|
I am so very pleased to give the third
Caroline Benn Memorial lecture today. My
admiration for Caroline and for her unflinching work to bring
about a truly comprehensive system of education in England continues to
be immense. Those of us who have spent their working
lives (in my case some forty years) in supporting the
comprehensive principle that all children have a right to be educated
together, irrespective of their ability, in equally well-resourced
locally-based schools, have watched with dismay, as successive
governments have attacked or devalued this principle.
Caroline, more than anyone, knew that creating hierarchies of
schools, offering what is perceived to be superior and inferior
education, is a recipe for the development of an hierarchical and
dangerous society of smug winners, and resentful losers.
My own view is that we are at a turning
point as far as education for a democratic, egalitarian society is
concerned.. We can carry on with the creation of
a competitive marketisation and encroaching
privatisation of schools, under the rubric of diversity,- with
increasing overt and covert selection
for different kinds of school. Or we can reconsider the development of a
distinctive comprehensive learning programme, establishing common
schools for all, as a basis for educated and democratic communities.
Caroline herself pointed out, in a lecture
at Oxford in 1995, published in Pring and Walford’s book Affirming
the Comprehensive Ideal (1997)
that no government has charted the development of comprehensive
education in Britain. This has allowed myth and antagonism to what has
been a successful education reform to flourish. Tony Blair spoke before
the 2003 party conference of “ changing the traditional comprehensive-
let’s do more of it” (Observer 28/9/03).
Yet not even the Prime Minister knows what a traditional
comprehensive is!
Much of what we actually know about
comprehensive schools over the long term,- their development,
ethos, organisation, teaching and learning strategies -as distinct from
caricature, half-truth and mendacious attacks- comes from the report by
Benn and Simon (1970) who studied some
728 schools at a time when around a third of children were attending
such schools and from the report Thirty
Years On by Benn and
Chitty.(1996) This study of 1560 schools and colleges , all LEAs in
England, Scotland and Wales being represented, asked whether
comprehensive education was alive and well or struggling to survive. As
almost 90 % of young people were attending comprehensive schools
by the 1990s they had
clearly survived. But Benn and Chitty:
“found a severe and debilitating
contradiction at the heart of education over the last thirty years in
Britain. On the one hand governments were ostensibly supporting the
comprehensive principle to which most schools and colleges were becoming
committed; while at the same time they were either failing to support it
adequately, or working hard to undermine its principles and practices,
and in some cases repeatedly making it clear that they had no confidence
in education which did not pre-judge an individuals worth or facilitate
an escalation of enclaves for the favoured few” ( p 468)
This puts it very politely. Governments
over the past forty years have demonstrated bog-standard
(1) commitment to the principle of the equal value of every
individual’s learning, free from prior judgements about who has
“ability or aptitude”, and very limited commitment to the equal
resourcing and funding of all schools and colleges. A major political
project of the right throughout the second half of the twentieth century
and into the 21st has been to deny any recognition of the successes of
democratic education reform, and seek to keep and reintroduce selection,
which works for the social reproduction of an hierarchical society. No
government so far has come
near to resolving the contradictions involved in greater investment in
education and training for all, in a society that still regards
educating the working class and the disadvantaged with ambivalence. (
initiatives directed towards vocational programmes, and engaging the
truants, the disaffected and socially excluded are not aimed the middle
classes) The retention of
openly selective schools and the
introduction of education markets in England
claiming to provide “choice” and competition between
a “ diversity” of schools
are proving extraordinarily effective in reintroducing a complex
system of selection and
inequitable resourcing of schools. There has been an astonishing lack of
support for those teachers, local authorities, parents and communities,
who work to carry out what has actually been a successful transformation
of secondary education. Attacks on comprehensive schools by those in or
near government, and by sections of the media,
have persisted, and attempts to de-stabalise the principles,
infrastructure and purpose of comprehensive education continue.
In this lecture I want firstly to document
briefly some of the successes
of comprehensive education and nail the lie (to be found most recently
in a DfES press release 28/11/02
) that there has ever been a “one-size fits all” system of
comprehensive schooling.
