a culture of it is uncool to learn, in addition to this, brighter kids are picked on and do not want to be seen as being bright because of the fear of getting bullied.

Clever children will do better in a school where all the children want to learn and have ambitions to excel.

Grammar Schools are good for society if they take children from all backgrounds and the selection process is only based on intellectual ability and the williness to learn.

Unless there is a direct correlation between social class and IQ – and it may be that some people on the right believe this to be true…

Children from a supportive home environment, with two graduate parents and ample access to books, do well. So do some working class children, where their mums and dads provide encouragement. Others, shall we say, obviously have difficulties.

Given what it is that IQ tests actually measure, it would seem fairly clear both from your own experiences, and from the evidence of league tables etc, that there is a correlation between social class and IQ.

On a more general point, I agree that a return to the eleven-plus is unlikely to be the answer. I would be more open to such a return if I read a cogent argument why 70% of children should be educated at secondary moderns. As it is, it tends to be a series of people complaining that private schools are too expensive, and their kids ought to be in grammar schools instead.

I go to a Grammar in Kent, and I agree with you. The vast majority of people who attend are middle class kids, with a very select number of working class children getting through the 11+. Tutoring plays a role, but so does the proactive and perhaps ‘pushy’ parenting which is associated with we middle classes- my Dad will go and demand teachers recognise my abilities and weaknesses, which not everyone is able to say.

And the vast majority of working class children don’t get let into the Grammar schools. Those who don’t (middle and working class alike) are left to suffer, because Secondary Moderns are much worse than the Comprehensives you find elsewhere in the country. Take away the most academically gifted and brand people as inferior, and it’s hardly surprising that grades go down.

It’s basically a question of whether you want to help the top 5% reach their fullest potential and screw over the bottom 95%, or whether you want to mix them together and help 95% of children. Personally, as a Grammar kid, I think I’d actually benefit- I did better when my Maths class was mixed ability than when it was in sets, for instance, because lots of people learn best by helping others. It would also be better from a social and societal point of view, because we get thought of as posh (which is hard for a socialist such as I to live with…) and many Grammar school children become snobby.

And don’t get me started on what single-sex schooling is doing….

I was “lucky” enough to get a direct grant to a boys public school in the 1960′s although I lived on a council estate.

About half of the intake were direct grants and with the exception of some highly talented kids the “paying” pupils were nice but dims.

God knows what the intake of the school is like now but then they still got 20-30 to Oxbridge each year.

My point is, I learned as did my fellow working class kids did, very early on what privilege is and I have had a chip on my shoulder ever since.

Many of the working class kids under achieved later which is difficult to explain given their obvious talents and educational advantage.

My conclusion is that I would have been better in the long run at the local comprehensive with kids of my own class.

I went to a ‘comp’ (read secondary modern) 11-16 and grammar 16-18 (both in Kent). The grammar was far better but its still very sad to see the waste that happens in the sec. mods. as a direct result of the selective system. It means that if you have a bad day for the exam you’re committed to hell for the next 5 years. If you happen to just be outside the catchment area for a grammar and you fail the 11+, you get chucked into a sec. mod. and spend 5 years being told that you’re a disgrace to the human race because you’re not clever enough to go to grammar. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy and the majority of able people who go in aren’t really capable of much when they come out, and have incredibly low self-esteem. Oh, and parents with a lot of money will buy a house right next to the grammar school and have their children specialist tutored specifically for the 11+ exam, so you find a huge class slant as well.
Having said that, it’s not likely that the sec mods would improve if selection there was abolished, because the negative attitudes are there already, and the grammars could go downhill. So I don’t know the answer!
p.s. has anyone considered that the predominance of public/grammar pupils in politics is maybe a result of confidence/arrogance rather than ability?

Grammar schools aren’t the answer, and never were. The sad thing is it’s not surprising thing that we are still having this debate decades after comprehensives were first introduced – it simply reflects the anal, class-ridden, forelock tugging attitude of the English towards education.

The answer is relatively straightforward, and hasn’t changed.

All pupils should go to their nearest school, which should be properly resourced, cater for all academic abilities and be streamed for ability, and neither too small to offer a decent range of subjects nor too large to function properly. Any subsidies to faith schools should be withdrawn. Anyone who doesn’t like it should feel free to educate their children in the private sector.

If we want a more egalitarian, socially mobile society we aren’t going to achieve it with Grammar Schools, Academies and spurious markets predicated on the false assumption that people are demanding “choice”; in education as in health services people want decent services, properly resourced, as close as practicable.

They don’t want league tables, travelling miles for a specialist academy, or schools run by well meaning amateurs.

PMQ today once again highlighted how Cameron and Miliband typify the division between the ‘haves and the ‘have nots’. Both leaders come from priveleged backgrounds, though I am reminded of “Animal Farm” that all pigs are equal, but some are more equal than others.

If Miliband ever hopes to lead a socialist party he is going to have to develop far more street thuggery to attack the Tories. He cannot help his background, but he can do something to show he is on the side of the working class by no longer being “Mr Nice Guy”. Miliband has chosen to play with the big boys and girls. He needs to remember the Labour Party is meant to be a working class party.

The Tories won’t give power over willingly. Cameron, Osborne and Hague all act as if they have some divine right to office (probably stemming from the messages they received when they say in they toffee-nosed prep schools). Miliband should take the class issue by the scruff of the neck and rub the Tories’ noses in it.

I live in hope.

@ Tim J

“Given what it is that IQ tests actually measure, it would seem fairly clear both from your own experiences, and from the evidence of league tables etc, that there is a correlation between social class and IQ.”

Yeah, and not all that hard to explain either, given that a high IQ is one factor that can help you (or your kids) move into the middle class. A process that properly run grammar schools serve to assist, in fact.

The whole “some on the right may actually believe this!!! :0″ shtick in the OP seemed like a pre-emptive ad hom to me.

“has anyone considered that the predominance of public/grammar pupils in politics is maybe a result of confidence/arrogance rather than ability?”

Not just politics, but pretty much all walks of life. If you can bullshit and sound like you know what you are doing, you’ll get the higher paid jobs ahead of those who actually can do the job but don’t have the confidence/self belief to demonstrate it in selection processes.

@14 Spot on.

It’s not just the top political jobs that are filled from a narrow social strata – very similar patterns are evident when it comes to the law, medicine, financial institutions and of course the civil service.

As long ago as 1965 that Anthony Crosland said “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every last fucking grammar school in England. And Wales. And Northern Ireland” – yet exactly the same privileged groups continue to flourish?

Comprehensive education has been with us for over 35 years – yet today any working class parent who has educational aspirations for their child knows that state education has to be supplemented by their own teaching efforts unless this work is outsourced to a tutor (or a combination of both).

