but where grammars exist today, is very much distorted by them being exceptions. If you go back to the 50/60s it's a different story which corresponds to the practical implication in the world - that people from such schools penetrated the upper echelons in a way that has gone into decline as those generations have been replaced.
But that’s the problem EEG. I agree that while conclusions drawn from places many grammars exist cannot be taken as conclusive (though Northern Ireland might be a different case) it is the best actual evidence we have about grammars and social mobility. You cannot simply assert that because mobility has decreased at the same time as grammars stopped that this means one caused the other. This is the period of rising inequalities more broadly, yet you ignore that as casual and focus on schools. (And incidentally, the evidence is that schools have a marginal difference on educational outcomes when other factors such as class are controlled for, 7-15 % IIRC)
i'm pretty sure you've previously conceded that you look at things to fit your ideology. While I am sure that I reflect unconscious biases as we all do, I don't set out to do that, and don't believe myself to approach things ideologically. For instance, my objective here is the furtherance of social mobility - I don't believe yours is to retard it, so I can't help feeling that the comprehensive model is an end in itself. I also suspect, happy to be corrected, you would prefer it to be the sole model - or at minimum that there should be a sole model of some description. Putting means before ends is ideological in a way that I am simply not reciprocating.
No, I’ve admitted that I’ll tend to see things through my own ideological prism. I can and do try to be objective but am honest enough to admit that impossibility. You can’t possibly argue that you do otherwise. Re objectives, my objective is falling inequality so mobility is but a part of that. I think the masses can live better lives, not just those deemed clever enough at the age 11 to leave their pals in ‘failing’ schools.
'making all schools better' is so nebulous as to be worthless - I appreciate you are only suggesting an alternative focus not describing it, but sadly it often doesn't go much further than that when opposing politicians pontificate.
How is it nebulous. If we don’t do that then we make some schools better and the others either stagnate or get worse.
I think the point here is overly pessimistic and sort of beside the point - if tutors can really raise ability (I'm a sceptic there) then what you set out is still an improvement on placement by wealth alone. However, I think it unlikely that across the board affluent dunces can be polished up to dominate in the way thar money alone enables.
Any evidence I’ve read suggests that the wealthy get into grammars, and then the wealthy get into the ‘best’ universities regardless of intelligence. And tutors tutoring doesn’t invert the influence of wealth, it clearly reinforces it.
what do you suggest? It seems to me that denying the bright but less affluent kids the chance to escape their circumstances (frequently made more difficult still by the domestic chaos that is another fruit of the preofessive vision) so that less bright peers and the occasional late developer can be shielded from reality, is a rather uglier downside. What rejoinder would you offer, that isn't a more obfuscated version of my point that in life there are tough choices? Let's make everything better for everyone is not going to be good enough, seeing as neither of us are giving a miss world winners speech.
I think this is the crux of it. Success for you is a small number of working class kids ‘making it’ by being pass-ported out of their neighbourhoods. (there is also evidence that the kids seen as being able leaving schools has an even more detrimental impact on those that remain, while middle class parents moving their kids out of local schools does similarly). Success for me is far more working class kids making it within the area in which they live. Now I accept mine is more difficult to achieve but I think its worth aiming for while simultaneously trying to deal with inequality. Actually, in a sense I see it as the other way around, reducing inequality is one of the means of improving schools.
why stick with an ideal that hasn't worked then - isn't that ideology at its worst?
But as I’ve said, its operated within a broader socio-economic context of rising inequality. Now if we ever manage to create a system that has verifiable lowering inequality under comprehensiveness where the comprehensive system proves inadequate I’d rethink my view. That is, I’d respond to the available evidence.
I'm puzzled by the second portion given that a) the current system amplifies the effects of wealth polarisation by making income the determinant of school intake and b) if education has no causal contribution to life trajectories then this whole debate is moot.
a) Grammars do that as comprehensively as any other system and b) education has an impact but schools have a marginal effect. So as we stand the wealthier kids are set up to succeed in all facets of their lives, education, health, housing, nutrition etc, while working class kids are disadvantaged in all of these factors. And I repeat, there is no evidence of grammars having any positive impact on any of this.
There are clearly other factors than education, I alluded to them above: as well as being the biggest influencable cause of poverty, the progressive social revolution has led to many kids growing up in circumstances less than conducive to learning and otherwise prospering; in fact the cumulative outputs of the 1960s liberal left have been nothing short of catastrophic in respect of entrenching poverty. But to me that makes the case for a an education system that can help more to escape - and with the implied hope those escapees can one day contributor to wider change - even more vital.
There is too much there to take aim at so I won’t bother. What I would say though is that you massively overstate the impact of the ‘liberal left’ in all political commentary. Now, while government isn’t where all power lies in these matters the tories have been in power for 32 of 56 years since 1960. You also completely ignore broader economic policy and practice enabled by governments of all of those 32 years plus a great many of the labour ones in between, deregulation, privatisation, lowering taxes for the wealthy and corporations etc.
It's hard for me to escape the suspicion that their are vested interests who prefer a dependent neo-serf class providing captive votes and a warm feeling of benevolent righteousness as they funnel other people's money towards the wreckage. Even if that is not the case, I am a believer that we should take practical action in the context of a failed system, rather than waiting for a unifying theory of everything that will (never) come along and solve all problems, and I also believe that helping those who are able get on an academic life raft, is a lesser evil than insisting that all go down together (and the more affluent subsequently airlifted to safety as a result of money).
If there is a vested interest in a serf class it is on the part of those who want to have a central labour force and an excess supply of labour to plug gaps when they emerge but who have no rights and can be gotten rid of at will. Since the 1950s this was largely an immigrant workforce (though earlier it was the Irish who were viewed as an excess supply of labour), though since 1979 and the dismantling of workers rights and representation a swathe of the British working class is viewed similarly. And it seems to me that your politics would do nothing to inhibit that, it would simply allow a few to escape from serfdom.
Ps the modern complement to grammars need not be secondary moderns as they were. But the whole approach to education could do with a rethink, including the related dumbing down of universities as soft degrees which add little to subsequent life chances, proliferate to meet a context that hates the idea of academic selection.
I agree that there is a need for a changed approach, just not this one. Re the 2nd point, needless to say I disagree. I believe in education to learn, not to create automatons. Take Gove, is English at Oxford a soft degree or did he learn stuff of use while there (like how to shaft working class kids
). Or all these PPE Oxford types, or Boris and his classics. It seems to be that the privileged are allowed to just learn while the rest have to be made for certain jobs.
Ours children face a more difficult labour market context than any post war generation, and material action is required.
I agree, my kids can expert to be poorer than me. Thats the first time we have had that generational shift in 100 years.
Anyway, this has been a nice distraction from chaotic work so I'll be off now, cheers!
