The rising birth rate – time to eat humble pie?
A few years ago I wrote and published a short book with my father. ‘What are children for?’ explored what might lie behind the declining birth rate in developed nations . The book got some news coverage and was serialised in The Times. In the first days after publication it sold a few hundred copies, then, after getting some pretty mixed reviews (mainly from women who questioned our authority to write on the subject) it disappeared without trace. It was great fun to work with Laurie and I like occasionally using the phase ‘in my book’, but otherwise it was a strangely inconsequential episode in my life.
I was reminded of the book by new ONS data showing a rise in overall fertility, even among the indigenous British population. ’What are children for?’ suggested there might be strong underlying cultural reasons for the declining birthrate so perhaps I should be admitting we got it wrong. Then again, perhaps not.
A general rule among those who study birthrates is that over time the higher rate among migrant groups comes back towards the indigenous norm. Although rising, the UK fertility rate is still below the replacement rate of just over 2.0 per woman. This is the same among all other Western European nations, where it is immigrant groups that keep the overall level closer to or above the replacement rate.
What the statistics don’t show, as far as I can see, is a comparison between second generation immigrants and the long term indigenous population. I suspect the 1.84 child per woman rate for the UK born population includes a higher rate for second generation migrants but a much lower rate for middle class women. If this is the case and migration levels remains the same or decline (as they have done in the last year), we would still expect to see, over time, a replacement rate consistently below 2.0. This means the number of people dying each year exceeds the number being born, as it already does in Germany.
Overall, I agree wholeheartedly with Felipe Fernandez-Armesto who argues this morning that we shouldn’t worry about increases in the birth rate. As he says, the important thing as far as sustainability is concerned is not how many children we have in the developed world but how the population uses resources. As he points out, the global population increased fourfold in the 20th century but per capita resource consumption multiplied nineteen fold. Also, while it is good policy to enable women in developing countries the power to choose to have fewer children, it remains the case that the very best way to bring birth rates down (both in nations and in groups within nations) is to help people become better off.
So, I’m not quite ready yet to abandon the argument in ‘what are children for?’. In essence, we suggested the usual arguments made to explain the decline in the birth rate among the middle classes (the cost of children and the impact on women’s careers) were inadequate. Instead we explored whether other factors such as a loss of faith in human progress or the decline in the idea of family professions and family businesses had diminished some of the cultural meaning of parenting. (For those who ask why we need a reason to parent, we reminded our readers of the overwhelming evidence that, unlike having a partner, a garden or a dog, having children has no aggregate effect on adult happiness levels.)
Anway if you want to read the elegant, convincing argument in full you’ll have to buy the book. But be quick, of the 2,000 copies in the second run there are only about 1,980 still available .
Going up to the Wire….
A few slightly random thoughts as my (second) holiday draws to a close…
Being away I haven´t been able to be as active in Bloggers` Circle as I would like. It´s hard to access other blogs using a Blackberry abroad and impossible when it is nicked (as mine was in Lisbon). But many of the blog summaries sent round every day are intriguing and having access to the web today I checked out Henry Kippin´s post at 2020PublicService Trust.
As a great fan of ´The Wire´I agree with Henry that it was a strange (not to say inept) reference for Chris Grayling to make as part of the Conservative Broken Britain attack.
The messages I got from ´The Wire´include:
The disastrous impact of city hall corruption and nepotism
The incompetent and self serving nature of most senior police officers
The links between organised crime, big business and the trade unions
The morally ambiguous nature of drug dealing and gang conflict as the only viable route for young men to establish status and make money
So which bits of this is Chris saying are right about Manchester or any other major UK city? Given that the Conservatives are the biggest party in local government does he think city hall corruption and collaboration with organised crime is widespread and if so where; Surrey, Kensington and Chelsea, North Yorkshire? Surely, we should be told.
Not that any amount of Conservative errors are benefiting Labour, certainly not according to the latest ICM Guardian poll . The other bad news for those who hope for a Labour revival is that is seems increasingly unlikely that an unopposed successor will emerge to take over if GB is ousted or falls on his sword. The British people would surely react with understandable rage if they had to witness a potentially divisive competition in the Labour Party to see who would be their next Prime Minister, especially as contenders would have to appeal not to the general voter but to the increasingly unrepresentative constituency that chooses the Labour leader.
Being on the Iberian peninsular I remembered one possible way of resolving the combination of voters´antipathy to Mr Brown and the unacceptability of an internal Labour contest to choose a replacement for the person who replaced the person the voters chose in 2005. This is the Jose Aznar option.
In 2003 Aznar chose his successor who then became the People´s Party candidate for the 2004 election (which the PP may have won without the intervention of the Madrid bombing). So Aznar stayed as PM until the election but the election campaign was fought by his successor and current PP leader Mariano Rajoy.