Some have said that comprehensive schools are first and foremost a form of social engineering, and by a very distant second, places of education – hell, not even Diane Abbot would her child to a school in Hackney
http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=8687

As long ago as 1965 that Anthony Crosland said “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every last fucking grammar school in England. And Wales. And Northern Ireland”

Tony Crosland, of course, having had the privilege of an independent education at Highgate, and then at one of the poshest Oxford colleges, Trinity. An awful lot of Labour education secretaries have been privately educated in fact: Crosland, Williams, Clarke, Kelly, Balls…

I was born just before the war. My home was a two up two down in a terrace in a northern industrial town – in one of the most deprived areas. I do not remember seeing my father until he came back from the forces so, in effect, I was brought up by a single parent. I attended the local primary school. Classes were 50+ but I do not rember any of my contemporaries who could not read or write. I passed the 11+ to the local boys grammar school. I was the only one who did so. My success was the source of much pride to my parents, but also in the neighbourhood. People saw my pass as a symbol of what a boy from their class and their circumstances could achieve. Later others – both boys and girls – would follow me. My father was a building labourer, my mother had been in domestic service but no longer worked. They scrimped and saved to support me (and later my two brothers) through the school. I have had a very successful life, to great extent based upon a first rate education that I received from that school. I tell this background to explain why I worry about the talented youngster from deprived surroundings trapped by a system that does not allow desire to learn come through. In many ways it was hard for me, but how much more difficult must it be for those young persons today. You see the Comprehensive School has become a neighbourhood school. If neighbourhoods had the same pride in the achievements of their youngsters as mine had, then the schools would reflect that pride. If the parents wanted what mine did then their pride would shine through. Expectations and ambitions have virtually disappeared, both for schools and parents, so I would not object to the reintroduction of some form of grammar school if that would help the young person desperate to learn. But I feel the problem is much deeper than the simplicity of reintroduction would solve.

@ 19

“Comprehensive education has been with us for over 35 years – yet today any working class parent who has educational aspirations for their child knows that state education has to be supplemented by their own teaching efforts unless this work is outsourced to a tutor (or a combination of both).”

Part of your problem there, of course, is that the parents of middle-class schools have much deeper pockets to dig into for donations, fund-raisers and sending their kids on that expensive but very useful school trip. Or rather, that’s not a problem unto itself, but it does mean that a school in a working-class area will have a lower de facto income than one in a middle-class area, even if they receive the same funding per pupil from the government.

TBH most education debates are a red herring. The inequalities start in the first few years of children’s lives before any educational structure can start to influence things. If you are serious about raising achievement of poor children you need at least the following things in place before structures should even be discussed:

1. That children live in households where at least one person is in regular stable employment bringing in a living wage, and where disposible income can be spent on things like books
2. Parents who take an interest in education, and as such are able to read to their children.
3. Household has a computer and parents teach the children how to use it.
4. Lots of opportunities for external stimuli – i.e. trips outside, nature, sports activities etc..

and I realise this can be misinterpreted as a generalisation, but it also helps if parents aren’t alcoholics, drug addicts, or violent to each other.

@ 23 Planeshift

In other words, you need a system that licenses parenting. Cure’s worse than the disease.

No, you don’t, and I’d never advocate that.

You need above all, full employment, raised incomes for people at the bottom up. The rest follows.

@ 25

I’m not saying you’re advocating it!

Certainly you can improve the situation by improving the distribution of wealth and availability of employment offered by society, and that’s a very worthwhile thing to do. I’m just saying you wouldn’t get a 100% hit rate (even in that ideal scenario, you’d still have alcoholic, anti-education or just generically crap parents around).

[22] “Parental involvement with children from an early age has been found to equate with better outcomes (particularly in terms of cognitive development). What parents do is more important than who they are for children’s early development – i.e. home learning activities undertaken by parents is more important for children’s intellectual and social development than parental occupation, education or income”.
http://www.continyou.org.uk/children_and_young_people/study_support/files/DCSFparentalinvolvement

I do not dispute that material resources are an issue but this disadvantage can be offset, at least to a certain extent but motivated parents (at least when it comes to exam performance).

Conversely some parents are just as much of a handicap to their child’s education as a disadvantaged comprehensive school, because of a failure to recognise the connection between style of parenting and the negative impact it can have on school behaviour.

@Smith – 13: Do you know how rare it is that there’s any mention of secondary moderns in this debate? No-one ever advocates those as the answer, even though they are the obvious counterpart to more grammar schools.

We had an unusual system where I grew up: there was no state grammar school, but we sat the 11+ and those who passed were sent to the local public school. Seven years as a working-class pupil in that place gave me a serious insight into the Tory mind, I can tell you: non-Tories were all ‘communists’, comprehensive pupils were all ‘plebs’, etc etc. Nobody had the faintest conception of what life was like for those not born to privilege. (I still remember one bemused fellow pupil trying to understand why my parents couldn’t just buy me the guitar I was saving up for.)

No doubt the Tories would paint this as a working-class lad given a golden opportunity to get a rigorously academic education. In reality the place was a GCSE mill and my role as a bright scholarship boy was to balance out the results of the nice-but-dim paying pupils by getting A grades in as many language GCSEs as I could reasonably cram into two years. The school had no interest in developing pupils’ own interests and strengths by making a good range of subjects available: there was no drama, no psychology, no philosophy, no politics, no sociology. Instead it was ‘traditional’ subjects all the way. Michael Gove would have loved it.

Nobody had the faintest conception of what life was like for those not born to privilege.

There was a famous essay set at a prep school (many years ago…) on ‘poverty’. One answer began:

“Everyone in the house was poor. The mother was poor, the father was poor, the children were poor, the cook was poor, the maids were poor…”

there was no drama, no psychology, no philosophy, no politics, no sociology…

How many people study psychology or sociology before GCSE? I only got round to sociology in the first year of my undergraduate degree.

“He cannot help his background, but he can do something to show he is on the side of the working class by no longer being “Mr Nice Guy””

The problem for Ed is that as soon as he starts trying to be Mr Angry he sounds quite shrill and silly. His best PMQ performances have been when he sounds calm and controlled.

Ah the grammar school question. It always comes up at some point.

Full disclosure, I went to a grammar school in Birmingham in the 70s/80s. Unlike the local secondary modern, it was underfunded. And the social mix was pretty much the same as the local area.

“privilege” we are told, but are they? As the OP says parents pay nothing and if the selection is purely on ability (which I agree is not easy), then tutoring is useless and a great way for those with too much money to waste it. If entry is based on ability then there is no geographical selection, and parents cannot simply buy a house that will get their kids a place.

Others say that secondary moderns were poorly run. Well the clue is in the statement, if secondary moderns were failing then it means that they needed reforming. “Oh look this hospital is failing, let’s close the good hospital in the next borough”. Not a great idea, is it? It is not the kids that make the school, it is the teaching. If secondary moderns were failing then you should look at the teachers, not the kids. Stupid league tables that simply look at exam grades do not give a proper measure of a school. Yeah, grammar schools get better exam results, so what? A school can only be regarded as succeeding if it improves the student, allowing them to develop.

And then there is something else to think about. Rather than kids of every ability playing in the same football team we select them for their ability, the important point is that kids get a game, not that they play in the first team. If they play in a team according to their ability then they have a better game. (I speak as someone who was useless at most school sports – my eyesight was not good enough for most team sports – but at those sports I could do, I did well. Opportunity is the important point.) Do we allow anyone of any ability on A level courses? No, we have selection. Selection at 16. Do we allow anyone of any ability on university courses? No, we have academic selection. Selection at 18. Every job I have ever done, I was “selected” first through my CV then through interview, and yeah, I’ve had enough rejections too, but I learned from them about what I *couldn’t* do (and there is a lot I can’t do) and then applied for something that I could. But we are told that selection at 11 (or 14, or whatever) is wrong. Inconsistent.

