Socialist Educational Association |
The fifth Caroline Benn Memorial Lecturewas given by Melissa Benn and Fiona Millar on 26 November 2005Melissa Benn I’m
delighted to be giving this lecture with Fiona Millar this afternoon.
Can I just say on behalf of the wider Benn family how very pleased we
are that my mother’s work on education - her life’s work in so many
ways - continues to be honoured in this way by the annual lecture and to
thank the Socialist Education Association and the Institute of Education
for hosting it. And
on a more personal note, can I just say how pleased I am, as my
mother’s daughter, to be standing here, continuing in her campaigning
footsteps, five year after her death. For that’s what we are here to
talk about today - campaigning for the comprehensive ideal: building
confidence in the alternative argument. Today’s
lecture is slightly unusual in that there are two of us, so can I just
briefly describe how Fiona and I started working together - and how we
are going to divide today’s talk. We stand before you today, not as
educationalists, or experts or teachers. We stand before you as active,
campaigning parents. We are both with children in inner London schools,
primary and secondary, Fiona in Camden, myself in Brent, both involved
in our schools in various ways. We
met late last year - having been in contact about each other’s work on
education - and decided to write something together from the parents
point of view, directed at new Labour, which somehow assumes that all
aspirational parents - to use a new Labour term - will inevitably try to
escape the state system. We felt this failed to take account of the many
thousands of families like our own who happily used the state system and
wanted to see improvements from within our local school rather than
escape routes out of it. We
couldn’t have known then that, as we worked on and finalised our
pamphlet - A
comprehensive future: quality and equality for all our children -
sent for printing last Thursday and coming out in early January, that
the White Paper would be published, and education become the key issue
of the time, the litmus test of the Blair administration. Things
are moving so fast at the moment we cannot quite be sure what the exact
content of that Bill will be; every day the papers report possible new
concessions on private providers, on admissions …
But this lecture is, in essence, our view of the comprehensive
vision in modern circumstances - how and why we should argue for a
comprehensive model, high quality schools rooted in the local context. The
way the talk will be divided: I
will offer some thoughts on campaigning for the comprehensive vision in
today’s context, in particular look at New Labour policy and some of
the contradictions of the White Paper.
Fiona will then talk about the alternative, what changes are
needed to update and modernise the comprehensive model, how to take the
campaign forward - and some of the difficulties of that in terms of the
media. The
comprehensive vision in a modern context I
am aware that I talk as a parent in an inner London borough, and that
some of what I say will not apply so much to those in rural or small
towns. It is important to start by saying that. Both of us believe that
comprehensive school remains a very powerful vision. In the words of an
early pioneer, Robin Pedley, “Comprehensive education does more than open the doors of
opportunity to all children. It represents a different, a larger and
more generous attitude of mind … the forging of a communal culture by
the pursuit of quality with equality, by the education of their pupils
in and for democracy, and by the creation of happy vigorous, local
communities in which the school is the focus of social and educational
life.” I
went to a comprehensive school; I am a comprehensive - supporting
parent. Myself, my siblings and my children have benefited, I believe,
from that ‘larger, more generous attitude of mind.‘ For me it is the
single most radical idea of the past fifty years - that children should
be educated together. Not just different ethnic backgrounds or faiths,
but children of different social backgrounds. My
three brothers and I were all sent to local schools after starting out
in the private sector. I now realise what was at stake in that decision
by my parents. As
the archivist of my mother’s papers, I have looked through some of the
correspondence of that time, the letters that flew back and forth - some
from eminent people of the day - warning my parents of the grave risk
that their decision posed to our futures, our potential for intellectual
achievement. Well, it worked out all right in the end. But
I mention my own education only because it has given me an enduring clue
as to what underlies so much of the argument about comprehensives to
this day - hope and fear. I
can think of no other public service or big idea that can embody
people’s most intense wishes - for a better more equal society - and
arouse their most intense fears, about being left behind. Nick
Davies in his excellent book on Sheffield’s schools talked about the
comprehensive vision for the middle class as the ‘ thrill and the
threat’. The thrill of being part of society, the intense, often
unarticulated fear of being dragged down by the poor. The
problem for New Labour in my view is that it brilliantly understands
both instincts, the yearning for a good society and the intense
positional self interest, but ultimately it has lacked the boldness to
create institutions to overcome the divide. Instead, New Labour boldness
in education is directed at returning us to a form of social
stratification without overt selection. So,
in our pamphlet * we argue firmly for the return to an idea of solid
high quality local schools, non selective in character, connected to the
community. * “A Comprehensive Future. Quality and Equality for all our Children” published by Compass At
the risk of stating the obvious for a moment, can I just emphasise how
important such schools are in a time of racial and ethnic division and
growing inequality between rich and poor. Now, more than ever, we need
local institutions, rooted in the community, in which children can come
to understand, more profoundly, the lives of others very different from
themselves. They do not need separate schools, some for the wealthy,
some for the poor - nor, in
my view, do we need a confirmation of
faith schooling in the current climate. Thus
the key elements of the modern comprehensive must be 1)
a high quality institution that is used by all elements of a community.
