The unedited version of my article in today's Daily Express:
Sometimes terrible truths come out just 'by the way'. Alan Johnson, the education secretary, made a speech on Wednesday about the challenges facing Britain and how he was going to make our schools 'even better'. But a long way down his speech, just incidentally, he mentioned some appalling facts.
"Despite all our progress," he said, "five million adults in Britain cannot read". And, as if this were not sufficiently bad, he added "and 15 million people, almost half the workforce, are not properly numerate".
These are staggering statistics. The state has provided free primary education for nearly 90 years. Yet five millions adults in this country cannot read this newspaper because they are incapable of doing so. They are living in a world that those of us who are able to read can only imagine. They have difficulty filling in forms or understanding such things as advertisments for pop concerts. The twilight world in which they live represents a shocking failure.
To ram the point home, it also emerged this week that 54 per cent of top news journalists in this country went to private schools, a very large proportion considering that more than nine out of ten children attend state schools. The Sutton Trust, which researched the figure, previously discovered that, similarly, 70 per cent of top barristers went to private schools and 42 per cent of those at the top of politics.
Everyone knows Tony Blair went to Fettes College, a private school in Scotland and David Cameron went to Eton. But there are plenty more. In journalism, for example, Jeremy Paxman went to Malvern College and Katie Derham to Cheadle Hulme School - both private schools. Yes, it is true that the BBC's inquisitor, John Humphrys, went to Cardiff High, a state school. and both Gordon Brown and William Hague also went to state schools. But state-school children who have reached the top have beaten the odds. You could even say that, though their success, they have shown that they (or their parents) have been exceptionally clever and determined.
I am a governor of a state primary school and I know how dedicated and talented many of the teachers there are. But state schools were created partly to equalise the life-chances of the rich and poor. We need to face up to the fact that this isn't working. State schools might actually be reducing the chances of the least well off. The proportion of privately educated children getting to the top seems to be rising. An earlier study showed that a bright girl born into a low-income household in 1958 had a four in ten chance of getting a university degee. Twelve years on, a similar girl had only a three in ten chance of getting that far.
Prior to the creation of widespread government education, there were a surprising number of people who rose from the working class to the top. Nye Bevan, the minister who created the NHS, was a miner's son who left school at 11. But there was no question of him not being able to read or write. David Lloyd George, one of Britain's most famous prime ministers, was brought up by his uncle, a cobbler, and educated at an independent church school in a remote part of Wales. When he left school at 14, he was better educated than many a graduate of today.
Sadly, the way our state system works, the poor tend to end up in the worst schools. The upper middle classes - people like Tony Blair - get their children into the best ones. So the least well-off start with disadvantages and then often go to schools which give them virtually no chance of breaking out.
But why? Why have state schools failed to do what was intended and hoped for?
Could it be that they have let us down because governments - of any political party - are not much good at running things? The state was notably bad at running an airline and a telephone service. We discovered after privatisation that literally hundreds of thousands of people who the government employed in the gas industry were not really needed at all.
The cost of a place at a state school is not much less than one at a private school. It only costs about a fifth less. But much of this money never reaches the schools themselves. The Department of Education takes a slice, then the educational quangoes and then the Local Authorities and their 'education advisers'. In the end, only about two thirds of the money gets through. Huge amounts of cash are wasted.
The heads of state schools have less autonomy than the heads of private schools. They are under enormous pressure to do whatever the government 'recommends' and these recommendations have often been lousy. The disastrous method of learning to read that has been recommended in the past twenty or thirty years is responsible for much of the poor literacy of today.
Meanwhile a private school only survives at all if it satisfies the parents. If it fails to teach children to read or to pass exams which get them into good secondary schools, parents stop sending their children to them. Unfortunately, an appalling state school can go on for decades. Private schools are free to expel children who disrupt classes. But, in some state schools, the job of teachers is really crowd control rather than teaching.
