Thank goodness for that! Bewildered and exhausted I crawl to the end of the half-term, quite ready for a week of lying down.
Like anyone does, I moan about my job; what is unusual, they also moan about it on the Today programme. As I dress myself in the morning, Danny's radio-alarm pipes out Radio 4's well-educated voices, gnashing at the dreadful state of British education.
Our education system is a bit slap-dash, I'll grant you, but it isn't that bad. Most of us come through with the ability to read a tabloid newspaper and count our change, and frankly that is the useful bit. I have never needed, for example, to recount the many causal factors of the Peterloo massacre of 1819, nor to utilise the chemical equation for photosynthesis. No, the real issue in education is not learning, but social justice.
Schooling in Britain has grown up piecemeal. We have independent schools, including the old elite of public schools, we have grammar schools left over from the tripartite system, we have faith schools, we have the bog-standard comprehensive, and now the newfangled city-academy, whatever that may mean. Viewed one way, it is a right old mess, with a child's schooling options depending mostly on their parent's income and where they live, entrenching social divides. Viewed another way, it is a triumph of heterogeny and offers maximal parental choice.
One question is whether independent schools, which exclude by money, and grammar schools, which exclude by ability, provide a better quality of teaching. I would say there was no guarantee. Good teachers are more likely to gravitate towards good schools; however, teachers tend to be left-wingers and many would refuse to work at an exclusive school. Often, teachers head for independent or grammar schools because they 'couldn't hack it' at a comprehensive. I reckon quality of teaching varies amongst exclusive schools as much as amongst comprehensives.
A different question is whether the opportunities provided by exclusive schools are greater. They certainly are. Allowing a school to select it's pupils creates an environment where the pupils are in general better behaved and better motivated, and hence more likely to succeed. This fact, combined with the greater funding available to an expensive independent school, creates a clear advantage for its already wealthy pupils. The higher social status associated with grammar schools over comprehensives is another form of advantage, this time for pushy, middle-class parents who have their children tutored to pass the relevant exams. Exclusive schools certainly help to maintain social division in this way.
"Death to exclusion," comes the war cry! The envious glare of the disadvantaged and their sympathisers sees injustice and howls, and a bit of me can see their point. After all, nobody likes that the world is unfair.
My worry is that whilst removing the advantages of the few creates a level playing field, it does nothing to improve the position of the many. The end result would be greater social equality, but overall educational standards would be impoverished, as we take away the opportunity for at least a few of our children to have a better learning environment.
Which is better: a fair world of homogenous mediocrity, or an unfair world where a lucky few get the chance to unveil their potential and shine?