I want to point out the bog-standard policy
of retaining overt selection- particularly as we now know that selection
does not contribute to the admirable and necessary aim of raising
educational standards for
all.
I want to
say something about the dubious policy of what the government
call “modernising diversity,” via the encouragement of specialist
schools and more faith schools. The assertion in the 2001 White Paper
that specialist schools will not constitute a “new hierarchy” was
not based on evidence. Tony Edwards and I noted last year that “ The
traditional incapacity of the English education system to develop
schools which are simply different, without being unequal in esteem,
resources and life-chances of pupils
is well-documented” ( Edwards and Tomlinson 2003). Despite more recent
attempts to row back from giving already advantaged schools yet more
resources, ( which Stephen Gorard has shown is the case with
longer-established specialist schools), the government still appears to
be working hard to undermine to undermine the stability and coherence
that could be brought about by supporting comprehensive education. It
has abdicated a responsibility for providing good comprehensive schools
in every locality.
Finally I want to revisit Lord Michael
Young’s “ Rise of the Meritocracy”, in which he satirised the rise
of a class who believed their “merit” entitles them to endless
privilege and the right to look down on those who have not demonstrated
such merit. This, he believed, had come about by 2001, and as a result,
“ general inequality has become more
grievous .. and without a bleat from the leaders of the party which once
spoke up so trenchantly for greater equality” (Young 2001)
I
will remind you here of the diversity of secondary schools we now have.
Secondary Education 2003
Private (Independent Schools) 1528
Academies
3. (30 planned )
City Colleges
15
Grammar Schools
164
Foundation Schools
Foundation Specialist Schools
Voluntary Aided or Controlled Schools
(religious)
Voluntary Aided or Controlled Specialist
Schools
Community Schools
Community Specialist Schools
Foundation Special Schools
Community Special Schools.
Pupil Referral Units
Learning Support Centres
Programmes for “Gifted and Talented”
Sixth Form/Tertiary /FE Colleges
Specialist Schools/Colleges 2003
992 in operation By 2006, 2000
Arts 173
Business and Enterprise 18
Engineering 4
Language 157
Maths and computing
12
Science 24
Ports 162
Technology 443
Beacon schools ( to be phased out)
Leading Edge Schools (to be phased in)
Training Schools
130 ( more planned)
Extended Schools ( 240)
“Sports status schools choose sweatshirts
and polo shirts, while language and arts schools go for traditional
uniforms of blazer, shirt and tie”
(Anna Housden. Trudex Textile Company
2003)
Very Old Labour
It is noteworthy that the word
comprehensive has not appeared in any of New Labour’s education
legislation. Perhaps this is because
New Labour despite talk of inclusion, has never really believed
in educating all young people together . I should point out that support
for selective education is so very Old Labour. The 1944 legislation was
based on educationally spurious notions of three types of mind,
academic, technical and practical. Children were separated at 11 on the
basis of “scientific” testing and the result was that from 1946 some
80% of children were placed in secondary modern schools with inferior
resources. A 1945 Labour government pamphlet argued that these schools
were for children whose future employment “would
not demand any measure of technical skill or knowledge”, and
the Labour government argued against the development of comprehensive
schools until 1952. As Tony
Benn recorded in his diary ( 2nd Oct 1953) “Jennie Lee says that Hugh Gaitskill-soon to be Labour
leader-“still wants an educated elite learning Latin verse”. (Benn
1994) Actually Karl Marx
was a Latin scholar. His favourite motto was “ de omnibus dubitandum”
(everything should be doubted)
The Conservative government and Labour in
opposition in the early 1960s recognised that educating more young
people to higher levels was an economic necessity. This coincided with
mainly Labour politicians’ view that educating all children together
rather than selecting a few
for a higher status, better resourced education, was a desirable
egalitarian aim. Deterministic theories of intelligence began to be
rejected, and before Labour was elected in 1964 90 out of 163 LEAs had
plans to end selection. Mrs Thatcher in the 1970s approved more plans
for school reorganisation than any other education Minister, and by the
1990s some 88% of young people in England were educated in comprehensive
schools. Wales and Scotland
developed fully
comprehensive non-selective systems.
