With the publishing of the new education white paper, school
admissions policies, and in particular selection, are once again high
on the agenda. In response to this general debate and in particular
in response to a number of comments made after this entry in Boris
Johnson's blog, I have decided to set out why I am opposed to
selection in school admissions. As this is a response piece, it will
be largely negative, i.e. I will respond to attacks on non-selective
entry. I will put together a piece that looks at it from the other
angle as well.
Firstly, the great sweeping claim of pro-selection: 'comprehensive
schooling fails children as it treats them as all the same.' The
corollaries of this being that comprehensive schools force every
pupil to learn the same things at the same pace and that
comprehensive schools are incapable of providing specialist support
to those that need it.
Well, comprehensive education does treat every child the same in that
it allows each and every one of them the same opportunities.
Comprehensive education does not achieve this by forcing everybody to
do the same things.
The word comprehensive means "complete and including all that is
necessary". In other words, comprehensive education is not designed
to give everybody exactly the same education, that would be
'identical education', but it is designed to ensure that all pupils
are given the necessary education that they need and then the
opportunities on top of that to take things further if they wish and
in the directions that they wish.
By the same definition it is implicit that if some pupils need
specialist support, they must receive it in order to reach that
complete and necessary education to the best of their ability.
So, that is a defence of comprehensive education from one of the
classic attacks.
Time for an attack on one of the suggested advantages of selection.
So, the claim: "selective education provides focussed environments
for academically minded pupils to peruse academic subjects,
vocational courses for the technically skilled and so on."
Well, so does a comprehensive system, but avoiding three pitfalls:
1. It doesn't neglect one type of education at the expense of
another and thus avoids creating narrow people who may lack certain
skills from other skill sets.
2. It keeps everybody's options open for as long as possible, should
they find they are doing the wrong thing or they want to change their
course.
3. It doesn't create a great social divide between book people and
skill people which is turned into a chasm by the fact that they never
mixed socially at school.
In fact, it has been suggested that selective and fee paying
education is a good thing precisely because it does separate people
from one background from another. I cannot think of a better way to
destroy social mobility, create ghettoes of the haves and have nots
and increase class hatred.
So, to sum up, this is why I am opposed to selection:
It creates and increases social divides between different groups of
society.
It fails children by reducing their opportunity to meets different
types of people who are not from their own background and thus
reinforces social gaps, reduces understanding of differences in the
world and reduces educational opportunity.
These are the reasons I support comprehensive education:
It provides a standard from which everyone can head off in their
desired direction.
It provides equality of opportunity for all.
This is by no means complete, either in supporting my concluding
claims, defending comprehensive education or attacking selection. In
fact, I can see a couple of problems with my own arguments. I shall
return to the subject at a later date and hopefully put together a
more comprehensive case. All comments and suggestions welcome.
While this was a general piece, it was based on two comments in
particular from the article I link to above. One statement in
particular caused me some confusion. Unfortunately, the comment has
not provided contact details for me to clarify this point.
To quote:
"Its not that surprising that parents are with schools and although
left wing parents hold certain views, they are essentially views that
make them feel good about themselves. They don't actually live by
their values. It wouldn't be human."
I would like to check whether this means that it is inhuman to live
by your values or whether it is inhuman to have those particular
values in the first place. I suspect the latter, but the wording is
ambiguous. I would contend either answer, but I shall save that as well.
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