Mixed intake is essential; it is at the heart of the practical workings
of that ideal. 2)
an emphasis on excitement in learning, discipline in the classroom, and
each child’s achievement. The shorthand for this is ‘standards’ -
but as Fiona will say, we think there are some important ways to improve
learning in our schools. 3) local accountability. We
believe that there is high parental support for such a system - with the
possible exception of the faith criterion which poses particular
problems of its own. In many ways, the argument against overt selection
has been won, in that few on the centre/left will openly advocate it.
What they do in practice of course is another matter. However,
as campaigners, we have to face the difficult fact that the comp vision
itself has been misrepresented in so many ways, in terms of its history,
in terms of the extent of its reach, in terms of the standards possible
under it. 1.
History - read more about it. It’s very moving, quite
extraordinary that with all the deep conservatism and prejudice in this
country that comprehensives came in at all. It is tremendously powerful
to remember - and remind people - of the unfairness of the grammar
system and the waste of potential in the secondary modern. We must never
forget that 20/80 per cent divide: achievement for some at huge cost to
the majority. When people talk of grammars – and how they helped
social mobility - increasingly they are being reminded of the flip side,
of the waste of opportunity represented by the secondary moderns. I
have just finished reading the autobiography of one of my mother’s
collaborators, Brian Simon, and he writes very movingly of the great
advances of the 50’s and 60’s and early 70’s, even under
Conservative governments: the momentum towards greater fairness. Simon
also reminds us how rational a change it was. 2.
but it was only ever partial. Another misrepresentation of the past is
that we actually have a comp system now. You can’t be a little bit
comprehensive, like you can’t be a little bit pregnant. The
proliferation of selective, semi selective and what I call shadowy
selective options means local schools rarely take all the children in an
area, certainly not in the city. As
a result, the comprehensive system has become synonymous in their minds
not with just with poor local schools - the Chris Woodhead version - but
schools depleted of all but the poorest families. We are back to the
fear of poverty and, in the inner cities, white fear of black
citizens’ schools. 3.
Standards: the fundamental misrepresentation in the popular press and
public mind about comprehensive and standards. Obviously, a school with
a mixed intake is never going to have the results of a grammar but the
evidence is overwhelming - and Geoff Whitty’s research backs this up -
that able children can do well in a comp, and that all children’s
education will be improved by having an able, motivated student body. So
one of the constant challenges of our movement is to correct these
misrepresentations - both in theory and in practice as well as to tackle
the many real problems that remain in local schools - many of them
problems that arise from society itself and the growing gap between rich
and poor. Now
I turn to the Government’s argument - which has moved from the solid
standards not structures,
to the rather more dreamy diversity and choice - we all
know that. Oh these lovely words. Who is against diversity and choice? (or,
as I call it, better schools for the better off. ) Fiona
will say more about government attitudes to the comprehensive movement,
but suffice to say here, there’s been a contradiction throughout. Increased
funding, an undoubted passion to raise standards matched by a deep
defensiveness at the heart of government about the idea of all children
being educated together: this has led to the many contradictions of the
diversity and choice argument and the white paper, a contradiction
between the new New Labour and new Old Labour. The contradictions of
this have been endlessly pointed up - by Ted Wragg, Estelle Morris and
Geoff Whitty among others. I
read the white paper at dawn every morning over half term. ( For a
government committed to expanding parent power, the timing of
publication seemed inconsiderate) - on the one hand, talks about free
floating autonomous schools with their own admissions policy run by