For decades, governments have thought they can make state schools better. It has all been hope and hype. It is time to recognise the truth and think that maybe there is a better way of running education in Britain - a way that embraces the advantages enjoyed by private schools instead of pretending they don't exist. A way in which everyone, instead of just the lucky few, get to have a private education. We owe it to the next generation not to go on with a system that has failed so many, a system that has not managed to teach five million people even to read.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Education
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Could it be that they have let us down because governments - of any political party - are not much good at running things? The state was notably bad at running an airline and a telephone service.
The real challenge is to identify anything the state does well. Anything at all.
Posted by: Bishop Hill at June 16, 2006 04:32 PM
The problem is not that the state does things well or badly in itself.
It is a lack of *any* sort of meritocracy and producer capture.
There is no meritocracy in the public sector. You don't get promoted by being any good at your job (it's probably a handicap because there are so few competent people), you get there by b/s, cya, self promotion, knowing the right people, spouting the latest specious drivel, crawling to politicians.
Obviously that applies in the Private Sector too.
But in the Public Sector it is near *universal* ; there is no reward for being good at your job (there are plenty of rewards but none linked to any sort of ability) or sanction for being incompetent (that I am aware of), and the customers have to buy your product whether you want them to or not.
It's getting worse ; there are people who work in the public who genuinely are driven by a sort of 'sense of community', they're being driven out by the inept, incompetent and dishonest.
Posted by: Paul at June 16, 2006 10:44 PM
As we all know, education is the ONE issue which underpins our journey through life. I am in the 'departure lounge'having raised three children, all educated in the State system, via REAL universities and all are high flyers. We did need to 'read the riot act' to the Heads of their primary schools, way back in the '60's but of course my wife is a qualified and experienced teacher, now retired.
Our youngest is a PhD in Education and 'spitting tacks' about current education standards... as he is laughing all the way to the bank! Our eldest working in The City wishes to put a contract out on someone named Gordon Brown! Our three grand-daughters, currently under 7 are being privately educated because etc..etc..
MY POINT IS THIS.. I admire all attempting to influence and improve the current government approach to education BUT I NOTE.... these activists put their own children through private schools!!
Here is a route to improving educational standards. LOOK AFTER YOUR OWN AND LEAVE IT TO THE MARKET. That's tough but that's life.
Anyone can 'get on' if they so wish. Bevan, Loyd George, Prescott and 100's of senior management have risen from nothing to something by 'bootstraps'. To survive and prosper in life and in politics / business one needs 'knowledge and learning' plus personal and interpersonal skills.
But 90% of the parent population aint interested. Just give us our 'benefits' and our telly and we will vote for you... again.
In summary.. STOP BELLY-ACHEING about educational standards and look after your own which means you will have to pay, which is of course the real reason for bellyaching!
Regards
Peter Crombie
Posted by: Peter Crombie at June 17, 2006 08:12 PM
Many countries, including the US, Holland, Denmark and Sweden have experimented with school choice measures. Insofar as it is possible to tell, it would appear that these have had a positive effect on academic outcomes. Yet the difference is one of degree, not kind. And the best-performing state schools outstrip a substantial percentage of private schools.
Yet anyone of a certain age is painfully aware that even the best are pretty dismal. When I inspected some of East Anglia's best comprehensives for the Telegraph Good Schools guide in 1999, I only found one pupil who understood how to find a percentage. In most lessons, teachers droned on without making the slightest attempt to see if pupils were paying any attention (they weren't). You couldn't really blame the teachers--they were just doing as they are told, rushing to cover an intellectually incoherent curriculum without regard to outcomes.
Market solutions on their own will produce very meagre results if the our vast education bureaucracies are not dismantled entirely. Politically, this is a problem because of the 'accountability' issue. Yet our bureaucracies themselves are completely unaccountable. And for so long as we have David Cameron in thrall to the North London consensus, this cannot even be discussed in the most hushed of tones.
Posted by: Tom Burkard at June 19, 2006 02:30 PM
I'm amazed that you could only find one pupil who knew about percentages. That statistic is jaw dropping.
There's a tie between decimals, fractions and percentanges which is very core mathematical understanding. It's not that percentages are so important in themselves, it's the implications for lack of understanding.
I have some sympathy with Cameron. He does need to get the vote of Labour's enormous client state (latest addition: counsellors for the unemployed) ; turkeys don't vote for christmas (-1 mark for cliche).