Under this scenario Gordon Brown remains Prime Minister until the election but the Labour Party chooses a new leader to fight that election. In this way the internal contest within the Party for its next leader is not about foisting a new Prime Minister on the country, but about choosing someone about whom the voters can make up their own mind. The other advantage of having this option in mind is that it gives Gordon more time to try to turn things round.
I`m not advocating this nor do I think it is likely (it´s not really any of my business), but difficult circumstances can lead to novel solutions and Labour certainly does face difficult circumstances.
The release of al-Megrahi – brave, stupid or both?
I hesitate before adding to the commentary on the early release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi. But I find the whole thing so mystifying. Maybe some of my readers can help me make sense of it.
There do not seem to me to be any compassionate grounds for the early release. The Lockerbie bombers killed more people – all of them innocent civilians – than the number of UK soldiers who have tragically died in Afghanistan trying to make the world safer from terrorism. If that isn’t sufficient basis for a life-means-life sentence it is difficult to see what would be. Surely compassion could have been served by the quality of care and conditions al-Megrahi received in prison It didn’t require release, a hero’s welcome and a disastrously mixed message on terrorism.
So, everyone assumes there is something else going on. The main theory is that there is a big oil and investment deal in the background. A slightly more benign explanation is that this is all part of the continuing process of forming closer ties with the current and future leadership of Libya, a formerly rogue state. It should be noted that this process was, until this episode, hailed as one of the big breakthroughs in recent diplomacy.
If either of the last two explanations, especially the latter, are true there may be a case for the release, ugly though it has been to watch. The problem is that these explanations are being denied by the Scottish Executive and Downing Street.
Which is where the episode starts to look like poor political judgement. For the authorities in Scotland and London to put themselves in the position where they are unable to give the only information that makes their actions understandable or justifiable is either brave or foolish. The problem is not just with the immediate fall out from the USA, the media, hurt relatives and a baffled public. This case will be repeatedly cited whenever the Government claims to be tough on terrorism at home or abroad. Because the Scottish and UK Government are not filling in the gaps in the story critics and conspiracy theorists will.
My hunch is that the release was part of a strategy with the best interest of the country (and the world) at heart. But in today’s political and media culture, to pursue such a strategy while also denying it is certain be politically costly.
Meet the new targets – same as the old targets?
First, the good news. Michael Gove has told me he will be replying in September to the questions I posed in my blog a few weeks ago. Hopefully we can generate some wider coverage for what is an important debate.
Today I want to pick up an another point raised by the Sir Richard Sykes review for the Conservatives of school and pupil assessment, which Michael briefed to the press at the weekend. The Conservatives intend to tighten up on assessment in a number of ways. More points will be allocated to pupils and schools for attainment in ‘hard’ topics like maths and physics than ‘soft’ subjects like sociology and media studies. Also, there will be no recognition of attainment in the new 14-19 diplomas, which should pretty much ensure they are killed off.
But the proposal that received most coverage, and was the subject of positive comments on this site, was to remove the focus on the number of secondary school pupils reaching the target of 5 or more A-C grade GCSEs, including Maths and English. There are two grounds for this reform. First, that the current system encourages school to focus undue resources on those just around the 5 A-C’s borderline. Second, Michael has made clear that he thinks that in some subjects it is just too easy to get a ‘C’ grade (he has also said that in future those who want to become primary school teachers will be expected to get a ‘B’ grade rather than just a ‘C’ in maths).
I suspect Michael’s critique is valid. There is no doubt that schools, especially thsoe worried about being branded ‘failing’ do obsess about the 5 A-Cs target. Also, I suspect there have been steps to make it possible for less able students to get a ‘C’ in subjects like maths as long as they make a reasonable effort.
However there are some other points worth bearing in mind. The existing target is not simply a creation of ministers. Way back in the day, when I was at school, pupils and schools were very focused on the criterion for being able to enter sixth form, which was then 4 A-C ‘O’ levels (for the record I just scraped through). The Government itself recognises the problem with the GCSE target so from next year it will move to a balance scorecard approach compressing all the data about schools (there is a lot of it) into a single A-E score. I am not sure it will work. Parents will still focus on the area of school performance they care most about, and going on to do A levels will continue to figure highly.
In fact, Labour was told very early on in its administration (when David Blunkett was Education Secretary as I recollect) that the target was skewing resources. The response was to create a new target to minimise the number of pupils leaving school with no qualifications at all. The problem was that no aspirational parents cares about this target and for any school to admit that any pupil leaves with no qualifications would be a PR disaster. So this new target achieved little traction.
