Spot on. I think there are sectors of society that people have simply given up on. That is, it appears, modern thinking. Even our TV comedy seems increasingly about making fun of the poor (chavs etc).

As you say, for a Labour government is it unforgivable and further proof that this is no real Labour government as we might have expected it to be. All those people who still have a loyalty to the party need no longer bother.

Still better than the major alternatives maybe but it’s all a reminder that if you want to vote for a “big party” then you should realise that their loyalties will always be with the media tycoons and their own funders.

Let’s face it, if they weren’t then they simply wouldn’t be allowed into power.

State education has failed generations of children under governments of both left and right. Labour, like the Conservatives before them, and presumably the Conservatives who will follow them, know this, but don’t want to give up the control and power of patronage they get from running the education system.

You can wring your hands all you like, but until you recognise this, millions more children are going to have their lives blighted.

Spot on Paul.

BH – How do you come to the conclusion that state education has “failed”? In what measurable way do you claim this?

The report also vindicated what Sunder Katwala said here only the day before – that we need to look at education and social mobility.

Libertarians seem to be obsessed by the education system in itself, and in love with the Swedish system, but nothing much is actually said about social mobility and how that has been made worse since the expansion of private education.

It amazes me that left-liberals (Polly Toynbee leading example) rave about the wonders of egalitarian Sweden – only then to go on to assert that it would of course be quite wrong for us to actually do what they do, e.g. education vouchers, much more mixed provision/localised health service., etc. Throwing money at an ever more centralised and less efficient bureaucracy seems to be their only solution.

Sunny – surely it is left-liberals who *should* be in love with the Swedish system, inasmuch as that system seems to work rather better, and deliver better left-liberal outcomes. I do not understand why you are not. It is you who are being ultra-conservative and obsessed with maintaining the current structures. Down with the private sector, don’t tamper with the NHS, and so on.

It is wholly one-sided. You seem to want Swedish levels of tax on the extraordinarily naive – I would say stupid – assumption that our current structures could use it effectively. Surely the last five years have shown that they have not and cannot.

Even I would support higher taxes if I could see them being used effectively!

One in six UK adults has difficulty reading.

Half of all parents would choose private education if they could afford it.

UK’s results in international comparisons are bad and falling.

Where is your evidence that UK schools are doing a good job?

And what expansion of private education has there been? At most this has been minimal, and cannot explain why results in state schools are getting worse. The whole point of state education was to increase social mobility. The state has had, what, sixty odd years to acheive its aims and it has had no shortage of money to do it with. So where’s the output?

There is none. The money has been thrown away, and children’s lives have been blighted.

Where is your data on inequality? I’m sure I read somewhere that inequality is now back to levels not seen since the 1970s – if that’s right, it’s hard to square with your Thatcher wot started it story.

Also, have you thought about what the determinants of income distribution might be, and which of these are within government control (or perhaps better, what the government would have to do to control them and what the cost would be). There is no analysis here.

“Four years on, is it too much to be hoped that such ideas could yet form the basis of Labour’s programe for a fourth term in power?”

Yes. Yes, I’m afraid it is.

That’s not to say they won’t wheel them back out as talking points occasionally, or even use similar language in grandiose announcements of policies that, actually, will be designed to achieve the opposite. It’s all they know how to do anymore.

LuisEnrique – inequality in the UK fell to its lowest level in the mid 1970s, rose sharply for twenty five years, and has remained steady for the past seven or eight. Lots of stats and graphs at http://www.poverty.org.uk if you want to see more.

Paul – I agree with you about the importance of reducing inequality (though I don’t share your high opinion of Alan Milburn), but I’d be interested in how you square that with wanting to cut or abolish inheritance tax. There’s also a difference between inequality and social mobility – improving educational attainment can help individuals be more likely to earn more, but is less likely to reduce levels of overall inequality.

Sickening, just sickening. And yet some people, namely a number of well-known trade union leaders, still persist with their belief that Brown is somehow ‘old Labour’ and will undo all the neoliberal damage that has been done. What planet are these people on?

Inequility as measured by gross gap gap between rich and poor has increased, although this could mean that the rich have simply got richer, faster than the poor have got less poor, but that both are relatively better off . For that reason, I would question how meaningfull such a crude measure is nowadays. More importantly, the gap between the bottom and the middle has got smaller as taxes have been redistributed from median to <60% median households. This is the source of Blairs claim to have lifted x number of children out of “poverty”. It has had the less desirable effect of creating a chav class by reducing the incentive to work, and by shifting the tax burden to the middle and working classes, has become a primary source of “seething”. How anyone can blame this on Thatcher is beyond me – a lot of working class people benefited, yes benefited, from Thatcherism, under nu lab none of them have, they’ve seen taxes rises, public services crumble and the value of their contribution degraded and undercut..