private companies, no real parent involvement; the expansion of good
schools, the closing down of poor schools - on the other, talks about
‘strong schools sitting at the heart of their local community’ -
offering extended wrap around care. Obviously,
you can’t have both - or rather you can have both, but one set of
schools will service the upwardly mobile and the rich, the other will
service the locally rooted less well off and the poor. The
key thing about the diversity and choice agenda - the name of the 1992
Tory white paper too - is that it obscures its own potential injustices
through sheer complexity, what I call a masked political vocabulary. The
only thing that the grammar - secondary modern divide has in its favour
is that everyone can see its unfairness; there is simplicity in its
stark injustice. The
most confusing thing about New Labour, - particularly with its language
of promoting the interests of the urban poor, its talk of social
inclusion, is that its proposals seem to be benefiting all - while, in
our view, likely to benefit a significant minority. Offering
everyone access to their own particular school - through faith or
specialism - seems on the face of it to be an inclusive or even
imaginative proposal, but coupled, as it seems likely to be, with unfair
admissions policies and a lack of a central authority concerned with
fairness, it could descend into disaster. Local
parents find it hard to see this, because unlike most people here, they
are not experts in educational policy. The sheer complexity of the
educational landscape works very much in the governments favour. Part of
a campaign for the alternative is to find straightforward ways of
explaining the complexity. The most helpful way to me, which I want to bring to you today, is to try and think through the changes in a specific way. I tried to think through the changes in my eleven years as a local parent - in the area of Brent in which I live and where my children go to school. Brent is the most ethnically mixed borough in Europe - but it also has a high proportion of wealthy families in it. In
my corner of north west London, which takes in some of Camden, education
provision probably already represents the ‘diversity’ dream map of
Blair’s imagining. Birds
eye view: Private schools; single sex, academic; mixed sex, semi academic: mixed sex, bohemian, grammar schools a bus ride away. Plethora
of faith schools: Catholic,
middle class: Catholic working class; Church of England, mixed class;
Jewish primary school. To
the north of the borough, Jewish Free school. Up the road from my
daughter’s primary, two single sex Islamic schools. Recently,
an academy building by Norman Foster, intake from the old Willesden
High -sports specialism. Another one planned - in Wembley - with a lot
of parent protest. And
last but very much not least the local comprehensive. Even here, we have
diversity. The local comprehensive the middle class used to go to, the
local comprehensive that middle class parents don’t want to go to but
is now changing. Diversity
or hierarchy? Or a bit of a bloody mess? Personally,
the fog lifted for me when I came to hear Tim Brighouse give the first
Caroline Benn memorial lecture, four years ago. On this stage, he
rejected his pyramid of state schools onto the screen behind him and
there I saw it clearly for the first time - it wasn’t diversity it was
a clear hierarchy - the
best schools at the top, going down the ‘ worst’ schools at the
bottom, ranked by results, but also more subtle indicators like pupil
intake. This is how diversity and choice works in the real world: A significant minority of parents, most well resourced middle class ones, aware of the hierarchy that exists even at the top end of the schools market, begin anxiously to position themselves in the market. For those within the state sector, anxiety propels some parents, often against their deepest wishes, to acquire religious affiliation, move into scholarships, tutor for grammars and private schools, wheedle grandparents into paying, or to move. I
don’t know if you saw, recent figures on middle class leaving the
cities – I
know at least three families who will probably all end up at exactly
same school in the west country, all moving away to get away from
diversity and choice in north London or the local comprehensive.
