Inequality and education

[mtbc]

My memory of the Conservative government under Thatcher is that their actions truly did back an ideological stance that, while people should face the consequences of their own mistakes or failures, they should also be supported in reaching their potential. Perhaps the unions are now weaker than is good for the country but I do wish they had put less effort into resisting moves to link pay and advancement to actual performance.

While I will never know how the alternative would have turned out, one policy for which I thank the Thatcher administration is that I was able to attend public (for Americans, British public is prestigious private) school: there was an assisted places scheme by which the government would pay for bright students from poor backgrounds to attend fee-paying schools. At least they avoided the left's common hypocrisy of condemning this policy while sending their own children to such schools. I got a lot out of my private schooling and was certainly pushed harder and offered rather more than my son appears to be a decently rated state (Americans: public) school.

I am therefore curious to read present-day BBC reports of how,

Sir Michael Wilshaw said despite the education watchdog's efforts to stretch the brightest children, little progress has been made in England's schools.

He highlighted how gifted children from poor homes entitled to pupil premium money were still lagging well behind.

… What is most depressing is that the brightest children from disadvantaged backgrounds are the most likely not to achieve their full potential.

My own luck continued. Despite my regional accent and neither of my parents having attended university, I was admitted to King's College, Cambridge. The BBC report that,

The lowest perception of value for money is in England, at about 32% …

In Cambridge, for 18-year-old applicants, there were 1,260 places gained by students in the top fifth most privileged areas, compared with 65 places for those from the least advantaged. There were 30 black students gaining places compared with 270 Asian and 1,785 white students.

There are no breakdowns by private or state education …

Perhaps my only real disadvantage was economic: I am white, male, born in England, from a two-parent household. My parents did not have much income while I was in secondary school and we lived in mid-Cornwall, then one of the poorer areas of the country.

Another way in which I was lucky was in coming in at the tail end of grant-funded university places. English undergraduates today have to take out much larger loans than I ever had to consider: while on better terms than Americans face, still enough that I wonder what I would have decided to do had I been born some years later. This is a reason that we now live in Scotland instead, near some good universities: the government pay one's undergraduate tuition. Perhaps that won't continue but for our own children I would expect it to at least remain a substantially better deal than is offered in England.

Comments

[damerell]

I think the usual question about Assisted Places was not whether it benefited the recipients but whether it was effective use of the money.

[mtbc]

That's entirely fair. The current complaint seems to be that this pupil premium money doesn't seem to be. Whether one is better than the other I've no idea. At least the UK has generally been rather better at directing more money to schools in difficulty than the US tends to be.