I’m not sure we’re all reading th same report here. The Sutton Trust looked at a proxy for social mobility: the ability to get a degree by age 23 ranked by parental income.

That isn’t, in fact, social mobility. It’s a best a proxy and at worst misleading.

But what the study does tell us is that the current education system doesn’t do what it was intended to do, increase the number of poor getting a decent education.

So can we tear it all up and start again please?

It’s a sad indictment of New Labour. Not only is their more inequality (pace Mandelson being comfortable about the filthy rich), but we are talking here about social mobility. Those born in the bottom 10% are more likely to stay there than before. For a government that talked a lot about meritocracy, it shows which end they were talking out of. Of course to Blair, the idea of meritocracy was less about “to each according to their merits” than “I’m rich so I must be good”, and it’s corollary “they’re poor because they’re shiftless idlers”.

“Half of all parents would choose private education if they could afford it.” BH. I’m surprised it’s only a half. If you thought you could gain an advantage (and in terms of class sizes and investment per pupil, private education certainly has an advantage) wouldn’t you say you’d take it? But of course we can’t all afford it, that’s the point. You get a self-defined minority that use their wealth to gain advantage and reduce social mobility. Tax them properly and take charitable status from private schools, then get off teachers backs and put some proper investment into providing free childcare and smaller class sizes.

It’s noticeable that in market towns where there is a sizeable middle class, there is no flight from the local comprehensive, as the local middle class have a stake in the local school and make sure that it works for their children. Why pay when you can ensure that your local school is good? The problem is more in cities, where middle class flight into suburban ghettos and private schools creates such a division.

And it’s no surprise that the intelligent children of the underclass get such a bad deal. If your parents worked 50-60 hours a week for the minimum wage, with no organised childcare, and the stress leads to a high level of family breakdown, that’s not going to give you a continuing learning environment, is it?

@ Bishop Hill – No education system fails the children in it – they train them, then measure the results – even an F grade in lawnmowing counts as a qualification.

What I suspect you do mean is that our education system fails our society, thus by inference it fails your unspecified generation of poor innocent little weepy-eyed wonders-in-waiting.

It does this is by creating artificial links between the teaching, the exams and the purpose for which it is all designed in the first place.

Anyway social mobility isn’t an end in itself, unless you are assuming that for every time someone falls into the gutter there is a guarantee that they will fall under another paralytic, thereby raising that earlier unconscious unfortunate up out of the vomit and other assorted detritus.

I do not think the assessment of a ‘scandal’ and indictment of the Labour government stacks up. Yes, we need to do more, but this is a central focus of current policy (with the focus on inequality strengthened significantly in the last year or two).

The rush to judgement on is not a fair analysis. If it was, fine. But given that it is not, this does not seem to me to contribute to the strategy we need to deepen this agenda (instead seeming to offer left-wing endorsement – labour isn’t working – of a right-wing agenda which says the state will always fail, and should stop trying).

We simply do not know the impact of the last ten years on social mobility, as I argued
(http://fabians.org.uk/events/katwala-life-chances-07/speech) earlier in the week, in a speech extracted on the site, just before these new results.

The new research tries to get a proxy for a snapshot of social mobility today for those born in 2000, by using test results at age 5, which in the past have turned out to be strong predictors of eventual educational attainment and socio-economic status.

At most, what that can tell us about the New Labour agenda is that, by 2005, it had not managed to do enough to counter the impact of pre-school factors, such as the home learning environment. But this has been a very strong focus of policy, based on evidence about why this matters and the comparative data: those countries with better mobility have been doing for much longer. But would we expect transformative results by 2000-05? What is needed is a deepening of the agenda.

And we should not accept that the proxy measure used (results for these 5 year olds in 2005) will determine where they end up in 2030, for two reasons.

(i) Feinstein and others have warned against their research being interpreted as ‘just focus on the early years; as that determines everything’. Rather, a strong focus on early years needs to be supplemented by an agenda across the life course and across policy areas as part of a coherent equality strategy.

(ii) By definition, the data can not tell us about any policy measures dealing with other and later parts of education, skills and employment policy, (other than those broad measures which afftect the home environment). There are many things which could and should happen which could have an impact on where these 7 year olds end up.

The big life chances test of the education system: does it challenge and do something to reverse social disadvantage; does it leave things as they are; does it entrench and exacerbate initial social position?

Some policy issues that will matter: primary school results, especially whether they give a strong foundation to those who have historically done less well (literacy and numeracy focus); secondary school results, esp for the 75% who have not done well in the UK system, because of the comparative weakness of vocational education (the 14-19 curriculum is about this); who stays on at 16 and why (financial support, such as educational maintenance allownces, are one factor), why we have a large numver who drop out NEET (here, the package of measures proposed to pave the way for with the raising of the education leaving age to 18 over the next 6 years

A cross-cutting issue is levels of funding and whether resources are focused on disadvantage (where the comprehensive spending review introduces a new PSA target to narrow the attainment gap between socio-economic groups).