As to the Neil programme, well I suspect that it is similar to a piece he wrote for the Spectator 5 years ago (he talks about schools from Page 4, but the rest of the article is interesting from a historical point of view).

Getting working class kids into the establishment is worthless if they are just assimilated into the establishment themselves and do not change it. Similarly with women – if they don’t “feminise” the organisations they run but merely act like men, then the status quo continues. Parliament seems to be a good example.

A bit of context before I start. I went to an ex-grammar which went private in 74 after our borough abolished them. My parents were faced three options, send me to the local comprehensives (at that point our borough was 3rd worst in the country), send me on an 1 1/2 hour journey each morning to an area with Grammar Schools, or scrape together money from relatives/economising/working all hours to send me private.

The key thing to know is that while the school had excellent teachers and facilities it still had problems (from my time at school no. going to oxbridge 1, number to prison for violent offences 2)

The problem is, and always will be, that some kids are disruptive shits. They don’t want to learn, they don’t work hard, they don’t try, they disrupt the class, and they bully kids that do want to work.

The good thing about selective education is that it attempts to separate kids that will succeed academically, from those who will ruin it for everyone else. This applies as much in the private sector as in the state, the advantage held by private schools is that it’s easier to chuck out disruptive pupils.

The latent anti-intellectualism within British society as a whole is a major problem, but is particularly pernicious lower down the social scale. Anyone who works hard is a ‘bodrick’, a ‘nerd’, and most worryingly ‘acting posh’. This last one would seem to indicate that poor academic performance has been adopted by some members of the working class as a badge of identity. To succeed is to betray your roots. Far better to aim to get rich as a ‘footballer’ or a ‘reality tv star’ than as a ‘lawyer’ or ‘doctor’ and risk the ostracism of your peers.

The problem of the middle class obsession with academic performance is not that their children do well, you shouldn’t stop people from trying to do their best. But also that its association with middle class identity encourages those who don’t identify as middle class, to reject it. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps someone here could shed some light on it.

Tim J

“How many people study psychology or sociology before GCSE?”

I was really talking about A-Levels.

“you’d still have alcoholic, anti-education or just generically crap parents around).”

Yes, and then we’re really talking about mitigation policies, of which educational structure is way down the list of things that make a difference.

Let’s remember that one of the reasons why the public school boys closed down grammar schools was because they weren’t liked by well off middle class parents who got upset when they were told their little darling wasn’t academic enough to get in, but that nastly little Tommy from the council estate was.

Public schools gave more working class kids a chance than anything else since. This is why there are now fewer working class students at Oxford and Cambridge than there were 50 years ago.

[34] “The problem is, and always will be, that some kids are disruptive shits. They don’t want to learn, they don’t work hard, they don’t try, they disrupt the class, and they bully kids that do want to work” – such children directly reflect the kind of household they were brought up in (in the main).

A great deal of paid for, or selective education is driven by the desire of families to avoid exactly these kinds of circumstances – certainly many politicians do not live up to the rhetoric they espouse on education – some even go so far as to rationalise their hypocrisy with all sorts of specious logic (see link at 27 – Rosen’s letter to Diane Abbot).

And remember this?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article1290558.ece

I fail to see why politicians should all be of highly educated stock. What is wrong with the miner or shipbuilder becoming an MP? Except of course we don’t have many miners or ship builders anymore. The landowners have always believed that they were born to lead, and that has not changed.

The Grammar system was devised by the landowners to select the brightest from the lower classes who could be educated to run their companies and interests. There were not enough of the aristocracy to do it. The system was not about the betterment of the working class it was about providing the accountants and lawyers, and engineers to run things while the aristocrats could go on hunting and shooting, and sitting in their posh clubs.

38. In which case the question becomes, how do we construct an education system which allows smart, hard working kids to reach their full potential, while mitigating the impact of ‘bad kids’ (ie. the products of bad parents).

A problem with the current system is that it encourages schools to focus on the D/C border kids, at the expense of B/A border kids or A/A* border kids. Why do state schools get lower marks than independent schools? because they don’t push the smart kids to achieve their maximum potential.

Bear in mind, that this is a decision on the allocation of resources, and is perfectly justifiable – A/B kids can look after themselves, will do fine anyway etc. However, it does have consequences, which are that the proportion of state school kids going on to Oxbridge etc. will be less than those who go to schools which do push the smart kids.

@14 Galen10: Academies and spurious markets predicated on the false assumption that people are demanding “choice”; in education as in health services people want decent services, properly resourced, as close as practicable.

If, as you say, people don’t want Free Schools, then any that are set up will wither due to lack of custom, and they will not be a problem.

I suspect that some of the people against them are against them because they thing they will be popular. (I’m not accusing you of that).

39. sorry, you posted while I was writing. Why is it important for the country to be run by educated people?

Possibly because negotiating an international trade deal or determining spending priorities within a government is somewhat more complex than hammering rivets all day. The point of this argument is that an extremely intelligent rivet hammerer is wasted hammering rivets, and should have access to the best possible education – allowing him or her to negotiate the trade deal.

Apologies to all for feeding Sally, I couldn’t help myself.

41 Phil Hunt

Fair enough if true; my issue with Free Schools however is that in general I regard them as a Trojan horse for anti-comprehensive right wing ideologues who would really be a lot happier if the oiks just knoew their place.

I’m not denying there aren’t a lot of “useful idiots” out there who will lap the Free school nonsense up, or are driven to it in extremis because their local schools have failed due to chronic under-investment and mismanagement…. I’d just rather they didn’t try to dress it up as something it wasn’t.

@19 a&e charge nurse: not even Diane Abbot would her child to a school in Hackney

Personally I think MPs should be required to use state schools, public transport, etc, in situations where the majority of their constituents would do so. So if any MP outside London has lots of their constituents commute into London to work, the MP would have to too, instead of getting a free flat in central London. (I suspect that if this was the case, state schools and railways would be better.)

Any MPs not prepared to do this would not get paid or be allowed to vote in any Commons division.

Well we have had some of the best educated people running the country for the last 150 years or so, and they have not exactly done a great job. Oxford I think has something like 25 former Prime Ministers and Cambridge about 15. Hardly very reflective.

You don’t need to be educated to a high standard to negotiate. Go down to any market place to see that for yourself. Being an MP for most tories is a very cushy job. You normally have outside interests to prop up the salary. Most of the letters are answered by tour secretary, and you get plenty of time to write books, do after dinning speeches (that you get paid for) No wonder there is a list as long as the M1 for people wanting to become an MP.

“Apologies to all for feeding Sally, I couldn’t help myself.”

HA HA HA The trolls have had a giant troll circle jerk and realised they can’t beat me .So they have given up and are now ignoring me. Too funny. The thought that the trolls have all gone off to troll central to form a plan is hilarious. The average troll now comes on here to ignore me. Priceless. How the mighty trolls have fallen.

44. Phil Hunt

The thing is, a sufficiently high-up politician’s kid is a target for kidnapping or even just revenge attacks, whereas most people’s aren’t. They need extra security, which you don’t get at state schools.

