Hands up for selection
Hands up who believes in selection? What do you mean no-one does?
Surely, it was John Prescott's worries about a return to selection that persuaded him to give a whole new meaning to the idea of "open government" (he told a Sunday newspaper what he'd previously told the Cabinet - namely that he feared that government proposals would lead to greater divisions between good schools and "bog standard" comps).
There again, Tony Blair tells us he too is not in favour of selection. His Education Secretary Ruth Kelly says she won't allow it by the front door, the back door or the green door (I didn't understand that either).
Tony & Ruth say it's the Tories who really favour selection. But hold on a sec, David Cameron insists he too doesn't want a return to selection either. So what on earth is going on?
The real debate here is a belief in parent power versus a fear of it. Tony Blair plus his new friends on the Tory benches want to "set parents free" to shake-up the schools system. They want parents to shop around so that competition - or what the policy wonks call "contestability" - encourages the best schools to expand and the worst to get their act together or even close.
That means giving schools some power (more or less limited depending on who you listen to) over which children they admit and which they keep out.
John Prescott speaks for many in his party, many in the Lib Dems and many in the world of education who fear that parent power is all too often used only by highly motivated and relatively well-off parents at the expense of the rest. They believe it's the job of government and local councils to stop the anarchy of unrestricted choice distorting the schools system.
So why all the talk about selection then? It is still the biggest emotional issue in education. Prezza missed out on getting a bike from his mum and dad when he failed the 11 plus. Worse still - his brother got one.
Many Labour MPs are angry that the status of private schools and grammar schools has not been challenged even after eight years in power. Tony Blair knows that, so he wants to trap David Cameron into backing it - or at least appearing to - so as to draw a "dividing line" between the Tories and Labour.
Mr Cameron, of course, knows this all too well but also knows that many in his own party hark back to the days of selection so he somewhat awkwardly has to say that he wants schools to have the freedom to select while predicting that few schools will want to use it. Now is that clear?! I'll be testing you later.
P.S. Sorry about the interruption of normal service. My blogging software crashed and then when it was fixed my boiler went.
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Comments
Of course, if the schools system was universally successful rather than patchily good parents wouldn't need to choose between one and another. There are some aspects of recent and forthcoming education reform that seem designed to help sort that out but all this talk about choice and selection is just hiding the real problems and issues.
Good luck sorting out the boiler by the way, time to dig out some spare jumpers methinks.
It would help if the Education system accepted that some children are clever with their heads and some children are clever with their hands.
currently the wealth of your parents decide if you get to a good school. There may be something about selection that enables poor PUPILS to overcome their parents dis-advantages.
Parents do not have a choice they have preference. If a good school has 100 places and 200 pupils apply then it's the school that choses.
They say good schools can expand, but what if they can't or won't?
How do they do selection in Europe and the USA? Can we learn any lessons from them?
Boiler went? Did you manage to get a British Gas engineer out to fix it?
The government should bring back selection. All comprehensive schools do is group children from poor backgrounds together. Grammar schools and assisted places to private schools would ensure that children from all backgrounds would have a chance of a decent education.
I'm surprised that you didn't comment on the more interesting of John Prescott's remarks at the weekend, Nick.
john thought that working class families aren't up to picking schools for their children:
"Middle-class parents are concerned, and rightly so, about the quality of education for their children, which sadly is not the same for working-class parents.
"If you set up a school and it becomes a good school, the great danger is that's the place they [the middle-classes] want to go to."
Naturally Prescott opposes Tony Blair's timid school reforms, preferring the traditional Labour view that it's much better to level downwards and have the same bog-standard comprehensive schools for everyone, rather than risk any "middle class" kids getting a leg up.
Unless their parents can afford to move into a good school's catchment area, or pay to go private, of course.
Am I right in assuming that there is no selection for the state-run elite sports academies? Could I (short, fat, bad at sport)get in?
I find it astonishing that the "charitable" status of the English Public Schools is not under more serious scrutiny. Fees at Eton are now over £22k a year, and that's before you take into account the other neccessary expenses like starched collars, boaters and the like.... it doesn't sound very charitable is it?
Perhaps this will all change if the Tories come to power.... oh hang on a minute.... he's an Old Etonian?
Perhaps not.
ST
Many people do still support selection in the form of the 11-plus - not least Tory politicians in Kent. Many sociologists, even on the left, believe grammar schools did a lot to enhance social mobility as it gave a superior form of schooling to those who are more intelligent amongst the working classes.
Furthermore, Prescott et al haven't really spoken out against streaming within the comprehensive system - that is, children being assigned particular classes according to their ability *within* schools. It is hard to see how this is substantively different to the 11-plus system.
Comprehensives do not give kids from poor backgrounds a sporting chance. In fact the very opposite is true.
Comprehensives cater for only the lowest common denominator in terms of academic ability. The cleverest pupils suffer, allowing the highest grades to be achieved by those with a private education.
This creates a sinister form of selection on ability to pay rather than on academic ability.
Why not give all clever kids, rich or poor, a chance by bringing back academic selection? This would also allow less academic kids to follow a vocational-based curriculum.
I understand far better than Mr Blair or Mr Cameron will ever understand because I went through the state system.
I think I'll follow the example of Tony Blair's parents. It's off to public school for my kids!
What's wrong with selection?
I was a bright working class kid, and the only way I managed to avoid the poverty trap was because I was able to go to private school on an assisted place!
Selection of the brightest is the best way to help working class kids up, as is selection of the most athletic for sports academies etc.
Why dumb down on intelligence? It really frustrates me that it's OK to send your kid to Chelsea youth if they're exceptional at football... but you still have to send them to bog standard comp if they're excpetionally intelligent!
In answer to Bishop Hill's question, there is selection on ability for sporting and music academies, and so forth, however only 10% of the intake can be selected according to that criteria (otherwise the fat, wheezy, tone deaf kids in their neighborhoods would have nowhere to go).
Ruth Kelly defends education ‘reforms’. I thought the point of reformation was to achieve improvement. How will these reforms achieve this? Think carefully. How many schools will have admissions criteria that invite the poorest, the most disruptive or the lowest ability pupils? How many will specify that their catchment group should include parents who do not actively support their childrens’ education? There is no logical defense to this policy. I am amazed that anyone in Government could support this. Oh, and don't forget David Cameron. On schools, he has advocated a voucher system that would send public resources to private schools at the expense of state comprehensives. He talks like a man of the left but is right of Bush on matters domestic and foreign. Looks like us old fashioned social democrats have got nowhere to turn. Thank God its Christmas!
As a successful grammar school boy, I have been fighting to have them abolished for something like fifty years,and many (more famous) ex-grammar school boys do too. There was only one good thing about the grammar school system and that was the eleven plus test that got you there. Nowadays it is not politically correct to have a scientific test of ability, so really no one knows what they are talking about when trying to sort out success of schools, social conditions, ability etc. This is a complicated problem and all children shoould be tested at age 11 and 17.
Don't get the reference to "Green Door"? Obviously not a Frank Ifield (I think it was him anyway!) or Shankin' Stevens (definately him!) fan.
"Green door, what's that secret you're keeping?"...
Gordon Hall, I am also a succesful grammar school boy. Passing the 11 plus and attending a grammar school, gave me a whole new set of challenges and forced me to try harder, I became inspired by a teaching staff who believed in excellence and giving opportunities to those who were prepared to use them, not just to those who could afford them. My old school still consistently outperforms fee paying public schools in the area, which i believe is not only as a result of selective entrance but also as a result of the teachers belief in the system.