I would like more to have been done but this is as substantial agenda on life chances and future mobility, in education, as can be found anywhere in the EU. (And a non-Labour government would not have done it). This needs to be part of an agenda on work, skills, the economy. health, housing, etc. And the children’s plan addresses several key non-school factors. Income and wealth inequality matters, of course, and getting back on track to end child poverty should be central to this.

Where are the gaps?

In education, there is a strong and coherent focus on extending opportunity. But there is also a wariness in challenging factors which entrench advantage (such as selection by house price; impact of private schools)

Overall, yes broader inequalities. I would want Labour to be bolder on income and wealth inequality. But those of us who want to make the case to deepen this need to guard against feeding into the ‘nothing works’ agenda from the right.

The neutral analysis of the Institute of Fiscal Studies shows how much the government has had a significant impact in challenging inequality – albeit by holding it in check, ‘running up the down escalator’. But the impact of government policy on incomes in each decile has been strongly redistributive though, I agree, not redistributive enough.

But, when we debate this, we need to focus on both challenging government to be bolder, and on creating the public space to go much further, not closing it down.

http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn73.pdf

I do think we need some perspective when we discuss education and how it has impacted on social mobility. In 2007 well over half of all 15-16 year olds in maintained schools achieved five or more ‘higher passes’ at the end of compulsory schooling. This is the hurdle set in the past for only those attending grammar schools, one which many, even of that selected minority, failed to surmount. For example:

In 1970, 47% of pupils left secondary school with no qualifications at all; in 2006 that figure was down to 4%.

Between 1969 and 2006 the percentage of 16-18 year olds in full time education rose from 25.6 to 80.3.

In 1972 just 14% of under-21 year olds entered higher education, in 2005 42% entered.

Over a third of the age group entering higher education is an aim which would have seemed impossibly ambitious a generation ago. Given that expenditure on education did not increase in real terms between the mid-1970s and the late-1990s this remarkable increase in productivity and progress (as measured by qualifications) is attributable, in large part, to the impact of the comprehensive system of schooling.

For me a real barrier to increased social mobility is the fact the continued popularity of private schools. In fairness it is not unreasonable that any parent should want their child to do as well at school and in life as they have done themselves, often they want them to do better. In a free society if some parents choose to secure advantage and privilege by sending their children to elite schools there is little the state can do about it.

There are though, clear consequences for social mobility that many “left leaning” (and possibly Liberal Conspiracy contributors) parents often choose to ignore. British public schools have always been a production line for the class system. They employ some of the best-qualified teachers, with as many as two-thirds educated in the top 20 British universities. They can – and do – raise their fees steadily, they select their pupils, have a growing endowment income from their benefactors and some of the most impressive sporting and extra-curricular activities.

What’s more they now recruit from a middle-class obsessed by perceived educational and social advantage. Parents who are willing to take the bold decision to become part of the problem, rather than seeking to be part of the solution. I often hear some of my friends and “comrades” attempting to ease their conscience by announcing that the local comprehensive school is simply not good enough and justify their decision to go private in the name of parental responsibility.

It is also the case that because so many of these parents work in the media (a few are in government) there is little political mileage in calling for the reform of private schools and more equal access to universities.

I think one of the main problems is that those who do have influence, those who really do have a “voice” in our society have such a high stake in the current order that they will seek to mobilise and organise in order protect it. The sad truth is that when middle-class parents abandon the state sector in favour of the private, it is conservative and not progressive politics that triumphs.

The problem with those advocating Swedish solutions are:

1) They massively overstate the private provision in the health system there.
2) They want to create the “free choice in education” without the same level of funding.
3) They want to install various market solutions without going through the years of egalitarian solutions first.

None of this is an endgame to the argument about whether or not we should take up a Swedish approach, but it does suggest some reality based ground rules about whether or not it’s worth listening to a libertarian who advocates it:

1) Are they actually prepared to at least begin to address the funding gap at the same time?

2) Do they acknowledge that if you start from a different inequality base, it may be that the Swedish solution may not produce the same outcomes? (And hence some modifications might be in order?)

Mike Ion is correct in one thing – that private schooling is the bedrock of the class system. My solution to this would be to make all schools private, thus removing the problem at a stroke. I don’t suppose the “liberals” on this site would find this an acceptable solution though. The fact that government is unable to provide any service even tolerably well just doesn’t seem to carry much weight with some people.

He is quite wrong when he says that the middle classes are obsessed with educational and social advantage. The problem is more one of “Can I get a half-decent education for my children”. State schools are clearly not providing this for many, if not most, children. My children’s state primary is obsessed with environmentalism, healthy eating, sex education, bullying and the whole gamut of government inspired targets. This is not what I want my children to learn at school – these areas fall under parenting, not schooling.