@ 45 Sally

“Well we have had some of the best educated people running the country for the last 150 years or so, and they have not exactly done a great job.”

The thing is (and I’m not necessarily jumping on the “politicians need a good education” bandwagon here), this doesn’t prove anything unless you can show how good a job poorly educated folk would have done. It might have been worse.

[47] “The thing is, a sufficiently high-up politician’s kid is a target for kidnapping or even just revenge attacks, whereas most people’s aren’t” – good point.

42
It is a myth that the country needs to be run by educated people although it’s probably a good idea that we have literate people.
Having a phd in theology is hardly going to help when negotiating an international deal. The fact is our leaders are surrounded by experts in all disciplines (these are the ones that need to be educated).
Thatcher’s chemistry degree had no baring on her free-market ethos, in fact, she probably had never heard of Adam Smith in 1979.
I also agree with the premise that arrogance and a belief that you were born to lead, which is instilled into the children of a particular class, also helps.

@41 The problem with the whole “choice” business is that everyone is essentially seeking the exact same product, a decent education for their kids. In deprived areas with poorly performing comprehensives I fully expect enthusiasm for free schools to be high, an unknown is better than a known piss-poor after all.

The problem isn’t a lack of choice, it’s the lack of access to decent education. You might believe offering choice is a method of correcting this problem, I however, regard it as an abandonment of responsibility on the behalf of the government (of whichever stripe you care to mention) who have thus far been quite happy to let the proles fight one another for access to the limited supply of decent education rather than work toward improving access across the board. Course that would require effort and money, so that’ll never happen.

@40 Ed: A problem with the current system is that it encourages schools to focus on the D/C border kids, at the expense of B/A border kids or A/A* border kids. Why do state schools get lower marks than independent schools? because they don’t push the smart kids to achieve their maximum potential.

This is true. Schools — like everyone else — perform according to what their incentives are. A better way to rate schools is to give them points according to A*=10, A=9, B=8, etc, so that every grade increase helps the school’s position.

@51 Cylux: The problem with the whole “choice” business is that everyone is essentially seeking the exact same product, a decent education for their kids.

Really? So a religios fundamentalist who wants a “faith” school and a rationalist who wants their child to be taught rationalist, scientific enlightrenment values, want the same thing?

In deprived areas with poorly performing comprehensives I fully expect enthusiasm for free schools to be high, an unknown is better than a known piss-poor after all.

The fact that a free school has the potential to be set up may in itself drive the incumbent school to do better. (My analogy for this would be in municipalities in the USA served by one ISP where the municipality proposes to set up a municipal internet service — the fact that they might do so, itself, might spur the ISP to provide a better service).

Really? So a religios fundamentalist who wants a “faith” school and a rationalist who wants their child to be taught rationalist, scientific enlightrenment values, want the same thing?

Given that there are already many instances of atheists/agnostics/secularists faking faith to get their kids into seemingly better performing faith schools, the answer is yes. Very much so. The increase in demand for faith schools had more to do with them managing to stay high in the league tables* than any increase in religious fervour across the country.

*There’s a strong argument that they managed this by abusing their faith school status to “choose” the brightest applicants of each year and not doing much to retard their education, good pupils in – good pupils out, so to speak.

And I alone in the education debate in not caring about the grammar schools issue? I was educated at both a comprehensive and a grammar, and the education I got from both was of a similar (and generally high) standard. To me the important issues are:

1. what subjects kids are taught

2. the syllabuses for these subjects

3. how they are examined

4. how to incentivize learning, which I’ll deal with separately below

Of the fisr three, the third is the most important of these. Assuming passing exams is important (if it isn’t, the exams are a waste of time and should be scrapped), then schools will teach to them. Therefore is it’s possible to pass them merely by rote memorisation then that’s how kids will be taught. Instead, exams should be written so that to pass them, you need to actually understand the subject, not just have memorised words and phrases.

The next important issue is making sure the school environment is conducive to learning. Others have brought up this issue:

8:

I believe this because most of the secondary schools in my borough and neighbouring boroughs appear to have a culture of it is uncool to learn, in addition to this, brighter kids are picked on and do not want to be seen as being bright because of the fear of getting bullied.

34:

The problem is, and always will be, that some kids are disruptive shits. They don’t want to learn, they don’t work hard, they don’t try, they disrupt the class, and they bully kids that do want to work

The disruption problem needs to be solved by preventing disruptive shits from preventing others from learning. If this means expelling them, so be it — better one person’s education suffers than a whole class’s does. Schools need to have discipline here (note: there are other areas where discipline shouldn’t be an issue, e.g. what clothing of hairstyles schools have, because schools shouldn’t care about these as long as the kids are learning. Or maybe the schools could let only those kids who’re doing well academically wear whatever they like — this would cause the kids to perceive academic excellence as high status. Which brings me to my next point…)

Regarding learning being uncool, this is also a serious problem and a school can’t improve as long as that attitude is widespread. The issue here is that children, being humans, chase after status; if something (anything) has high status, they’ll want it more than if it has low status. Maybe one way to achieve this would be to give kids a financial or other incentive to do well academically. but here’s the twist: don’t give them the bonus based on their own performance, base it on the whole class’s performance. This would create an esprit de corps (since they’re together striving for the same thing) it would also cause the kids to value those of their peers who’re doing well academically, and to put pressure on slackers who’re letting the class down.

@47: The thing is, a sufficiently high-up politician’s kid is a target for kidnapping or even just revenge attacks, whereas most people’s aren’t. They need extra security, which you don’t get at state schools.

I accept that you may a point there.

OTOH, the same argument was used as to why politician’s kids shouldn’t be in the ContactPoint database the previous govmt was building. It strikes me as morally wrong that our rulers should not be subject to the same rules themselves that they make for us.

Fact is the salary MPs get put them very much in the upper middle class status. Whatever background the MP comes from he is the top ten % income range. And as we all know the middle class tend to play the education system for their own advantage better than most.

But you don’t need a degree to be an MP.

Surely everyone agrees that MPs ought to be literate and numerate!

“Tony Crosland, of course, having had the privilege of an independent education at Highgate, and then at one of the poshest Oxford colleges, Trinity.”

This is often brought up by critics of comprehensive education. What they tend to gloss over is the fact that much of the pressure for it within the Labour Party came from councillors, MPs and activists from working class backgrounds, especially from South Wales and the North East.

I agree 10% with the various folks here who have said:

> Regarding learning being uncool, this is also a serious problem and a school can’t improve as long as that attitude is widespread.

My wife is German, and we often visit, and the anti-learning thing is much less there.
(Is becoming a problem in some Turkish areas among girls, where maybe 50% of fathers tell them they are onmly going to get married so don;t need an education..)

In Germany there they have not just 2 school layers (grammer + sec mod) but 3 (gymnasium = uni-preparation), Real and Haupt : for clerical type work (bank staff) and for apprenticeship type work (plumbers, chippies etc).

As like everywhere in the West, the demand for less-skilled staff is plummeting… so more parents see Gymnaisum as the only sensible choice for a career.

I have a friend from Denmark. He says he was shocked when he first came to the UK – over there they are obsessed with needing to compete and thus obsessed in wanting a highly skilled work force.