Interestingly, these are all families who, were there no choice, would,
I believe, happily use the local school. My point is - choice creates an
absurd anxiety in those with resources as well as those who don’t. But
what about the families who are not so knowledgeable, who do not have
the resources? Currently, they feel cheated and confused. They’re
being told everything’s lovely and that social inclusion is a key part
of the government agenda but they are without a genuine political
vocabulary for that sense of being cheated. One
of the things that made me most angry was to see - at year 6 - see all
of them applying for the ‘good schools’ but of course they didn’t
get in. They -
weren’t tutored sufficiently -
didn’t have a music scholarship -
weren’t part of the right church -
weren’t the right social group The
only place they could be sure of getting a place was the local comp. of
course. It led to huge resentment. How come, they wondered out loud, the
single sex faith ‘comprehensive‘, a tube ride away, which seems to
have a very high ability intake despite its comprehensive label, seems
to only take the white middle class girls? (answers to the School
Adjudicator on admissions please?). How come the local comprehensive
seems to take all the difficult children in the area? Why are some
schools overwhelmingly white, the others overwhelmingly black? These
are the questions people ask - and the problem with such a system is
that on the ground, parents don’t see it as a system - that’s the
beauty of so- called choice from the point of view of the providers -
everybody sees their decision as the result of individual agency or lack
of. Individuals are encouraged to pit themselves against institutions
with the predictable results. Those
with resources can feel superior. Those without feel inadequate. All
this emotional angst instead of seeing the landscape as a political one,
a socially engineered one, and a lot of these matters being about an
unfair admissions policy. This
is what diversity and choice mean in the real world. -
it means a possible return to the grammar/secondary modern divide
in new post modern self- esteem speak way. That’s what frightens me
actually, the obscuring of the real politics of it. Which is why we keep
needing to make clear arguments about a fair system for all, and
institutions being bound to adhere to it. Just
briefly – The
Government propose having ‘ choice advisers’ to help poorer parents
negotiate the system. How ‘choice advisers’ would help to overcome
this I fail to see, particularly if schools were given even greater
freedom to tinker with admissions policies. Can
you advise someone to take up the tuba or modern dancing at four? And
even then, if your parents don’t work for a bank or a national
newspaper, your chances of getting into the Church of England
comprehensive are still somehow rather low? Perhaps
there could be advisers to coach people on how to
perform at parental interviews with the head? ( keep your mouth
shut, you’ve got a cockney accent; take in a copy of the FT) Can
you advise someone to get private tutoring at enormous cost - for a selective
or specialist school? Can you advise someone to become a muslim to get into a school that has a 97% a-c pass rate? But
I’d like to end on a positive note by just talking briefly about the
local school - the comprehensive in my birds eye’s picture - the one
in effect boycotted by the middle class. Because
I have come to think that the best arguments are often put in the
practice. In other words, if local parents see a genuinely mixed,
thriving local school, there is much less incentive to scramble for
places - particularly in the inner city - at schools miles away, with
all the consequent worry about transport, lack of local friends,
children’s tiredness at the end of the day. QPCS
was a school made up of over a dozen schools. It was put in the middle
of a very wealthy area - but - to use a shorthand - boycotted by many
local parents, of all classes and backgrounds. The school worked
tirelessly - using government funds - to build new buildings, create new
programmes, get a specialism. But it remained a comp with no admissions
fixing. Local
parents began to support it. A group of parents got together and said
lets go there; then another wave of parents. There is probably a tipping
point with every school and I suspect the tipping point has been reached
this year. It’s now accepted that the majority from the local primary
go there. It is an extraordinarily mixed school with mediocre results
which everyone is working on, but it has something possibly more
important than results: vitality, and a role
in promoting social cohesion in the area. Local
parents feel far happier about a school when they see all types of
parents using it - the feel for intake is a crucial part of school
choice, we all know it - a public service, to return to my first point,
where all kinds of children, white,
black, jewish, muslim, boy, girl, well off, poor, walk through the door.
It isn’t utopia, but it’s a powerful statement about the society we
need and could have. Return
to Robin Pedley - “Comprehensive
education does more than open the doors of opportunity to all children.
It represents a different, a larger and more generous attitude of mind
… the forging of a communal culture by the pursuit of quality with
equality, by the education of their pupils in and for democracy, and by
the creation of happy vigorous, local communities in which the school is
the focus of social and educational life.” Think global, or in our case think national - but act local. Schools like this make the comprehensive argument more powerfully than a thousand speeches. Fiona Millar
Delighted
to be here today. I have never managed to attend any of the previous
Caroline Benn Memorial Lectures but I have read them all and I I
first met Melissa after she published her book in memory of her mother. We
had corresponded before that as she kindly wrote to me after I wrote a
piece in the Guardian’s G2 section about my experience as a state
school parent in North London. At
the time I wrote that piece I was still working for the Labour
government. I didn’t really think I would end up two and a half years
later with my sometime correspondent Melissa Benn attempting to
spearhead a campaign on behalf of parents for more equity and fairness
in our education system. So in a sense this lecture is a preview of the
themes we will develop in that pamphlet Melissa has referred to; why we
need to make this alternative argument
but what exactly we are campaigning for. About
a year ago I was in the cinema with one of my kids when I ran into a
Labour MP I knew from my No 10 days. We got chatting about some of the
things I had written in the Guardian and he asked me what I was going to
do about these City Academies. When
I explained that I wasn’t sure there was that much I could do, as a
humble hack, and asked what he was going to do as a member of the
parliamentary labour party, he looked downcast and replied: “It is
very Circumstances
have changed since then. The White Paper, as Melissa has pointed out,
portrays an educational landscape that many people find alarming. Bleak
though that may be, its publication does give us the opportunity to make
that alternative argument. Indeed it may well be the last chance we have
to do that. The changes proposed will be as the PM says, irreversible. I
don’t underestimate the difficulty we face.