Comprehensive Success
The success of comprehensive education, as
both an education project that raised educational standards for all, and
to a lesser extent, as an egalitarian project, has been remarkable. It
was not to be expected, in a class-conscious country like England, that
educating all social classes together would be popular, and, despite the
professional and managerial classes doing best out of comprehensive
education, middle class strategies for avoiding their children being
educated with the poor have become more and more ingenious and
expensive. Nevertheless,
standards, as measured by those entered for and passing public
examinations have been steadily rising since the 1960s. In 1962, when
some 20% were selected for grammar schools, 16% of pupils obtained five
O level passes. In 2000/1 51% achieved the equivalent five GCSE passes. The A-level
exam,- originally designed for less than 10% of pupils, was achieved in
two or more subjects) by 37% of pupils in 2001. In 1970, 47% left school
without any qualifications- by 2000 this had fallen to 10%. In the early
1960s some 10% of young people went on to higher education. The Robbins
committee (1963) recommended an increase to 17%. Now around 40%
are in higher education and there is a laudable aim of increasing
this to 50%. Those who
persist in asserting that more working class children made it into
higher education when grammars schools were the norm should revisit the
Robbins report. Their survey in 1961/2 showed that 64% of students in HE
at that time had fathers in professional or managerial jobs, only 4% had
fathers in semiskilled jobs and only 2% came from unskilled parentage. (
Robbins report p50)
But eventually thousands who had “ failed
their 11+” obtained degrees with Harold Wilson’s great success- The
Open University. And millions more obtained further education in
comprehensive institutions. By 2000 some 450 Further Education Colleges,
although under-funded - were providing a comprehensive education and
skills training for nearly five million students (full and part-time)
and a million adults were enrolled on adult education courses. (Social
Trends 2003)
A major success of comprehensive education
has been the education of groups not previously consider “able “
enough for a subject-centred secondary education. Grammar schools have
always educated predominantly middle and lower middle class children,
with enough “bright” working class children selected to maintain an
illusion of equality of opportunity. Although arguments continue to be
made that grammar schools enable social mobility it was comprehensive
schools that enabled widespread occupational mobility. In 1960 three
quarters of the male working population were in manual jobs. Via
comprehensive education ( and a changed occupational structure) their
children are predominantly in a wide variety of non-manual jobs
Offering all girls chances of a comprehensive education has led
to a closing of the gap in female achievements, although accompanied by
moral panics about underachieving boys. Ethnic minority groups have
never done well in systems of selection, but have improved their
achievements via comprehensive education, and the partial inclusion of
disabled young people must be regarded as a success. Perhaps we can also
count as a major success that in our very own political dynasty the son
of the Benn dynasty was educated at a comprehensive school (Hilary Benn).
We should perhaps note that primary maintained education remains
comprehensive, and a very positive (unbog-standard) policy of the
current government is free comprehensive education from 3 years.
I do
not want to go over the many attacks on comprehensive education, often
from people who should know better. The former chief inspector of
schools and a well-know Sunday Times columnist can be relied on for
regular attacks on “noxious egalitarianism”,(2) but it was
disconcerting that apart from the bog-standard jibe by a now retired
number 10 personality, a former Minister of Education spoke of
“schools she would not touch with a barge-pole”, and the
current shadow Home Secretary would rather “go out on the
streets and beg” than send his children to his local comprehensive.(
Despite the previous headteacher of
this school having taken my
MA course at Goldsmith College) The
“one-size fits all” and supposed sameness of comprehensives is
another slur which has been constantly belied by research.