I have Dutch friend – she says it is uncool there for girls to think about not taking their education as far they can, to think about having kids before their twenties.

I know some out of work folk on the local council estate who are clever enough to have learnt something and be able to get a ona career ladder -but have not applied themselves, and still don’t want to learn

So…anecdotal evidence I know… but it seems we have a problem of culture.

British culture is much more anti-learning than other similar-ish western neighbours.

How do we set about addressing that?

Until the culture shifts…tweaking the schools set up is just deck-chairs on the Titanic.

Cultures can shift… witness how the smoking ban in public went through because it ws supported by enough people…

@60 I think the states has a similar problem, or at least that’s the impression you get from from watching their tv programmes. The constant lionising of the dumb, work-dodging jock, and vilifying of the hard working, intellectual nerd is bound to have an effect of children/teens attitudes toward their own path in life.

@ 60 Just Visiting

“British culture is much more anti-learning than other similar-ish western neighbours.

How do we set about addressing that?

Until the culture shifts…tweaking the schools set up is just deck-chairs on the Titanic.”

I don’t think it’s quite as endemic as you’re making out, but… yeah. Painfully well put.

@ 49 a&e

“The thing is, a sufficiently high-up politician’s kid is a target for kidnapping or even just revenge attacks, whereas most people’s aren’t” – good point.”

This is the sort of issue where I want politicians to just stand up and say: “look, we have a good reason for this”. However, I suspect the tabloid response would be: “Politician Says His Kids’ Safety Is Important – AND YOURS’ ISN’T!”

@ 56 Phil Hunt

“OTOH, the same argument was used as to why politician’s kids shouldn’t be in the ContactPoint database the previous govmt was building. It strikes me as morally wrong that our rulers should not be subject to the same rules themselves that they make for us.”

Yeah, I agree. But I don’t want to drag their kids into it. They didn’t choose politics. I accept that this can still mean their politician parents are being hypocritical, but as for levelling the playing field… it’s a huge “don’t go there” as far as I’m concerned.

What’s OTOH? I evidently need to brush up on my web lingo again.

@64 OTOH = On the other hand

@ 61 Cylux

“I think the states has a similar problem, or at least that’s the impression you get from from watching their tv programmes. The constant lionising of the dumb, work-dodging jock, and vilifying of the hard working, intellectual nerd is bound to have an effect of children/teens attitudes toward their own path in life.”

Haven’t you heard? Shreddies are TOO TASTY FOR GEEKS!!!!

Personally, I think the Beano has a lot to answer for. Good guys, like Dennis the Menace, are heroes. The bad guys are effeminate and carry books with titles like Extra Hard Sums.

@ 65

Ah. Cheers.

The really difficult issue for those who keep claiming that schooling opportunities are restricted by poverty is explaining how it is that poor white working class kids get worse results in the GCSE exams than the poor kids from ethnic minority groups:

“Poor white boys now do worse in primary school tests in England than any other main group, latest figures show.

“Only 48% of white British boys eligible for free school meals achieved the expected level in English and maths.” [19 Nov 09]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8368240.stm

“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

“Though white children in general do better than most minorities at school, poor ones come bottom of the league (see chart). Even black Caribbean boys, the subject of any number of initiatives, do better at GCSEs”
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14700670

I’ve posted several times in previous threads that within walking distance of where I’m sitting there are two maintained selective boys grammar schools which achieve better AVERAGE A-level results than Eton.

The London borough where I live regularly comes at or near the top of the annual league table for English local education authorities because of the AVERAGE attainment of the candidates for the GCSE exams in local schools even though the borough is only a modest spender on education and neither of the constituencies in the borough featured in this list of the 100 most affluent constituencies in 2007:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-477325/League-Wealth-Tables.html

8. Mr Grunt
“I think that Grammar Schools are the correct place for very intelligent or highly intelligent children that love to learn.

I believe this because most of the secondary schools in my borough and neighbouring boroughs appear to have a culture of it is uncool to learn, in addition to this, brighter kids are picked on and do not want to be seen as being bright because of the fear of getting bullied.”

Sorry but did you actually go to a Grammar School? Because I did, and love of learning was not much in evidence. There were plenty of disruptive kids who picked on the brighter kids. I’m quite confident such oiks exist in Eton, in fact if Cameron and Boris’ vandalising antics in the Bullingdon club is anything to go by we have clear evidence that there are.

Perhaps you should try reading Tom Brown’s Schooldays, published in 1845 about a intellectual young boy being ruthlessly bullied by Flashman, a senior.

I never fail to be stunned when people propose panglossian solutions to education, that do not involve an honest and candid examination of the psychology of sixteen year old boys.

16. Chaise Guevara
@ Tim J

“Given what it is that IQ tests actually measure, it would seem fairly clear both from your own experiences, and from the evidence of league tables etc, that there is a correlation between social class and IQ.

‘Yeah, and not all that hard to explain either, given that a high IQ is one factor that can help you (or your kids) move into the middle class. A process that properly run grammar schools serve to assist, in fact.

The whole “some on the right may actually believe this!!! :0? shtick in the OP seemed like a pre-emptive ad hom to me.”

A ludicrous suggestion, the IQ test was introduced in British schools in 1944 and lasted only a generation (30 years), do you imagine England was a highly socially mobile society in 1944? Was Britain a highly mobile society for most of that thirty year period, for the last decade of it perhaps, but before 1950′s the classes of Britain where not constituted on the basis of merit, no matter how high your IQ you would not be moving anywhere. How exactly did the 11 plus so perfectly and so thoroughly move all these children first from the working class into the middle class, then wait the necessary length of time for them to find a middle class job, get married, have children of their own, wait for those children to reach age 12 and find the classes so clearly separated that they could take only a tiny percentage of their pupils in the working class, and manage this all in sweep of one generation.

You may seem surprised that some on the right believe this. You should not, they do. The right-wing thinkers such as Hernerstein and Murray who worked for the conservative think tank American Enterprise wrote ‘The New Bell Curve’. A book of ‘scientific racism’ that purports to use IQ’s to establish racism and classism. Others right-wing think tanks like Pioneer fund have steadily built on that foundation. This has been more of an American right-wing agenda, but their is the odd Tory who subscribes to such views. Let us not forget that Ian Duncan Smith recently informed us that poor people “have different brains from the rest of us.” I hardly think stating the claimed beliefs of right-wing think-tanks can be called an ad hominem against the right.

@68: The really difficult issue for those who keep claiming that schooling opportunities are restricted by poverty is explaining how it is that poor white working class kids get worse results in the GCSE exams than the poor kids from ethnic minority groups

There’s a wide variation in GCSE results between ethnic groups, even when allowing for income, people from Chinese ethnicity in particular doing well.

I suspect the main cause of this is that some parents and some cultures value education more than others.

A muddled and unclear programme form Neil which is what you’d expect from a man deeply in love with himself and whose vanity and grovelling to Murdoch led him to have that absurd hair transplant. There was one marvellous moment though, the appearance of the mighty Jacob Rees-Mogg, a man so posh he makes Osborne seem like John Prescott. What makes the effete Rees-Mogg so hilarious is his delusion that he is average. In his brief foray into business Rees-Mogg proved himself to be bloody useless, he took his nanny campaigning when he fought his first seat in Scotland saying “I couldn’t survive without her” In 1998 at Glyndebourne his housemaid and his nanny took turns holding a book over his neck to prevent sunburn. Yesterday Cameron was sneering away at Death Ray Panda when up popped Rees-Mogg to sighs of relief from Labour (and cheers from Tory nutcases) and made the wonderfully insensitive comment “Is not the lesson from the noble Baroness Thatcher that, when you have set an economic course, you should stick to it – ‘there is no alternative’?”

