We haven't had an education thread for a while. Wonder what you guys think of this anti-comprehensives piece?
Schools for a scandal
Tim Luckhurst
Times
August 09, 2005
AMONG THE most infuriating conundrums in Britain is why comprehensive schools still exist when every argument for them has been undermined. The assertion that comprehensivisation would enhance opportunity was tendentious before the experiment was attempted. These days a potent blend of ideological zeal and intellectual dishonesty is required to defend it. A Sutton Trust study for the London School of Economics proves that comprehensives damage social mobility. Before that, research by York University demonstrated the benefits of academic selection for children from low-income families. The evidence from overseas is incontrovertible too. Selection delivers social justice.
3 comments:
As a parent of a child one year away from secondary and living in an awful neighbourhood I wish grammar schools were an option. (My borough is something like the 5th worst in London - and that's despite a couple of private schools and 2 v. good state schools bringing the average up).
My only caveat would be for there to be some mechanism to protect bright kids who screw up on the 11+. I'm not comfortable with one exam determining your whole educational future.
http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/01/16/dl1602.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/01/16/ixopinion.html
Comprehensively wrong
Telegraph Comment
16/01/2006
In Northern Ireland, where (academic selection) still exists, 75 per cent of 17-year-olds are still in full-time education, compared with only 60 per cent on the mainland. And what is more, a third more children from working-class backgrounds in Ulster go on to university than in England. Even those who "fail" at 11-plus tend to do better than those who, in areas where grammars do not exist, go to comprehensive schools. Social mobility - of the respectable sort - is greater in this part of the United Kingdom than in any other.
James Bartholomew looks at how private tuition boosts performance of top state schools (interesting fact that T Blair's son was privately tutored by a teacher from one of the top Private Schools in Britain - hypocritical?):
"I argued in The Welfare State We're In that the performance of many grammar schools in Britain is boosted by heavy oversubscription for places (far higher than for most private schools), the high social class of many of the parents and private tuition. In the sense that there is a great deal of private tuition, part of 'state education' is not actually done by the state at all. It is supplied by the private market. This was very publicly the case with one of the children of the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair. The boy was tutored by a teacher at Westminster, one of the outstanding private schools in Britain.
Yesterday there was further evidence of the role of private tuition in state education:
In the latest poll, market researchers GfK NOP surveyed parents of children at some of England's 164 remaining grammar schools.
The survey - for the BBC - revealed 81 per cent of parents coached sons or daughters to pass the entrance test.
Half paid for private tutors and the remainder taught children themselves at home.
Those using hired help spent an average of £700 on fees - receiving 90 minutes of tuition every week.
Research by Professor Brendan Bunting, psychologist at Ulster University, has found pupils coached for nine months improved their 11-plus scores by 40 per cent.
This research referred to students getting tuition in order to get into the grammar schools. It seems highly likely that a high proportion of grammar school children also receive private tuition to help them get better results in their public exams."
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