26 Comments on Social mobility – some clarification

Liam Murray on Thu, 23rd Jul 2009 2:34 pm


I’m sure the advantage gained from these ‘less benign’ efforts IS marginal in most cases Matthew but that’s an insight open to those of us that study the data or discuss these things in an abstract way – it’s not a natural or reasonable thought process to expect most parents to undertake.

The objection remains that to judge those efforts remotely or in the context of some ‘greater good’ is flawed and adds little of value to the discussion on mobility. If anything it’s an observation that lends weight to the arguments often advanced from the right that the very idea of social mobility is misguided.

Brian Hughes on Thu, 23rd Jul 2009 4:02 pm


It’s a slightly distressing irony that selection by ability at 11 probably produced more mobility than the present system. Perhaps that’s why so many grammar schools were abolished whilst Mrs Thatcher was Min of Ed, she was keen to pull the ladder up behind her!

But I’m not advocating a return to the 11+, its evils outweighed its virtues.

It’s hard to see a politically acceptable solution to the problem you’ve identified. Parental choice, a well-intentioned but misguided and largely ineffective attempt to provide an incentive for school improvement in my judgement, is now too deeply ingrained in our consumer-obsessed society.

Maybe the lottery allocation system being tried in some local authorities is the fairest. One’s parents are, after all, also decided through a form of lottery…

Graham Walker on Thu, 23rd Jul 2009 4:10 pm


Matthew

I right with you on this one. I send my two boys to a mixed intake Primary School in Lambeth where parents of all backgrounds are encouraged to participate in the life of the school. My boys are both doing great at school. And the school has been steadily improving and recently Ofted described it as ‘outstanding’. My competitive side can’t help a wry smile at other local parents who have paid £200,000 over the odds for house a few hundrew miles away but nearer a local church primary school which heaven forbid may be stagnatiing and getting overcrowded! And by some invisible hand seems to avoid having hardly any children eligible for Free School Meals in its annual intake.

I think there is hope as parents increasingly (perhaps too slowly) realise that their input is as or more important than the school to children’s learning. And whilst the evidence is patchy, a lot of people still feel that it’s a good thing for kids to have the ability to learn and have fun with other kids from varied backgrounds. I feel that it’s more fun as a parent too!

Is it right for some in the middle classes to hope for some downward mobility for their kids? Can a lawyer or doctor wish a less stressful work life for their son or daughter? Or like companies with demanding shareholders should families always be looking to increase their social position and income?

Graham

Graham Walker on Thu, 23rd Jul 2009 4:12 pm


in case anyone spots my error…..i meant a few hundred yards away and not miles!

matthewtaylor on Thu, 23rd Jul 2009 4:26 pm


Thanks Graham. My boys’ mother was chair of governors at her local Lambeth primary for almost a decade and during her team the school went from being very average to one of the most improved in London. It was hard work but she got great satisfaction from the process.

Christine on Fri, 24th Jul 2009 1:30 am


Certainly a touchy subject, you are right. When I first read your insight, earlier this week, I let the initial insinuation roll around in my mind, and deduced you meant what you clarified, here.

It might be a picky thing to separate the ‘middle class’ as a subject of study, for certainly all families of all classes want exactly the same things for their children, to varying degrees. And I agree it would not do to ‘interrupt’ the existing learning process from middle-class parent to middle-class child, as it helps to propagate the class system in which we live. Mixing up the soup in some schools, as it were, seems to add life and propagation to this system, again, in varying degrees and locations.

Let’s not forget many of these parents would love to spend more time with their children, but are just too busy working in order to keep the economy going. It is truly the mark, not just of the man, but of his family, to see how the next generation carries on, and ensures success for his line. What are the middle class schools teaching? Can they possibly hope to bend for so many different backgrounds of social and cultural aspirations? I think it depends on where the schools are, who’s in it, and how and if we weave global popular culture as acceptable material into existing international backgrounds.

Joe Nutt on Fri, 24th Jul 2009 10:33 am


Can I add a bit of much needed reality to the value added myth. According to value add, a secondary school in which I did several months supply teaching, comfortably outperforms the best local grammar school (one the the very best in the UK.) Of very many illustrations I could provide, here is just one about this secondary school that exposes the absurdity of value add.