Most of you in this audience don’t need to be given confidence
to believe that networks of real quality comprehensive schools are a
powerful alternative to the prevailing doctrine of diversity and choice. But
to get that message heard outside involves the prism of the media. When
I first left No 10 and started writing about education and made my film
for Channel Four on school choice, I was frequently asked to take part
in radio and TV debates. When I asked why me in particular, the
researcher would usually say it was because I had children in state
schools – as if that were some sort of Novelty Or
worse, as if they were afflicted by some kind of rare disease. During
that period I was invited to take part in a debate entitled “State
Education is a comprehensive disaster”. I spoke against the motion
with Tim Brighouse and Anthony Giddens. Our opponents were Melanie
Phillips and Chris Woodhead. As
it happens the audience (In
South Kensington – I should have guessed) was packed with private
school parents. We
lost needless to say and it was a stark reminder of how easy it is to be
put on the defensive on this issue. The
Woodhead/Phillips argument was that anyone who spoke up for
comprehensive schools couldn’t possible care about academic
achievement. Over
time I have come to realise that this line of attack, prevalent in a
small but powerful section of London opinion formers and politicians is
used because so many of them choose not to use their local schools. They
have a vested interest in talking down a system they have rejected
- while conveniently forgetting that using the private system or
a selective school miles from where you live is of course another form
of social engineering. But
there is a wider audience out there: parents, governors, teachers. And
at the moment in particular, Labour members of Parliament whose hearts These
are the people whose conviction needs bolstering In particular we need to remind them of two things: Firstly
never to be defensive about the comprehensive ideal. Some
comprehensive schools may not have worked as well as they should and
life in many mixed inner city schools can get tough as schools deal with
an increasing range of social problems. My
18 year old son now describes this as the basic induction period. The
skills which come from negotiating that path result in initiative,
resilience and a social ease which is sometimes lacking in young people
who haven’t had the privilege of a good state education. But
believing in the comprehensive ideal doesn’t mean we don’t believe
in high standards. A well led, mixed comprehensive school with high All
the available evidence both national and international is on our side. It
is also the best route to a fairer society. Educating children of all
social and ethnic backgrounds together is the most vibrant practical
example possible of the kind of society many of us want to live in. One
of the most moving moments for me as a parent was my eldest son’s
first report from his secondary school. Amidst his many academic
achievements he was commended by several teachers for the trouble he
took helping children less able than himself. I
hope he got that partly from his parents, but I also know that a strong
influence was the ethos of his primary and secondary schools, neither of
which top the league tables but which put a lot of emphasis on care,
responsibility to others and equal opportunities. Comprehensive
Schools are not part of a failed social experiment of the past. They are
part of a modern and progressive education policy and one as we know
that has never been fully tried yet in this country. Secondly
we must never forget that this is what most parents want. In
all my years as a parent and I have been through the secondary transfer
process three times now, I have never heard one parent say that what
they want is more schools that can select who they admit. All
the available research suggests that the majority of parents have a
clear core idea of what a good school means. Strong leadership Good teaching A stimulating physical environment in which their
children can feel safe,
happy and make progress And one which has the confidence of the community it
serves. And
while it is clear that parents do want to exercise some choice and have
a say in how their children are educated, the preference of the vast
majority - 95% in the
recent Which? survey -
will be to exercise that choice for a good school near to where
they live. Parents
also want something else when they are exercising that choice – a
school admissions system which treats them fairly, is objective, clear
and above all gives them some certainty about the outcome in what can be
a very stressful process. So
the key to our alternative argument must be to come up with policies
which will help deliver this outcome of a good comprehensive school for
all children in a system that is fair to everyone. The
proposals that are on the table at the moment both in the Labour Party
manifesto and the Schools White Paper documents are for all secondary
schools to become either foundation, trust, academy or voluntary aided
schools with the freedom to control their own admissions. We
need to be clear what that means. It could lead potentially to over 3000
admissions authorities in England. Far
from being “fair” it will build more confusion onto a system which
already includes fully selective schools in a fifth of all education
authorities and partially selective schools in many other areas. The
number of autonomous schools, that control their own admissions, has
also steadily increased in the last 20 years. The
patchwork of different criteria often means that some children either
can’t get into their local school. Or they are faced with a school
which isn’t really comprehensive at all as the more knowing parents
have taken the escape routes that the state offers them for seemingly
more desirable school elsewhere. In
other words we already have a system which already isn’t giving many