Smith and Tomlinson (1989)
Benn and Chitty (1996) and
others, have demonstrated the efforts comprehensive schools have always made to teach all children effectively,
develop a distinctive ethos, and respond to their locality. These two
research studies also found that parents wanted good local schools. The
parents Benn and Simon researched wanted
“ broad-based comprehensive schools
specialising in a full range of learning, with high standards throughout
in each field in each school” ( p323).
This was echoed in 2003 by the CEO in
Hertfordshire LEA, who told the House of Commons Select Committee on
Education and Skills that
“What Hertfordshire parents say to me is
that what they want is a high quality local school…it (education) is a
public service and people have a right to a high quality local school
and not have to shop around to get it” (HMSO
May 2003
We now know from estate agents surveys that
there is a premium of £23,000 extra to buy a house in the locality of a
“good” secondary school, and those worried about transport gridlock
do not seem to have made the connection between the amount of traffic in
term-times and parents shopping around for good schools.
When parents demand a good local school
they also demand a good all-round general education. There has been no
evidence of demand for “specialisms” in comprehensive schools.
Neither has there been complaint that a broad general education to 16
for everyone was regarded as a one-size fits all policy. Yet the
expansion of the specialist school programme was defended last November
by the DfES with the old jibe that the Government wants “to move
beyond the one-size fits all system”. Evidence from before and after
the introduction of the national curriculum is that comprehensive
schools always took account of their size, intake, social mix and
demographic location, developed their own ethos, introduced curriculum
and innovation, differed in teaching methods
and to the best of their ability, encouraged the highest
standards. I am not here about to apologise for the imperfections of
comprehensive education, which supporters usually feel impelled to do.
Advocates of grammar and secondary modern schools have never felt the
need to apologise for any shortcomings in the system they support.
Selection is Back
Commenting on the 2001 White Paper which
promised more vocational courses, provision for the “gifted and
talented”, more specialist schools ,and privatised city academies,
Stephen Pollard claimed
that “Selection is back as a centre-piece of education policy”
(Pollard 2001)
In reality selection never went away,
despite Mrs Thatcher worrying that she was unable to slow down the
roller- coaster of comprehensive reform.
Private education is the main source of
openly selective secondary education, the better schools selecting by
both money and testing. The private sector’s significance continues to
be important – around 7% of children overall are in private education,
-over 30% in Richmond on Thames,- but 26% of
those who take A levels come from private schools and over 40% are to be
found in the “best”
universities. Private education translates into privilege in the labour
market. A 1990s study concluded that a “super-class of top
professionals and managers are now almost entirely a privately- schooled
elite”. Thatcher’s assisted places scheme to enable “clever
children from less-well off
homes” to enter private schools was phased out by New Labour, but a
number of philanthropic schemes, based on the notion of “escape “
either from state education or its supposed less salubrious schools, is
encouraged by the government (3)
It is the
remaining grammar schools that constitute the main source of
state selection. Fifteen LEAs remain wholly selective, with a further 21
partially selective 36 LEAs are affected, and admissions to grammar
schools increased by 20% in the 1990s, with a corresponding increase in
admissions to secondary modern schools. The adjudicator is still
inexplicably allowing an increase in intake to some grammar
schools.(Skipton and Watford for example- the latter on appeal to the
High Court!) The schools
remain, as they have always been, largely middle class enclaves. Around
2% of their pupils are on free school meals, compared with 18 %
nationally.. A revealing table recently produced by the DfES, showing
the number of pupils achieving five good GCSE’s by free school meals,
showed grammar schools, the
lowest of all FSM schools, achieving the best GCSE’s , those with most
children on FSM obtaining the lowest number(HMSO 2003
Ev p 32)).
We now have accumulating evidence that
selection of pupils lowers standards overall.
The most widely quoted is the OECD PISA study (2002) which showed
that countries with non-selective systems achieve highest standards of
education overall. Kent, famously sticking with selection, has been the
subject of two studies demonstrating the effect of selection on lowering
standards, and recent research has questioned the benefit of selective
education even for the “most able” students. A recent analysis pf
value-added data assessing the impact of selection concluded that “the
differences between progress in comprehensive and selective systems are
not particularly striking, although they appear to operate in favour of
the former, especially at higher levels of prior attainment.” (Schagen
and Schagen 2003)
We have known since the 1950’s that the
way to raise the achievements of all children is to have schools which
incorporate a socially- mixed intake with a range of abilities.