A recently arrived, fifteen year immigrant boy from the middle east, who I taught and got to know well, was attacked and badly beaten up on the school premises by an estimated 15 other boys, for one reason alone. He was trying his best to work hard. The school made no effort to even identify, never mind punish the attackers

Many middle class parents make very informed judgements when choosing a school for their children and amongst them is the fundamental freedom to decide who they wish their children to associate with.

roy bland on Fri, 24th Jul 2009 10:42 am


“I’m not in the business of lecturing anyone about their school choices”

you’re not in the self-awareness business

Steve Rathbone on Fri, 24th Jul 2009 11:39 am


I am right with Joe Nutt’s comments on this one. As a pupil, try being overtly intelligent in some of these schools and you will find the cloakrooms at break time are hazardous places. With grammar schools, the broad premiss was that everybody wanted to work hard and, indeed, was expected to do so. True, the secondary moderns were inadequate. So they should have been improved instead of abolishing the grammar schools. The Germans have grammar and technical schools. Why does it work for them?

Having been to a comprehensive in the 1980s, I learnt very quickly how to do other people’s work for them – to avoid a good battering – and how to work hard discreetly. Mixed ability sets for arts subjects were quite an experience with one half of the room totally disengaged (even with reasonable teaching) and looking forward to the big Friday night fight in town, while some of us inwardly and desperately clamoured for more learning. It was alright for me, since I came from a bookish academic family. That said, the poor quality of maths and science teaching has left me with low confidence in those areas. Many friends of similar intelligence tragically underperformed as a result of the conditions described above. Moving to a grammar school at 16 was a liberation from the low expectations, anti-intellectualism of some (not all) of the staff, indiscipline and mediocrity of the comprehensive experiment.

Your children only go to school once. Give them the best you can find and don’t inflict your social engineering fantasies on them. They will discover soon enough what they have missed out on and they will hold you to account for it.

Colin on Sat, 25th Jul 2009 10:39 pm


There’s nothing quite like the site of left leaning posh kids pulling up the ladder behind themselves to deny the children of working class folks who have done moderately well in life the access to the privilages that they enjoyed.

WP on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 5:03 pm


Matthew – building on your comments about how the primary aim for parents should be to engage with their children and their school, rather than looking for the quick fix of a ‘good school’, what are your views on the private school system?
Private schools surely allow upper middle class families to pay for the guarantee that their kids will succeed in life? It also allows them to exempt themselves from the need to actively engage themselves in their child’s education at home or in school.

matthewtaylor on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 6:45 pm


I am no the greatest fan of the concept of social mobility. The point I was trying to make is that the efforts made by many middle class families go beyond bestowing the natural cultural advantages that they have and into trying to rig the game their way. This may be natural but whether it is or not we know there is a massive backlash if politicians or policy makers do anything which looks like a serious attempt to take away these ways of ensuring it is very rare for middle class offspring to fall down the ladder

matthewtaylor on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 6:47 pm


Fair point Brian. School choice may work to drive school performance at the margins but it also appears to have socially polarising effects. Thanks for the comment

matthewtaylor on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 6:48 pm


Thanks Chrstine. Some really interesting thoughts.

matthewtaylor on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 6:52 pm


I wont deny your experience. But as a contrast my 13 year old goes to the inner city comp of which Oliver Letwin said he would rather beg in he street that send his children there. He likes his school and I am willing to accept that although he might overall do a few grades less well at GCSE than f he had gone to Dulwich College he will always feel at ease with very different people.

matthewtaylor on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 6:54 pm


It’s a far cop Roy. Didn’t mean to sound sanctimonious. I guess I think it is the system not the individuals that have to change but I may have failed to get that across.

matthewtaylor on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 6:57 pm


Hi Steve. You speak from the heart and from your own experience. As it happens both my sons wanted to go the the local comps with their friends from primary school. So I guess I’ll have to blame them if it all goes horribly wrong.
Thanks for the comment

matthewtaylor on Sun, 26th Jul 2009 6:59 pm


I agree Will. Indeed I wrote a series of posts along these lines son after I started blogging
Thanks for the comment

Karl on Mon, 27th Jul 2009 11:13 am


As with climate change you have highlighted an inconvenient truth, probably a cultural theory explanation isn’t there? …
I think school governance is a big issue in this. My experience in a struggling school was that Governors had lots of responsibilities and few rights, not unlike Councillors. Which as ever leads to the current flaws in the local deomocratic model or the way it is interpreted. Why not use well-being powers to stop the corruption of admissions? Why not reclaim streets for people?
This really makes me feel like I need to go and lie down in a quiet room for a long time …

