I am struck by how Orwellian things seem. From London or Paris to Wigan Pier, 1984 or Animal Farm: similar dystopian views of equality and inequality play out in front of us now.
There are many examples. Let’s look at two. From a massive menu I choose grammar schools, and the much-discussed North-South divide.
I am a comprehensive-schooled Cambridge graduate. I had the choice to sit the 11-plus, pass, and travel four hours a day to and from an all-girls’ grammar in a uniform I hated. I said no, went to a mixed comprehensive half-an-hour away and a 6th form college. Then Newnham in Cambridge.
I’m married to somebody with a soaring intelligence. He failed the 11-plus and has carried the mantra “But I Can’t” for 50 years in spite of being a graduate engineer who speaks three languages. So excuse me: the grammar school thing runs deep. I cannot do the maths. They’ll be grammars but this is not about selection and everybody will get a great deal. Erm, say that again?
December 2016’s study from the Education Policy Institute (EPI) indicates that only six areas in England would pass the government’s tests to be passed before creating new grammars (Grammar Schools and Social Mobility: Further analysis of policy options).
All are in places with fewer than average numbers of disadvantaged children – the group with whom grammars do least well. We have research from many sources and political perspectives that says as much. Saying “la la la not listening, carry on” is not a valid response.
The EPI’s report is based on modelling impacts from what government has itself said about expanding selection.
Researchers examined how nearly 33,000 English districts would be affected were plans to go ahead as the government sets out in its consultation document. That is some sample size.
Researchers devised analytical tests echoing the White Paper, Schools that Work for Everyone. These tests state new grammars would only be created if they do not create detriments to the majority of pupils missing out on a place.
They must be in areas where there are sufficient numbers of pupils who could easily attend them. They must not undermine intakes or likely success of existing high-performing schools. They must only be in areas where parents want them.
The researchers applied these government conditions. They found broader and more rounded education would be harmed if new selective schools came into areas where more than half of highly attaining pupils could access them.
This “no detriment” principle meant that nearly 30 per cent of areas would not pass that first test, and were therefore removed from consideration.
The researchers then removed areas without at least 150 pupils with high prior attainment living within reasonable travelling distance of potential new grammars. Therefore a further one per cent failed the government’s “pupils can reasonably get there” test.
The researchers then removed areas with high-performing non-selective schools, given their fortunes could be harmed by new grammars taking out the most able. The “shall not harm other schools’ performance” test was failed.
This left just under a fifth of English areas. Cross-referenced with 37 local authority areas where respondents expressed support for new grammars in a recent poll, six areas remained: Solihull, Essex, North Yorkshire, Dorset, Northamptonshire, and North Somerset.
All have notable areas of disadvantage. I have lived and worked in two, and that is clear. However, on whole-authority levels all have fewer disadvantaged pupils than average.
Analysed for localities’ patterns of affluence and disadvantage, the government’s expansion tests would be passed only in some parts of each. Researchers concluded it will be difficult for government to identify areas for grammar school expansion avoiding damage to the majority who would not access a place.
A government spokesman dismissed the research as a crude attempt to second-guess the results of its consultation.
If you responded before the consultation closed in December you know that it was constructed to skew its results. Its assumption was that respondents would be in favour of selection. This appears to have been present as questions were composed. We are thereby asked how we can all help to ensure the government can do what it wants.
There are no questions on whether the idea is a good one, about schooling for the majority of children who would not gain places, or about special needs.
My doctoral supervisor would have stopped me using questions so unbalanced. If your mindset from which you ask questions whose responses are what you want to hear, that is persuasion, not consultation. “Researcher bias is avoidable, please redesign,” I can hear him remind me.
In another space, we have Arts Council England, cultural education commentators and creative industries leaders. They have research findings just as strong as the EPI’s, showing that arts’ place (for every child, not just those getting into a particular school) is repaid in every other subject, and the life of the school as a whole.
Recently I joined pupils, arts and culture bodies to launch London’s pilot of the Arts Council England’s Cultural Citizens programme.
Adults received a challenge: cultural bodies can’t wait for children to come to them. Children must be welcomed, including when they challenge adults’ expectations.
We must make them ambassadors for what we believe in so they believe they can be so. This is all overtly small-p political. It means speaking out against policies that make these subjects pastimes. The current Calouste Gulbenkian Inquiry into the civic roles of arts organisations explores exactly this territory. Look out for what it tells you about equality and inequality of opportunity and ambition. It matters.
And the North-South divide? Where do I start? There are, I remind you, hundreds of amazing schools outside London.
Since local management of schools started more than 25 years ago, they and their local authorities have worked on a deliberately unlevelled playing field. Use its name. It’s called funding. With or without austerity, it has mattered for a quarter of a century.
When, every year for 25 years, the 23rd most deprived English locality (Northern) has received half the cash per-child across every function as that going to the local authority one place above it in deprivation terms, the 22nd (inner London), this is not about low Northern ambitions.
It is about, as a head or a local authority director, having the choice to run stellar training, or fix the roof, buy the books, employ an extra teaching assistant, a floating teacher or enough social workers.
It is about whether pupils can expect their school to pay to let them access seven publicly funded orchestras in the capital, versus one across an entire region of 12 or 15 Northern local authorities.
It is about free travel 24/7 until you are 18 across a capital’s public transport, versus paying full adult fares at 15 to school or college from less than three miles away, on one bus a day through your village, and paying less but not travelling free if you live further off.
I am not arguing successful schools outside the regions should be stripped to straighten the starting line. I am arguing that if ALL our local authorities, economies, industries and infrastructures had received equal investment in public functions for the last quarter-century, those making clever statements about the further from London regions would be comparing apples with apples and acting accordingly.
But just saying “well you aren’t trying hard enough, obviously, you regional people”, while ignoring economic and financial realities, is as intellectually impoverished and counter-evidential as saying grammar schools aren’t going to select a minority and send the rest somewhere else.
If we want utopian rather than dystopian realities, we had better be braver about our debates.
- Dr Maggie Atkinson is the former Children’s Commissioner for England.
Further information
- Grammar Schools and Social Mobility: Further analysis of policy options, Education Policy Institute, December 2016:
http://bit.ly/2knUpCT - Schools That Work For Everyone, Department for Education consultation (now closed): http://bit.ly/2jV6Czf