Despite this, and promises of no selection while in opposition,
the government introduced six
pages of legislation in the 1998 Standards and Framework Act (sections
104- 109) concerning balloting parents for the retention of local
grammar schools. The complexity is baffling, but allows parents with
children at private schools to vote, while others in the local area have
no vote. Likewise the Act allows all schools to select up to 10% of
pupils by “ aptitude” . The House of Commons Education and Skills
committee reported that they had found no “meaningful distinction”
between ability and aptitude, although the lawyers drafting the 1998 Act
did their best with jargon about tests of ability not to be tests of
aptitude!
Section 102(3) “Where however, the
admission arrangements for a school make such provision for selection by
aptitude as is mentioned in subsection (1) and such provision for
selection by ability as is mentioned in section 101(1) the reference in
subsection (2) above to a test of ability does not include any such test
for which provision may be made under that section”
The non-sense of selection is compounded by
accumulating evidence of the preferential funding and resourcing of
selective schools. In Buckingham, Bucks grammar has accumulated a
surplus of £900,000 over three years, while the secondary moderns have
a similar deficit. ( HMSO 2003 Ev p123)
Overt selection does not raise educational
standards, and is unjust and unfair in terms of equity.
Failing Schools
A brief word on another bog-standard policy
which has done little to raise standards….In 1997 New Labour continued
the previous governments policy of “naming and shaming” schools
described as failing and in macho style
affirmed zero tolerance of such schools. They were all
comprehensive or secondary modern schools largely attended by children
of the poor, minority pupils, and those with special needs, not wanted
in schools attempting to boost their league table position. Market
forces were helping to create failing schools and it was not until
October 1998 that the public humiliation of schools and teachers was
abandoned. The contradictions of attempting to raise standards in areas
of disadvantage while retaining market policies of parental
preference” have become more and more obvious. Schools have become
more polarised by social class ( Taylor 2001)
Schools with a high level of disadvantage have become more
disadvantaged and very few schools attended by poor children achieve
good examination results. ( Bradley and Taylor 2002)
After studying the PISA results showing the wide variation in
achievements in England between social classes, German researchers
pointed to “ a comprehensive system being undermined by a competitive
market system” as one reason
for the polarisation. Certainly
aspirant parents seek to avoid schools which have been “placed in
special measures” as the jargon has it.
Modernising Diversity
While overt selection and failing schools
policies do little to raise educational standards overall and work for
social segregation and inequality, the government’s agenda of a
diversity of schools does not seem set to provide even the meritocratic
“equality of opportunity”, which will enable social mobility
irrespective of social class origins, which is the Prime Minister’s
declared aim. Certainly, the covert selection procedures, used by an
increasing number of schools which are their own admissions authorities,
allow for some dubious practices. As West and Hines found, “a variety
of criteria are used which appear to be designed to select certain
groups of pupils and exclude others”
in the foundation and voluntary aided (religious) schools they
studied. (2003) Although so far only around 6% of specialist schools
select by “aptitude” the chances are there for the schools to use
both overt and covert selective admissions procedures, and further
undermine the comprehensive principle.
Religious (faith) schools have been enthusiastically promoted by
the Prime Minister. They have hitherto been allowed to interview
applicants to check on religious commitment and this has led to
selection notionally based on faith skewing the social class intake (4).
It is now becoming more obvious that the government’s much
trumpeted policy of “ modernising the comprehensive principle” by
creating a diversity of schools is actually creating hierarchies of
schools and increasing social and educational segregation .
