The comprehensive system works

By Mike Ion / @mikeion

I enjoyed reading Ian Silvera’s piece on LabourList about the failures of the Comprehensive School sysytem – it was both thought provoking and challenging. However it was also strong on assertion but weak on evidence. The facts are clear: since comprehensive education was introduced, barriers to achievement for many young people have been removed. The annual government statistics of school attainment, examination results, and participation in further and higher education offer clear evidence of a “levelling up” over the last 25 years. However in some areas of England (Kent, Bucks, Birmingham) it is reasonable to regard comprehensive schooling not as a “failed experiment” but as an experiment that has not yet been tried.

In 2010 over 65% 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 that many, even of that selected minority, failed to surmount. In 1970, 47% of pupils left secondary school with no qualifications; in 2009 that figure was down to below 3%. Between 1989 and 2007 the percentage of 16-18 year olds in full-time education rose from 37.6 to 80.3. In 1971-72 14% of under-21 year olds entered higher education, in 2006-2007 44% entered. Having well over a third of school leavers enter higher education is an aim that 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, as measured by qualifications, is attributable, in large part, to the removal of the barrier of the 11-plus for some four-fifths of the population.
P
olitical support for the comprehensive ideal could well be a major issue at the next election. Why? Because if Europe has long been the Tory party’s Achilles’ heel then a debate about selection at age 11 plus could well prove to be a real pain in the neck for Team Cameron. In 2007 David Cameron called the defenders of grammar schools “deluded” and said that any debate about selection was “sterile”. Mr Cameron – though probably not his party at large – is still apparently convinced that there should be no more grammar schools and no more selection by ability at age 11.
What is puzzling therefore is why Cameron does not take the next logical step in this argument and call for all existing selection to end. Let me suggest why he is so reluctant to move in this direction: it is because the majority of the remaining 164 grammar schools in England are in Tory-held constituencies. Cameron is not opposed to selection out of conviction; rather he is in favour of keeping all existing selective schools out of cold, political calculation. Cameron often uses the term “progressive” when talking about the modern Tory party, but he knows that selection at age 11 is seen by many people to be an archaic and socially exclusive policy, he also knows that opening up a debate about this issue would produce a packet full of trouble for him personally.

Tory party members and supporters of a particular age see grammar schools as offering escape routes from poverty for bright working class kids – they disagree with their Eton-educated leader and want to see more grammar schools under a future Tory government, not fewer. As yet, the Tory party has failed to outline a vision for schooling that will help meet the rising aspirations of the British people. Do the Tories favour an inclusive, comprehensive system that intrinsically values and caters for all pupils regardless of their economic or social capital? Or are they still in favour of a two-tier, elitist system that helps perpetuate privilege and inequality? The answer to this question matters and Labour should provide their own, clear and unambiguous answer. The next Labour manifesto should make clear that under Labour there will be a bright, well resourced future for comprehensive schools and it should contain a concrete commitment to end selection by ability in the state sector once and for all.

One issue on which Ian and I may well agree on is the old fashioned (possibly even an “old Labour”) view that parents who espouse views about fairness, justice and redistribution but opt out of the state sector and send their children to private, fee-paying schools, choose to become part of the problem, rather than seeking to be part of the solution. Why do so many parents apparently talk left but act right, advocate change but seek to protect the status quo? One reason is that many middle-class parents perceive there to be little political mileage in calling for the reform of private schools and more equal access to universities. This is because those who already have influence, those who already have a “voice” in our society, have such a high stake in the current order they, almost subconsciously, mobilise and organise in order protect it. I am firmly of the view that when middle-class parents abandon the state sector in favour of the private, it is conservative and not progressive politics that triumphs.

Far from abandoning the idea of social mobility I think we need to set about creating a society that reduces the real barriers that prevent people from certain social backgrounds achieving their full potential. I agree that personal progress should never be measured by the extent to which individuals escape their social background, but we must also accept that in order to overcome entrenched privilege and vested interests we must actively seek to open up society and end the present ‘closed shop’ that has, for too long, stifled meritocracy by supporting an aristocracy of the elite.