parents what they want. Professor
Anne West, of the London School of Economics, has carried out extensive
research into own-admissions schools. At
a briefing for Labour MPs organised by Comprehensive Future in June
2005, she described how a higher proportion of schools that are
autonomous report using criteria that enable them to “cream pupils”. They
do this using a variety of overt and more covert socially selective
criteria in the event of a school being oversubscribed. Her research
found that just under half of autonomous schools use at least one
potentially selective criterion. This
“cream skimming” ranges from tests which band children against the
ability of those applying, the performance of siblings at the school,
letters from priests and clergyman, reports and attendance records from
primary schools head teachers and even interviewing prospective pupils. The commitment in the White Paper to “fair
admissions” and no return to the 11 plus gives us possibly the last
opportunity we may have to define what we mean by fair admissions and
campaign for the legislative and regulatory changes that may be
necessary to achieve it. The first and most important principle must be for
non-selective schools. No child should start their secondary school
career feeling like a failure. It is indisputable that one school’s admissions
criteria will inevitably affect neighbouring schools, therefore some
local, objective and accountable admissions planning process must be set
up if these proposals for more independent state schools are to be a
reality. The Code of Practice on School Admissions is
designed to ensure that admission criteria are “clear, fair and
objective”. But at the moment it is only guidance which schools must
“have regard to”. The
result is that many admissions criteria do not accord with the Code of
Practice. A new Code of Practice on School Admissions must
take into account the potential free-for-all that the White Paper could
herald and be put on These may seem like very technical points to be
raising in a lecture whose defining feature in past years have been it
proud principles. However if we don’t focus on the detail now before
the passage of the bill through parliament we may be helpless observers
of a headlong rush into more market style reforms which create a more
socially divided education system, more unfairness and less choice for
parents. There are good proposals in the White Paper. More
personalised learning, catch up tuition, extended schools and more
flexible inspections. We need to go back to focussing on what goes on
inside schools, rather than between them. In all my years as a governor involved in turning
round a large underperforming inner city primary school, I can’t think
of one moment when bringing in an outside trust or a sponsor would have
been the answer to our prayers. What we needed was the outstanding head we now have
who has galvanised staff and parents and ensured that we are now
outperforming other schools with much less challenging intakes in many
core areas while offering excellence in sport, music and home school
links. And my fear with the new proposals is that market
pressure will force schools to
reform themselves as others start to opt out. This will mean the focus will shift from standards,
from teaching and learning, to an onerous and possibly fractious search
for sponsors or trustees and the dismantling of existing leadership and
governance arrangements. Instead of exerting pressure on schools to opt out,
why not exert pressure for better professional development for heads and
teachers, better trained and more informed governors? Instead of directing billions to some disadvantaged
children in 200 city academies, why not put that money in to providing Why not use the predicted falling role to reduce
class sizes and even school size to give every child more personalised
education. Finally, rather than focus on illusory choice
between institutions of different status and the expansion of some at
the expense of others, how about real diversity of provision in a
curriculum driven not by tests and targets but by the desire need to
give each child a broad curriculum embracing science and the humanities
the chance to follow it in his or her time. There had never been a better time to re-make the
case for publicly accountable high quality comprehensive schools. The odds may be against us in the media. I read every single comment piece about the
education reforms in last Sunday’s broadsheet papers. All purported to
explain knowledgably what is wrong with the system as it is now. To my
knowledge they were all written by journalists with children in
independent schools or without any first hand experience of what life
inside a good comprehensive school is like. But the government’s central case that individual
choice and a market of independent institutions will somehow inevitably
deliver a system that is fair to all is a theory, not based on any clear
evidence. It also lacks a clear collective vision about what our
education system is for. As Melissa says it may be superficially seductive
but it risks further entrenching existing inequalities and storing up
trouble for generations to come. A fair society needs a fair education system. Achieving that will require a clear, tough and
coherent political vision. The coherent argument that we can provide what most
parents want through high quality, well-funded comprehensive schools
rooted in their local communities with fair access to all, is on our
side. Social cohesion, mobility, fairness and a degree of
choice can only be delivered, especially with a diverse range of
providers, if we ignore the old right wing arguments, rebut the spin and
have the courage to make the alternative case for good schools at the
hearts of their communities and a radically reformed admissions system. Only then can we finish off the task which was
started so many years ago of delivering a high quality comprehensive
education to all children. |