The House of Commons Education and Skills committee, examining School
Diversity concluded that
“A multiplicity of government initiatives
have served to frustrate the comprehensive ideal so that most secondary
schools, certainly those in the larger towns, cities and metropolitan
areas, do not attract and retain a truly comprehensive pupil intake that
is representative of the full range of ability and the communities
within which they are located” (2003
p10)
The specialist schools programme, the major
tool of diversity, has its origins in the conservative introduction
in 1988 of City Technology Colleges. The CTCs were private
schools to be funded by business, encouraging pupils to go into
scientific and technology careers. In the event the 15 schools ended up
largely funded by taxpayers. From 1993 the conservative government added
to the specialist programme , attempting to increase “choice and
competition” and business involvement with foreign language, sports,
arts and other specialisms. To
qualify for specialist status schools must raise £50,000 to be matched
by government money, ( £ 150,000 plus £123 for each pupil) provide
four year development plans and evidence
of ongoing private sponsorship links. The first schools to “go
specialist” were foundation schools (many of whom had already had
preferential funding as grant-maintained schools) and voluntary-aided
schools. There are currently some 992 specialist schools with a target
of 2000 to be operating in 2006. Having toyed with the idea of
designating some schools as Advanced Specialist Schools, the government
has now settled on a Leading Edge programme, whereby the “best”
secondary schools can apply for another £60,000 per annum to spread
good practice. This is in addition to some 40 schools –soon to be 123-
designated as Training Schools ( £38 k per annum).Extended schools
incorporating social services - 240 planned for 2006, will be able to
claim £200,000 plus. Beacon
schools- formerly spreading good practice, are no longer to receive
extra money but can apply to be Leading Edge schools!
City Academies (or just Academies now) are the latest addition to
diversity. These are to be business-sponsored private schools funded
directly by government but without any control by or accountability to,
LEAs. Three are in
operation and 33 more planned for 2006 ,plus the existing 15 private
CTCs. Academies may replace
LEA schools. One is planned for Hackney, on the site of Hackney Downs
comprehensive school, closed in 1995 by a government “ hit squad” as
a failing school. ( A book I wrote with three colleagues in fact showed
that this was a school “failed largely
by market forces, central and local government incompetence and
demonised by the media. O’Connor et al 1999)
Just as proponents of grammar schools from
the 1960s published
research purporting to show that grammar and secondary modern schools
produced better examination results than comprehensive schools, so the
specialist schools programme had barely begun operating than research
ostensibly showing that specialist schools produced better exam results
than non-specialist began to appear. Some of this was commissioned by
the government, some by the Specialist Schools Trust, (formerly the City
Technology Colleges Trust and headed by Sir Cyril Taylor, indefatigable
defender of diversity and knighted by Mrs Thatcher) A recently updated
OFSTED evaluation of 327 specialist schools stressed the good academic
performance of specialist schools, but noted that sports Colleges
achieved below the national average. Cyril Taylor acknowledged that this
could be associated with the lower ability intake of these colleges (and
as we have seen, their propensity to wear sweat shirts rather than
collars and ties!) The assumption that specialist and non-specialist
schools can be compared, even in 2003, is non-sense again, unless the
extra resources and funding and past history of every school is built
in. Stephen Gorard, giving
evidence to the House of Commons Committee, reported that his studies
had found more social segregation in areas with specialist schools, but
that where specialist schools use the same admissions criteria as other
local comprehensives, exam results are similar.
It is worth here noting the verdict of
Colin Crouch in his excellent Fabian Ideas Pamphlet (Commercialisation
or Citizenship: Education Policy nd the Future of Public services
2003). His view is that the result of attempting to bring commercial
values of the market place into education via selection and diversity
has resulted in “a dysfunctional stalemate”. (p32)
The rise of the Meritocracy
Instead of applauding the successes of
comprehensive schooling, finding ways of supporting the principle of
comprehensive education, ensuring properly resourced and staffed fully
comprehensive schools offering a “broad and balanced general
education” in every locality, the government has chosen to support
policies of selection and diversity, leading to hierarchies of schools..