Meanwhile the curriculum (as far as we can tell – parents are not allowed to see it) doesn’t actually contain any history or geography. The headteacher confided to me the other day that children in their final primary year couldn’t identify the noun and the verb in a sentence – they’d never heard the terms before.

So if I decide to take them out it will not be in order to gain social exclusivity. Social exclusivity will be a cost we have to bear. We will do it in order to get them a decent education.

And the point about not being able to see the curriculum gives the lie to Mike Ion’s claim that parents should seek to become part of the solution by engaging with state schools. Middle class parents are just as powerless to change state schools as working-class ones. This is because parents in state schools have precisely zero power – they can complain all they like but the teachers do not have to change if they don’t want to.

(And by the way, it is extremely offensive to working class parents to suggest that they need the middle classes to fight their battles for them).

Meh makes the point about the funding gap between state and private schools.

Firstly the funding gap is not huge, it’s just that the state sector chooses to use a very large proportion of their funding on central bureaucracy. You advocates of state education will have to explain why an organisation which operates in this way is the correct one to be running schools, or why this is an acceptable cost for the system to bear.

Secondly a lot of the funding for private schools goes to fund fripperies like swimming pools, and the upkeep of the mansion houses around which so many of them are based. Any comparison needs to correct for this too.

But either way, the argument being made by the free-marketeers is not that a Swedish-style system would be perfect, but that it would be better than what we have now, for the same level of funding.

But let’s face it, it’s hard to imagine anything that would be much worse than what we have now.

Is it really the case that parents are not allowed to see the curriculum?

It is in my children’s school. I’ve recently been elected to the school council (board of governors) so I hope to bring it up there. In the meantime anyone who asks is fobbed off. I know for a fact that this has happened to people other than me.

State education – gotta love it.

erm

this report says little about Labour.

The report focuses on children born in 2001-2 (as the link in the article makes clear). And it moans that inequality hasn’t reduced in 30 years, only ten of which were labour.

so what impact could labour have had on such a massive massive social phenomenon as in equality by 2001-2?

–

ignoring that I do wonder if we sometimes have a too individualistic view of equality.

poverty, for example, ignores the free health and education of young people as any form of wealth – and simply counts the financial income of the child’s parents.

that is and always has been a simplistic system of judging equality that the left should find som alternative to.

“My children’s state primary is obsessed with environmentalism, healthy eating, sex education, bullying and the whole gamut of government inspired targets. This is not what I want my children to learn at school – these areas fall under parenting, not schooling.”

Ditto – and then they have the bloody cheek to complain about how full the cirriculum is, how “overworked” they are and ask parents to “engage with the school” more. In other words, you, the parents, teach them to read, write and count and give us a load of money/time/gifts for the privelidge, while we, the state, sorry the school will indoctrinate them. The phrase “buying a dog and barking yourself” springs to mind.
This is why the middle classes are deserting state education. Do the apologists for the comprehensive system really think people would shell out thousands of pounds for something they have already paid for once, unless that felt they had no choice ? Leaving your kids in state education when you can afford private is tantamount to neglect.

And Mike Ion – thanks for cheering up a very dull day at work, your post made me laugh out loud. I haven’t heard such a spirited defence of the comprehensive system since the 1970s, and back then, they still thought it might work……

Matt

I’m a big fan of Mike Ion. It’s laugh a minute stuff.

It’s interesting that he thinks that people are willing to pay twice for an education which gives their children only a “perceived educational and social advantage”. Golly, the private schools’ marketing must be good! And all those Labour politicians who are taken in by it – sending their children to private schools for an illusory advantage. Amazing. (OK the ranks of the great and good is full of people who were privately educated, but let’s not split hairs – we all know what a marvelous job the state system is doing).

I am bemused by most of the contributions above (apart from the very sensible Sunder Katawala, of course).
Could some of them explain what they mean by Social Mobility? Please don’t tell me it is turning the children of Trades people into Professionals. That is only keeping pace with the changing Labour market..
We don’t know how many poor chidlren get into higher education, because the relevant Government Departments can’t be bothered to keep any meaningful statistics for higher qualifications than GCSEs or older age groups than 16+.
Those publslihed by the Universities and ther creatures the exam boards are utterly useless because they look backwards from the late teens instead of forwards from statutory school attendance.
It wouldn’t be difficult to publish the GCSE statisitcs for those pupils entitled to claim free School Meals. How about that Ed Balls?
It shouldn’t be difficult to publish the figure that LSCs have for NEETs.
I have some demands for more challeging statistics:
Education results and Higher education entrance for those who have
1) free school meal entitlement
2) lived in care
3) lived in workless homes
4) had criminal convictions by School Leaving age
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to require every selective school to publish statistcs for those pupils who don’t get into higher education. After all, they are more difficult to get into.