If Rees-Mogg doesn’t convince you that public schoolboys should be kept somewhere harmless until their daddies drop dead leaving them even more stinking rich and usually with titles, then nothing will. He also has a sister in parliament which along with Boris’ brother Jo makes me wonder if the House Of Commons will soon replace the Lords as a repository for the overprivileged and otherwise unemployable.

Sorry but did you actually go to a Grammar School? Because I did, and love of learning was not much in evidence. There were plenty of disruptive kids who picked on the brighter kids. I’m quite confident such oiks exist in Eton, in fact if Cameron and Boris’ vandalising antics in the Bullingdon club is anything to go by we have clear evidence that there are.

Given that Boris was a scholar at Eton, and a Brackenbury scholar at Balliol, and Cameron got a first (and was described by Vernon Bogdanor as the ablest student he taught) I don’t think you can argue that those two are typified by a lack of learning.

I agree with pretty much all the points made since [60] – my thanks to the contributors, especially CG and JV.

I would suggest that we have here the basis for a campaign. JV makes the key point:

Until the culture shifts…tweaking the schools set up is just deck-chairs on the Titanic.

The first pressure point, surely, should be to call for Ed Miliband to appoint a full-time Shadow Secretary of State for Education (Andy Burnham currently does it in whatever time he has left over from co-ordinating elections ) and for the individual he chooses to be signed up for the “cultural” analysis which has been developed on this thread.

We should encourage the Fabians, Labour Uncut, Left Futures etc etc to take up this analysis. I’m sure I won’t be alone in wondering what Dave Osler and Sunny himself think of this approach.

73 Tim J

Some of the stupidest people I know have PhD’s. Academic excellence doesn’t necessarily make you a great administrator, politician, business person or indeed a “nice person”.

Like may privileged people Cameron and Johnson have never really had to struggle in their lives, which is why most “ordinary” people find them unconvincing when they talk about the concerns of “dem poor folks”.

Schmidt @ 72 is quite correct; Andrew Neil totally missed the point in as amuch as he highlighted an issue which is a real problem and came to precisely the wrong conclusion. Why? Because he’s a mediocre individual who doesn’t have the brains to know that he is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The governing elites can afford to be fat, dumb and happy because they know nothing is likely to change anytime soon. That they can do so is largely thanks to the likes of Andrew Neil, who have been co-opted by the system they purport to dislike.

@someone above (forgot the number, apols)

“Possibly because negotiating an international trade deal or determining spending priorities within a government is somewhat more complex than hammering rivets all day.”

And the patronising award goes to… Seriously though, most deals at the level you talk of are dealt with via the civil service which has its own training etc in place*. A chap who hammers rivets all day (& I’ve done it!) may have more experience of the life that the majority of people in this country lead than someone who is cushioned at birth with salaried parents, private school, Oxbridge, internship for a think-tank, PPS, MP – the usual route, it would seem, to become a leader of the country.

How many members of the government have ever had to choose between eating and keeping warm? How many have ever received a “final demand” notice through the door? How many have been made redundant from a minimum wage job and had to go and sign on the next day? How many have spent hours trying to sort out a housing benefit claim on the telephone in a phone box? How many have had to spend their last few pounds on baby food rather than anything else?

I could go on.

I’m reminded of Ken Clarke yesterday saying how things are going to get worse for us all, well, not for him and his ilk. The government, hell ALL MPs, are going to be FINE for the next five years. As are their banker class-brethren. It’s the rest of us who are going to suffer.

A tangent, but anyway.

The point is that Sally is correct in her assertion that we do not require career-politicians who know nothing of life, particularly when they are making changes that affect REAL people and not their top 10% earning class. People with the experiences I talk about above may think twice before punishing those in a similar boat.

*Also, on this politicians-as-specialists note; anyone really think that every politician is a specialist in education, health, transport, the environment, farming policy (et bloody cetera)? Pols get briefed, heavily, and learn the subject while in the job. And as I point out, the civil service does most of the monkey-work.

Some of the stupidest people I know have PhD’s.

I doubt it. You’re making a classification error – they may lack common sense, or commercial nous or social aptitude, but the one thing you really can’t be if you’ve studied for and achieve a doctorate is stupid.

Academic excellence doesn’t necessarily make you a great administrator, politician, business person or indeed a “nice person”.

Of course it doesn’t. It is, however, also hard to argue that the Mayor of London (elected on the second largest personal mandate in Europe) and the Prime Minister aren’t good politicians. It’s also not quite relevant to the point I was making, which is that Boris and Dave – scholar and PPE first student – are not good examples of an anti learning ethos at public schools, which is what William was implying.

77
Nobody on this thread has proposed an anti-learning ethos and quoting Cameron and Johnson as being good (matter of opinion) politicians is nonsense, I could point to Dennis Skinner as a counter-argument.
Here is a few more truths, there are more women than men achieving degrees but still there is a massive defecit of women in politics.
Females out-performed males in the 11 plus but more males went to grammar school and inequality was arguably at it’s worst during the mandarory 11plus years. If grammar schools took working-class boys and made them good then why did it not equally do this for girls?
Once again someone needs reminding that correlation does not mean causality.

‘No-one ever advocates [secondary moderns] as the answer’

If the question is ‘social mobility’, then they were. The selection process was, at least sometimes, impartial enough that middle class children ended up there. The education provided there was commonly bad enough that at the end of it, the children couldn’t take up a place in the middle class, and had no aspiration to, so they got a job in a factory or whatever.

This is, of course, why they were shut down.

These days, while there are schools just as bad at education, virtually no middle class children get sent to them. So there is no educational route out of the middle class. And if at age 18 you are middle class, you always will be. Spend 5 years working in bars or unemployed, get sent to prison, whatever, you will still be able to walk into jobs that some would never consider an option, get a mortgage, etc. About the only remaining way to leave the middle class is to develop an unsustainable drug habit.

(I think there’s a Pulp song that makes this point)

Obviously, as there are a limited proportion of good jobs, then if no-one is leaving the pool of candidates, then few are going to be joining.

quoting Cameron and Johnson as being good (matter of opinion) politicians is nonsense, I could point to Dennis Skinner as a counter-argument.

What? The two politicians I cite have each achieved executive office, one as Prime Minister, one as Mayor of London. Dennis Skinner has been an irrelevant back bencher for two decades. What sort of counter-argument are you trying to make?

80
The point I made (although you obviously didn’t get it) is that there are other factors as well as education which contribute to, mainly men, getting into high oiffice and in general higher positions in the private sector.

81 – Well, obviously there are. We don’t just run a ballot for the people with the best degrees.

This could be a very interesting programme http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yb5kv

Oh, Cameron isn’t a good politician. He’s an expert PR man. Difference.