The rationale for these policies is an avowed belief that the way
forward is to use education to create a “meritocratic society rather
than an egalitarian one” ( Blair to labour party Conference 1999). In
a speech to the IPPR he explained the ten-year programme to tackle
poverty and social exclusion. “ At the end of it we will have an
expanded middle class and a ladder of opportunity for those of all
backgrounds. No more ceilings that prevent people from achieving the
success they merit” (Blair 1999)
Alas for those who do not make it onto the ladder of opportunity
or stay on the lower rungs.
We need to revisit the
Rise of the Meritocracy, written
by the late Lord Michael Young. It is the title of his marvellous satire
on the dangers of the development of a class who
congratulate themselves that their privileges and superior status
and reward are deserved because of pure merit. In the book merit is
demonstrated by educational qualifications, high “IQ”, and good
psychometric profiles, rather than birth, wealth, nepotism, bribery,
patronage or purchase.
It was a long-term Labour aim that
privileged status by birth and wealth should be done away with by
offering “equality of opportunity” to the lower classes to show
their merit, and this is what the current leadership believes should
happen. But a meritocracy sanctions selection. It demands, in Young’s
words a “sieving of young people according to education’s narrow
band of values” (Young 2001)
His satire, the journal of a hero of the
people killed in the revolution at
Peterloo in 2034, describes how scientific testing of every child from
birth, did away with claims by birth, wealth or inheritance to top
positions in society. Our hero describes how eventually the refusal to
separate the able from the stupid was overcome, and
the threat of the comprehensive school, with its optimistic
belief in the educability of the majority, was seen off. By means of
scientific testing clever children could leave the lower classes and
climb the educational and social ladder into the higher class. They
could acquire a new accent, and join BUGSA- the British Union of Grammar
School Attenders, and “intelligence tests became the very instruments
of social justice which even the most fanatical socialists could not
ignore”. The tests were so refined that IQ’s were tested at
7,9,11,13 ,and 15, and at each stage “superior people were taken away
from their inferiors and lodged with their equals”. IQ was recorded on
a national intelligence card which every person was required to carry.
National Intelligence Card
Issued by
HQ Eugenics House.
Verbal, numerical, spatial abilities
Memory and perceptual abilities
Driving ability, accident proneness,
Digital dexterity, analogizing power,
Emotional maturity
Sexual Attractiveness.
Testing available every five years after
15. Old card will be destroyed and another
issued. Only current IQ to be put in WHO’s WHO
(Michael Young 1958)
There were some problems with the
meritocracy. The children of Lords were not always happy to be demoted,
because of their measured dullness, to doing domestic work, living in
council housing and eating only ready-prepared meals. A hard core of
envious egalitarians became
a danger to the State (as the narrator noted “ all babies are creeping
socialists and some never grow out of it” (p 77).
While most people accepted that
merit should guide economic reform and those with most merit should
receive most payment and fringe benefits, some did not. A member of the
elite was forced to issue a plea for a Fair Deal for the Upper
Classes (2013) pointing out that those who are paid to think
“Need comfort, ample holidays, secretaries at work and domestic
help at home.. because the chores of life exact energy from the talented
which should be devoted to higher things”
Alas, the meritocracy was eventually
challenged. A Technicians Party arose (despite its low IQ) and allied
with a women’s movement, - women were not too keen on a eugenics
register for marriage. A Populist Charter was drawn up and a mass
meeting planned at Peterloo……… where we surmise violence took
place between the meritocracy and the Populists!
Conclusion
This cautionary tale has not been read by
the PM, or his Ministers, who assume that Young was supporting merit
against birth. In any event the sad situation of dull demoted Lords was
never a possibility. Goldthorpe and his colleagues, (1997,1999) through
painstaking social mobility studies have shown that merit plays a
limited role in class mobility. Children from lower socio-economic
origins have to demonstrate much more “ merit” to enter privileges
class positions. The 40 richest young people in Britain in 2000,
including internet entrepreneurs, far from representing a classless
generation, had been privately educated and had rich and influential
parents.