Joan Keating on Mon, 27th Jul 2009 3:37 pm


Late coming to this as I have had swine flu wiith all the trimmings (my children generously infected me). Have to say that as the mother of an very bright eleven year old (has been doing secondary school maths at primary school at the school’s insistence, level 5s in everything at the end of year 5) who is going to the local comprehensive in September I wish I hadn’t read the above comments. I have to say that I am not inflicting my social engineering on my son though, rather we have gone with what we can legitimately get. I am not about to pretend a faith (I take religion far too seriously for that), move house (we love our neighbours) or pay for tutors to get into a school we’ll have to bus him half way across London to. We could possibly afford fees for him (I don’t work but my partner is a senior civil servant) but not for our other two equally bright children who will also transfer to secondary school in the next few years. My own experience is of having been a working class child at a secondary modern turned comprehensive and as I turned out to be academic (something my parents were in no position to spot or deal with) it wasn’t ideal. Infact, it was crap but was transformed by the decision of a couple who for whatever reason decided to send their middle class daugjter to my school. She was the only child I remember who lived in a house that her family owned. The very fact that her parents expected her to go to university (as her older siblings had) opened a world to me that I hadn’t known existed. I went on to get a first and a PhD. My partner, incidentally, went to a grammar school (in Shropshire where they hadn’t abolished the system) and left school with no qualifications, later getting to university via an access course. While fearful of what will happen to my children at secondary school I comfort myself with the feeling that at least I recognise that wherever you send them there are going to be problems. There are no reasons for any of us to feel smug.

How the middle classes can be the change on social mobility « The Home of Toddism on Tue, 28th Jul 2009 1:45 pm


[...] Culture — Tags: Fiona Millar, Matthew Taylor, Melissa Benn — jonathantodd @ 1:41 pm Matthew Taylor argues with good sense and strong social [...]

Mark on Tue, 28th Jul 2009 3:47 pm


Matthew

This is a very interesting debate and I agree that it’s “touchy”. All parents take choices and, having taken a position i.e. state or independent I get a sense that they become entrenched in their positions which makes it difficult to discuss rationally.

I take a different view from you. From my perspective (as a middle class parent) there’s nothing worse than middle class parents taking an “active role” in their child’s school, although I have to confess that I don’t know precisely what “active” means. My experience is that almost all parents are self-interested and “active” tends to mean getting the best they can for their own child at all costs. I would much rather that parents didn’t get involved. And I don’t agree that the “middle class” ethos is the best way to encourage social mobility. It’s as if you are saying, only you know what’s best for everyone else. I appreciate that may not be the case, but it’s a fine line.

On a personal note, I have a son at Dulwich College and my guess is that he’ll feel at ease with as many people in life as your son. You appear to be assuming that boys at DC are privileged and don’t mix with other people outside school. My experience is that most of the boys are quite normal, and in my son’s case activities outside school give him plenty of experience in dealing with people from all sorts of backgrounds. I guess we’ll have to beg to differ on that one.

Joe Nutt on Tue, 28th Jul 2009 9:13 pm


Mark (amongst others) I have worked extensively in both sectors and the school most true to the “comprehensive” ideal I ever worked in was…a boarding school.

Martin Robinson on Wed, 29th Jul 2009 11:15 am


The social status of teachers is the bottom of the pile!

http://blog.yesassess.co.uk/2009/07/is-teaching-socially-mobile-career.html

Rob Shorrock on Fri, 31st Jul 2009 7:04 am


As ever this is all about middle class fear and prejudice; the corrupting influence of the working class child on their precious offspring. School ‘choice’ exposes some breathtaking immorality on the part of these parents who will sometimes lie and bully schools through the appeals systems to take their children on.

To promote social cohesion, there is a strong argument to use Index of Deprivation measures to ensure that every state funded schools takes a balance of pupils from all social backgrounds.

I would also ban traffic within a half mile radius of the school during start and close times. Not only would this improve road safety for children to cycle and walk to school, it would stop illegal parking but also have the effect of parents beginning recognising the value of sending children to schools within their local community.

matthewtaylor on Fri, 31st Jul 2009 9:18 pm


Good stuff Rob. My heart says yes my head says we may need to be a bit more incremental to avoid a bit back lash. Thanks for the comment.

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