There are now only 164 grammar schools remaining: one of their important features is that they have sixth forms whereas the most common type of comprehensive schools don’t – because of the adopted schooling structure by many local education authorities of 11-16 comprehensives followed by a tertiary college.

The inevitable consequence of 11-16 comprehensives is that the senior year of these schools has tended to be dominated by the laddish culture and values of early school leavers – which helps to explain the 20,000 or so 16 years-olds who leave their schools each year without any GCSEs. By contrast, in grammar schools – as well as 11-18 and 14-18 comprehensives – most of the senior years are usually aiming for A-levels and that affects the ethos of the respective schools.

George Orwell remarked on working class attitudes to schooling in: The Road to Wigan Pier (1937):

“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.” [Road to Wigan Pier, chp.7]
http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/6.html

In too many places ‘oop north, not much has changed since Orwell wrote that – which btw helps to explain why girls have come to overtake boys in getting more and better A-levels and why the majority of undergraduates at universities are now women.

Grammar schools enabled kids living on those vast council estates to escape the influence of neighbourhood peer groups.

77 Tim J

Cameron and Johnson didn’t get there because they were good politicians (which as others have pointed is in any case arguable), or even because they were academically gifted. In both cases, the overwhelmingly important reason they are where they are today is because of their upper class background and their privileged upbringing.

That is rather the point of Andrew Neils programme last night, and given the make up of parliament and the higher reaches of our political parties and establishment as a whole is hardly controversial, even if his conclusions are off the mark.

As for the rest; trust me plenty of post-grads in my experience can be counted as stupid whatever classification you use, and whilst Boris and Callme Dave might not individually support the earlier posters point about the anti-learning ethos in public schools, 2 swallows don’t make a summer either!

72 “What makes the effete Rees-Mogg so hilarious is his delusion that he is average. In his brief foray into business Rees-Mogg proved himself to be bloody useless, he took his nanny campaigning when he fought his first seat in Scotland saying “I couldn’t survive without her” In 1998 at Glyndebourne his housemaid and his nanny took turns holding a book over his neck to prevent sunbur.”

Too funny……

In both cases, the overwhelmingly important reason they are where they are today is because of their upper class background and their privileged upbringing.

It’s a pointless argument. David Cameron is the first privately educated leader of his party in 40 years – an ‘upper-class background’ has been a definite handicap in becoming Tory leader. He was widely regarded as the most impressive of the junior generation of Tories as far back as 1992. It’s undeniable that his path has been very much smoothed by his education and contacts, but education and contacts only get you so far. Arguing that he’s not a good politician suggests that you have an alarmingly high (or arbitrary) threshold.

And Boris isn’t from an especially upper-class family. He was a scholarship boy at Eton, and any dramatically upper-class connections are a) 8 generations old and b) illegitimate.

Mike

Pleased you found my post on topic.

> The first pressure point, surely, … appoint a full-time Shadow Secretary of State for Education … and for the individual … to be signed up for the “cultural” analysis which has been developed on this thread.

Entirely sensible point.

But I wonder if your average LCer
a) isn’t keen on admitting that there are cultural differences out there at all
b) would find a focus on trying to change the culture rather ‘non inclusive’ – too much like blaming the poorly educated, for their lack of educational acheievement.

@ 85 and 89,
This was the underlying point that I was trying to make. A substantial element of traditional working class culture is essentially opposed to that necessary for success in education. But more importantly, peer pressure against academic achievement is a huge problem in either the state or private sector. The anti-learning culture is pervasive within Britain. The reason public libraries are prime targets for cuts is that many are massively under-utilised.

Why? because we live in a culture where a semi-literate, sexually incontinent, man-child like Wayne Rooney is a role model for millions of boys. Possibly at the root of this problem is that Wayne Rooney is still recognisably working class, whereas if you look at a successful professional from a working class background they are perceived as ‘middle class’.

[89] Cheers

[90] Working-class culture – historically – was a little more complex than that. The miners, the railway workers and indeed nonconformist Protestantism more generally were very pro-education – “so that our children don’t have to go through what we’ve been through”. The dockers on the other hand, often Catholic, had the values you describe.

And whereas two generations and more ago there were blue-collar jobs that paid well, or even exceedingly well (e.g. the printers) those have almost all been replaced by white-collar and therefore “middle class” work.

@91

The result is that the ‘winner’ of the working class culture war is the anti-intellectual tradition. Arguably the decline of working class intellectualism is what has damaged the Labour party.

@90: ” The anti-learning culture is pervasive within Britain”

That’s probably a byproduct of Britain’s successful pioneering industrial revolution, starting towards the end of the 18th century, which led to a populist complacency about the market value of good schooling.

One early outcome was the Education Act of 1870, which created the basic administrative structures to provide for universal primary education, paid for by property taxes, as it became increasingly apparent that general schooling standards in Britain were slipping behind those in other western European countries as the result of leaving schooling here to the churches and to charities. Attendance in primary schools was made compulsory in 1880 – another explicit rejection of the failure of laissez-faire policies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_Education_Act_1870

A council housing estate within walking distance includes a featured “football academy” for 6 year-olds and upwards (!) – possibly as a safety valve because of the enforced ban on unregulated ball games on open spaces on the estate but also in response to a pervasive youthful working class fantasy about becoming a highly paid professional footballer. Try this on football salaries:
http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/blog/dirty-tackle/post/The-top-50-footballer-salaries-this-season?urn=sow-220011

Of course, only a precious few will ever make it to being highly paid top players in the premier professional clubs but the dream is enough of a personal motivation to discourage engagement in boring learning. Free market capitalism? Most football clubs make regular annual loses and depend on benefactors to keep the clubs solvent.

The previous dream used to be the vision of becoming a celebrated pop-singer or a movie star where similar market pressures apply. Hence that old Noel Coward’s song from before WW2: Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDAJxazhZvM

70. William

If you look back at the OP, you’ll see he’s using “IQ” as shorthand for intelligence. I’m not arguing about whether IQ tests are a good test of intelligence, because frankly I don’t know. I’m arguing that intelligence is likely to be positively correllated with wealth, which is definitely connected to class because that’s one of the way in which we define the concept of “class” in the first place.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to be that concept that the OP is dismissing as rightist nonsense, not the idea that “poor people have different brains to us”, whatever that may mean.

Now, I shouldn’t have to explain why it is likely that intelligence should be linked to wealth, but here goes: intelligence is one of many attributes that can help you become wealthy. Whether you become so because are capable of becoming a doctor – and get this opportunity through an education system that judges on merit rather than money – or through personal business acumen, you may well look back on your life and say that your brain was what made it all work for you.

Now, if you are born into a working-class background and become rich, you may later think of yourself as middle-class, or you may not. But your kids will get all of the advantages of your money, and being your offspring are likely to be bright themselves. They will probably go to a good school, then university, and get middle-class jobs.

A perfectly meritocratic education system (and no, that does not mean funnelling all the resources to the clever kids) would almost certainly see a VERY strong correlation between wealth and intelligence emerge, by virtue of being meritocratic. Insofar as this country is meritocratic to at least some extent, it would be surprising indeed to find that the rich and the poor have identical levels of intelligence. The OP can try to pass this off as rightist nonsense, and you can add accusations of “scientific racism” if you like, but that doesn’t change the fact that many of us on the left would rather accept the obvious than cling to a lie because it seems more politically charming.

