The real social engineering? Buying advantage in the education system

By Wes Streeting / @wesstreeting

When is buying advantage in the education system wrong? Not when it comes to private tutoring, it seems. I’ve heard a range of justifications to support those parents and carers who pay for extra tuition for their children out of their own pockets; none of which can alter the reality that this practice reinforces inequality by giving advantage to those children with parents who can pay at the expense of those who can not.

In many cases, it is impossible to condemn parents who pay for private tuition for their children. Nor should we stereotype them as particularly rich. Too many students are failed each year by classes that are too large, poor facilities for learning and teaching or a seemingly endless chain of supply teachers breeding inconsistency and a lack of personalised support for each student. Faced with the choice of seeing their children failed by the system or paying – in some cases scrimping and saving – for a few hours extra tuition every week it is not surprising that parents will opt for the latter.

Whatever the parents’ intentions, we must recognise private tutoring for what it is: a way for middle class parents to advance the interests of their own children at the expense of others. If it isn’t why would parents pay? They pay because they know – at some point – a university or an employer is going to judge their child’s grades alongside the grades of their peers and they can pay to improve their child’s performance.

The most common answer offered to this problem is to raise standards in schools; if the quality of state education improved, people wouldn’t feel the need to turn to the private sector. This is true, to an extent. Undoubtedly if schools, or other state commissioned services, were offering the kind of one to one support that students need, the market for private tuition would be dead. It is just as likely, however, that Britain’s public schools would continue to thrive as parents are buying lifestyle conditioning and an exclusive social circle away from the hoi polloi as much as they are buying smaller class sizes, excellent extra curricular activities and access to selective universities.

Improving schools is only part of the solution. The last Labour government dedicated billions of pounds to improving school standards – including the introduction of one to one support to help students falling behind in key subjects to catch up. The school environment improved, standards rose and the status of the teaching profession improved with it. We have yet to fully see the results of Labour’s necessary focus on early years.

We need affirmative action. Whenever the prospect is raised we hear howls of opposition and accusations of ‘social engineering’. This is particularly true in terms of university admissions. The University of Bristol, for example, was subjected to a sustained attack in the media for proposing to give lower grade offers to students from under-represented backgrounds whose attainment had been held back due to schooling, family circumstances, poverty etc. A growing body of research shows that students admitted in such circumstances not only succeed, but go on to outperform those from more traditional backgrounds.

It’s not universities like Bristol that are engaged in so-called social engineering, it’s those who seek to buy advantage within the education system. That’s what it amounts to, they should just admit it.

And to those who screech and howl every time some action is taken to create a more level playing field – where life chances aren’t determined by birth and meritocracy is based on ability and ability to pay: don’t complain about ‘social engineering’: you’re probably a product of it and your parents paid a good price for it.