The point Young made, in an article written
in 2001, was that while it is good to appoint people to jobs on their
merit, it is quite wrong that those judged to have merit “ harden into
a new social class without room in it for others”
In our “modern” social environment the rich and powerful are
doing very well for themselves, and are encouraged to feel that their
advancement comes from their own merit. The obverse of this is that
those judged to be without merit become demoralised and resentful. Young
was right that general inequality has become more grievous with every
year that passes. New Labour no longer speaks up for equality, but for
“fairness” to get up that ladder.
With this rational there is a need to prejudge children’s worth
and eschew the comprehensive principle, hence the bog-standard policies
supporting selection and diversity.
The government may think that the policies
are popular, possibly because the selective-specialist lobby is
vociferous-(rather like the Countryside Alliance!) But these policies
are creating educational structures which rest on genuine fears of
parents from all social and ethnic groups, about the future of their
children in the global economy and in the English social class hierachy.
Colin Crouch noted that despite government promises to publish
value-added data on school performance many parents will continue to be
interested in the raw scores since this tells them the social class of
pupils and enables them to select suitable fellow pupils” Ted Wragg
recently wrote that sending a child to the local state school seems to
many middle class parents to be a “betrayal of your caste” (don’t
mix with the poor, you may catch their poverty” ( Guardian 6/11/03)
There may be some moves to draw back from
the policies, New Labour, after all, is the party of fairness and social
justice, The current Secretary of State for Education would probably
like to change the balloting rules for the retention of grammar schools
so that all parents in an LEA could vote. There is some recognition of
the unfairness of differential funding for specialist schools which
exhortations to work in partnership with other schools does not
diminish. Suggestions that every school should develop a specialism
would only bring about justice if past funding errors were rectified.
But I return to my first point. The
structure of our education system and the chances it gives to all young
people is not designed to bring about a fair, democratic, egalitarian
society. Unless bog-standard policies are recognised for what they are
we are all losers .
Notes
(1) Bog-Standard: Chambers dictionary
defines this as spongy, mashlike or
latrine-like.
(2) Former Chief Inspector Woodhead and
Sunday Times columnist Melanie Phillips recently took part in a debate
supporting the motion that “ State education is a Comprehensive
Disaster” ( London. 9/10/03)
(3) The government supports, for example,
the Sutton Trust, which encourages grammar schools to sponser coucil
estate children to take their 11+ exam. Manchester Grammar school claims
their fund-raising is to enable selection by merit. The Girls School
Trust has a target of raising £70 million for its 25 schools.
(4) From September 2005, faith schools will
no longer be able to interview for admission.
References
Benn C and Simon
1970 Half-Way There London
Mcgraw-Hill
Benn C and Chitty
1996 Thirty years On London David
Fulton
Benn T 1994
Years of Hope London
Hutchinson
Bradley J and Taylor J 2002 The Report Card
on Competition in Schools. London Adam
Smith Institute.
Crouch C 2003 Commercialisation or
Citizenship Education policy and the Future of Public Services.
Fabian Ideas no 606 London.
Fabian Society
Edwards T and Tomlinson S 2002 Selection
Isn’t Working; Diversity , Standards and Inequality in Secondary
Education London
Catalyst Publications
Gorard S. 2003 Memorandum to House of
Commons Education and Skills committee. Seventh Report
Evidence pp 129-138
Gorard S and Taylor C 2002 “ m\rket
Forces and Standards in Educatuion; A preliminary Consideration”
British Journal of Sociology of Education vol 23 no 1 pp 5-18
House of Commons Education and Skills
Committee 2003 Seventh Report. Secondary Education: Pupil Achievement.
London The Stationary Office
Pring
R and Walford G 1997 Affirming the Comprehensive Ideal
London Falmer Press
Schagen
I and Schagen S 2003 “
Analysis of National value-added data sets to assess the impact of
selection on pupil performance” British Educational Research Journal
vol29 no 4 pp 561-582
Young. Michael. 1958 The
Rise of the Meritocracy London Penguin.
|