If the Conservatives move to a system that favors absolute performance in hard subjects it too will have a skewing effect. More students will be encouraged to do ‘hard’ subjects even if they aren’t very interested in them, but in fairness Michael may think that is a good thing. Moe problematic is the the likelihood that resources will be channeled to the most high achieving. This is simply because it is easier to get a bright pupil to attain a higher grade, or take an extra subject, than it is to achieve more with a less able child.
All targets have their drawbacks. I was reminded of this by what is happening in the police service. I was very much in favour when the Government announced that it is was moving to a single measure of policing; public satisfaction. After all, policing is the only service in which public satisfaction ratings actually decline after direct contact with the service. But I should have realised what would happen. Across England police forces are now spending hundreds of thousands of pounds employing consultants to advise them on what it is that drives public satisfaction. In this way a single national target quickly turns into multiple local targets, and resources get driven to those things that make us happier with the police even if they may not actually be the best way of ensuring law and order.
I believe public services need targets. Without them there are real problems about transparency, accountability and performance management. But all targets have their drawbacks. It is a matter of risk. The Conservatives clearly think the risk of more resources being channelled to the brightest is less worrying than that they are concentrated on those in the middle. Are they right?
Still no response from Michael Gove
I have given up hope that Michael Gove will reply to the questions I posed to him – on his invitation – last month. I’d like to say this is because he is on the run from my brilliant interrogation but I suspect it’s just that I’m not worth bothering with (even if other bits of the Conservative Party are quoting me!).
But I will keep nagging away: because I know a bit about education, because it matters, because I am fascinated by the gap between the rhetorical attractiveness of the Gove agenda and its less convincing basis in concrete policy. Also, given how highly disparaging the Conservatives are about what is going on now in most schools it is only fair that they should have their own ideas put under critical scrutiny.
Today and later in the week I want briefly to explore two recurrent critiques in Michael Gove’s pronouncements. The first is the allegation of ‘dumbing down’; the second is of onerous or inappropriate national interference in schools by Labour ministers, particularly through exam targets.
On dumbing down MG has been very clear that he wants to set the bar higher. Pupils will be discouraged from taking ‘easier’ subjects; examinations will be more rigorous; more use of streaming and setting will encourage schools more explicitly to separate the able from the less able. I don’t agree with this approach for reasons I have described before. But the point I want to make today is that the Conservatives need to be clear about the implications of this policy. There are three interpretations:
a) The Conservatives think that raising the bar and forcing more schools to do what works best will swiftly increase the number of pupils achieving a significantly higher standard. The problem with this is that most international evidence suggests it is very hard in mature school systems like ours to achieve this kind of step change in absolute attainment. If the bar rises quickly the number reaching it will, at least in the short to medium term, have to fall. Also, the Conservatives’ ability to force schools to do anything will be limited by their other commitment which is to free schools from central interference and let parents set up and manage their own schools. As an example, MG has been clear that he is very unenthusiastic about competency based curricula like the RSA’s Opening Minds but over 200 school have voluntarily signed up to OM. Will the Conservatives force them to abandon an approach which so many schools say works for them?
b) The Conservatives recognise that raising the bar will mean fewer pupils reach it but they see this as a price worth paying. If so then the Conservatives are abandoning a long held cross-party commitment to increase participation rates in post compulsory education. There is nothing wrong with this policy (the Treasury would certainly be keen on it), but it is a radical break not just from UK but from international practice. If the Conservatives are intent upon it they should say so explicitly.
c) The Conservatives want to raise the academic bar and also maintain the trajectory of high participation. They will do this by more clearly distinguishing between those with academic and those with vocational abilities. The problems with this are, first, that as far as I can see, the Conservatives don’t yet have a policy for school age vocational education. Second, they will need to explain how they intend to overcome the historic failure in England to develop a vocational route into post compulsory education with the same status as the academic. The Conservatives are clearly intent on doing away with diplomas (they said the other day that they will not count them in assessing school performance), but we don’t know what – if anything – they intend to replace them with.
The reason ministers, schools, and universities have ‘lowered the bar’ on the academic performance needed to get into higher education is that we have wanted to increase participation rates (at post 16 and into HE) faster than we have been able to increase underlying levels of academic attainment. There isn’t much evidence that this has damaged the performance of the top 10% (in most international surveys it is among this group that England scores highly). The policy has arguably been unfortunate for the bottom 40% as it means that not going into HE is now a bigger hurdle to employment than before (for example, you can’t now become a nurse without a degree).
The group that will be most impacted by the Conservative reforms is that which has benefited from the expansion in post 16 participation, a group largely but not exclusively comprising middle class children. So unless the Conservatives can find a magic bullet to achieve a substantial and rapid increase in underlying ability their policy will presumably make it harder for above average (but not brilliant) middle class children to get to college. This is a policy that I think Sir Humphrey would have called ‘bold’.
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