I suspect he knows as well as I do that a large proportion of these people want sacking (including *all* the counsellors). I can't actually figure out what most of them do for a living. (The annoying thing is that Thatch sacked most of these useless wasters, and this bunch of dimwits has brought them all back again).
I recall round our way there was an incident where a school caretaker got caught faking porn pictures of the children in the school (pasting their heads onto dubious pictures).
Whilst I have no time for such thing, the response was absurd.
The bloke got a prison sentence of about 6 years (massive compared to many violent crimes and a few killings) ; unpleasant maybe, but no-one actually got hurt or was directly used or abused.
I would hypothesise that far more damage was done by the legions of counsellors that came out of the woodwork to 'help' the children affected by these 'horrors' (makes a change for pandering to stupid viewers of soap operas) by making them fully aware of how baaaaad it is and how upset they must be.
It struck me that if they'd just kept their stupid mouths shut the children would have mostly ignored it.
It's rather like on those few occasions where something really bad happens to you and people keep coming up and saying how sorry you are.
Actually you want them to shut up and go away.
Posted by: Paul at June 19, 2006 09:54 PM
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The State not only runs schools ; it dictates what teachers do in them, often to a laughable extent (e.g. telling them what to say and do in each lesson),
This is inept design by DfES committee ; e.g. it is rubbish and boring. Though it is dressed up in fancy language to make it sound clever (e.g. calling what is woodwork with a bit of design thrown in "Technology"), This is much easier than actually *doing* anything clever ; viz. the emasculation of Science and Technical skills
There is one problem with the webmasters article, and the book as well. One major error.
It is much worse than he thinks it is.
Much worse. It is tied up with paper and string, and covered up desperately (the number of teachers assaulted who don't complain, usually under pressure is much higher than is commonly supposed).
The infuriating thing is that the bl**dy government is trying to interfere in private schools as well (and not just odd ones like Summerhill), presumably to drag them down to the same level.
I was in a local school for an hour recently, to see about doing some volunteer work. (I am a house husband at the moment).
I showed the Head my current (but not that recent) CRB check and apologised for its date. He responded, "that's more than most of us have got, the County take months to do them so we just start people anyway". (I live in the county that infamously *knowingly* appointed a Teacher with convictions for Child Porn. This same school appointed a Maths teacher with a conviction for child abuse because the LEA forgot to tell the school about it).
Then I saw a Yr11 lesson, ICT (Computers basically), with the teacher. There were about 10 lower ability pupils there (apparently the number who attended ranged between 2 and 20). About three of them were doing anything, and none were directed. One young lady spent an hour with her compact doing her makeup. I saw some of the work the Yr8/9 were doing ; fill in excercise books stuff. The computers were literally falling apart ; they were about 12 months old, but the 'approved' ones were held together with cheap plastic clips rather than screws, and so were literally 'falling apart at the seams'. The place was basically dilapidated ; it wasn't that the children were breaking things, it was peeling paint, holes in the walls, clapped out mobiles. The whole thing was astonishing.
After being in there about an hour they were suggesting I could help them develop a KS4 (exam age) course and manage the network .....
This isn't an inner city school. It is a very rural comprehensive, not very large. There are no pockets of deprivation anywhere about.
I am sending my 11-year old daughter not to this school but to a local private school, turned over by the inspectorate for supposed lack of staffing (obviously too many off doing private music lessons) and not having a drugs and bullying programme (probably this was due to the total lack of drugs and bullying in the school) ; a school full of polite hardworking children in a clean friendly atmosphere - doing proper work. First thing I said to the Maths teacher was "can you teach my daughter to do arithmetic properly ?" ; he knew exactly what I meant.
The inspectorate was okay with the previous school which was falling down and full of children doing not very much. Apparently.
I can only explain this by malevolence or central direction to do so, part of CSCI's vendetta against private schools. It was an absurdity. Reading through the report later, the problem wasn't the problems but totally theoretical non-problems = things that might theoretically happen in extreme situations.
Posted by: Paul at June 16, 2006 03:44 PM