@94 “A perfectly meritocratic education system (and no, that does not mean funnelling all the resources to the clever kids) would almost certainly see a VERY strong correlation between wealth and intelligence emerge, by virtue of being meritocratic. ”

The trouble is that coincidentally or not, with the demise of the grammar schools, social mobility has stalled in Britain according to the OECD:

“The chances of a child from a poor family enjoying higher wages and better education than their parents is lower in Britain than in other western countries, the OECD says”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/10/oecd-uk-worst-social-mobility

See the Figure 5.1 posted in the relevant OECD report: Going for Growth:
http://www.oecd.org/document/51/0,3343,en_2649_34325_44566259_1_1_1_1,00.html

See too this LSE research monograph: Intergenerational Mobility in Europe and North America
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/about/news/IntergenerationalMobility.pdf

@ 95 Bob B

I’m not going to lay that totally at the feet of the demise of the grammar school, because it may partly reflect that we’re starting from a better standpoint (i.e. a nation where wealth is currently connected more to circumstance than ability has the potential for more social mobility). But no, I don’t think a lack of grammar schools helps.

In France and the southern lander in Germany, selective lycées and gymnasiums have survived.

So, what is the answer, if not academic selection? Academic selection enables schools to keep bright and disruptive pupils separate. It also allows the concentration of resources on academically strong pupils. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean giving them more resources than other pupils, but by teaching bright pupils together, the teacher can pitch the lesson at a more advanced level.

Having just watched the Neil documentary, the description of the learning environment at Westminster was interesting. The pupils claimed that as all their peers were working hard (either through parental pressure or just personality) there was peer pressure to work hard and compete to be the best. – now we only have their word for it, but it seems plausible. How can we create a similar environment in the state sector. Particularly regarding class sizes.

Similarly, do state schools do enough to encourage young people to develop their academic interests outside school?

Worth reminding everyone that the inventor of the “meritocracy” intended it to be a satire…. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment

@94 Chaise

I’m sure you see the problem with your analysis – it doesn’t take into account the massive inequalities regarding class, gender, race etc etc. It is a convenient concept for the Right to cling to, because if intelligence = wealth, well, poor people are just thickos then aren’t they? And no point trying to help them out of poverty, it’s their own fault after all. It’s how the story goes. We see it already from this government and their respective henchmen (such as the Mail, such as Paul Staines)-people who hate the poor because they perceive them as lazy and stupid and not as deserving of good things as the successful rich.

NB I’m not saying that intelligence doesn’t help to become wealthy, but I don’t think it’s half as simple as intelligence = wealth or indeed vice versa.

“I’m sure you see the problem with your analysis – it doesn’t take into account the massive inequalities regarding class, gender, race etc etc. It is a convenient concept for the Right to cling to, because if intelligence = wealth, well, poor people are just thickos then aren’t they?”

Hang on, hang on, hang on. I said “correlation”, not “=”. Of course being wealthy doesn’t mean you’re intelligent, or vice versa. It wouldn’t even in a meritocracy, because intelligence isn’t the only attribute that can help you get more money. And it certainly doesn’t in our society.

Honestly, all I’m saying is that AVERAGE intelligence almost certainly rises with income, and that pretending that that isn’t the case because you (not you) think that will make you sound more egalitarian is just an attempt to rewrite the world to suit your own ideals.

@Chaise

Just to go back a bit, this is what you’re disputing:

“Unless there is a direct correlation between social class and IQ – [bit about right-wingers] – then membership of Five Alpha was more a function of what you dad did than how bright you were.”

…is there any research on a direct correlation that we can refer to? Cos we can make suppositions all day long and I do see your point, but I also see the OP’s.

@ 102

I’m treating “IQ” as meaning “intelligence” in that sentence because the OP seems to as well, hence him them talking about being “bright”.

I don’t know of any direct research, and obviously some would dispute the measures that would be used. I imagine there is some, though. In its absence, I’ll go with what seems most logical to me.

…is there any research on a direct correlation that we can refer to? Cos we can make suppositions all day long and I do see your point, but I also see the OP’s.

Of course there is. Heaps.

The scores adults achieve on intelligence tests are correlated with their socio-economic status (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Mascie-Taylor & Gibson, 1978; McCall, 1977; Murnane, Willett & Levy, 1995; Tittle & Rotolo, 2000; Waller, 1971). The causality could run in either direction, or both. On the one hand, parental social class is related to offspring IQ scores (Bouchard & Segal, 1985; Mascie-Taylor, 1984). Adoption studies consistently find a small but non-zero effect of the home environment on the development of intelligence (Capron & Duyme, 1989; Dumaret & Stewart, 1985; Horn, Loehlin & Willerman, 1979; Scarr & Weinberg, 1977), though, it should be noted, this effect appears to decline with age, just as estimates of heritability of IQ increase with age. Thus it can be argued that some of the correlation between social class and intelligence comes about through the socio-economic circumstances of childhood affecting the development of intelligence.

On the other hand, intelligence can affect socio-economic status. Intelligence test scores predict movement from the parental social class to a higher or lower one ( Jencks, 1972; Mascie-Taylor & Gibson, 1978; Waller, 1971). The association between social class as an adult and IQ is stronger than that between social class at birth and IQ. Thus intelligence is causally involved with processes of social mobility that match people’s occupations with their aptitudes.blockquote>

http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/daniel.nettle/britishjournalpsychology.pdf

As I said ages ago, given what IQ tests measure, a direct correlation with social class is more or less inevitable.

@104

OK… but this: “The causality could run in either direction, or both”, is hardly definitive evidence.

105 – it’s irrelevant to the question of correlation though isn’t it, which is what the discussion was about?

And the evidence in that study is that with children the causation seems to run from socio-economic background to IQ (“the socio-economic circumstances of childhood affecting the development of intelligence”), whereas in adult life it’s likely to be the other way around (“intelligence is causally involved with processes of social mobility that match people’s occupations with their aptitudes”). Which is why there’s a closer correlation between parent’s background and IQ with children than there is for adults.

Which is precisely what you’d expect.

“in social terms, the intake was heavily skewed towards the middle class.”

I went to grammar school in 1986, and yes I am middle class, living in a decent suburb. But the reason I was brought up in a decent suburb was because my working class mother got in to grammar school and then on to university. If she hadn’t had that chance, I’d have grown up in Newham, or East Ham as it was when my family lived there.

I don’t think the idea that public schools have an anti-learning ethos is credible. Four in ten of the UK’s leading scientists attended private school. So how does one get to be a Fellow of the Royal Society and the British Academy without knowing a thing or two about science?
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Four-in-ten-top-scientists.5714238.jp

Whether Andrew Neil’s conclusions are absolutely correct is not really the point. He was using his attendance at Paisley Grammar as an example that a modest background need not be a handicap. The Scottish education system was sending working class boys to university 150 years ago, before there was any state education system. Whether you were rich or poor It was the best education system in the world until about twenty or thirty years ago. Now as the state has grown it is just average. When I see the Royal Society having 42 per cent of the Fellows from a fee-paying school background when that is only 7 per cent of children that tells me the state sector are failing us. We are missing out on so much potential talent who are not reaching their potential.