Home > Alex Massie

Saturday 21 November 2009

Rod Liddle's Education Policy is Antediluvian Piffle

Tuesday, 3rd November 2009

Rod Liddle reminds us that he's no liberal. This will not, I imagine, trouble him unduly. Nevertheless, his disaste for the middle-classes gets the better of him when he writes:

The mantra of consumer choice was co-opted by New Labour and applied to all sorts of perfectly unsuitable things. Children should go to their nearest comprehensive school, without right of appeal. If that school is failing then the local education authority, or the government, should take steps to ensure it no longer fails, by either sacking the headteacher, or spending more money on it. Middle class monkeys will still shift around from area to area looking for schools which they believe are “good”; but the scrapping of league tables – which, like all artificially imposed targets have become an end in themselves rather than a means – would lessen that likelihood. There should be no genuflection in the direction of local communities (ie no hijabs, no burqas, no Sikhs with knives, no chavs with earrings). They should be both literally and metaphorically uniform, offering an equal education to all kids from all backgrounds, with no risk of schools being defined as “failing”. As I say, if Ofsted and the government believe schools are failing they should do something about it, quickly.

“Choice” is still considered an untrammeled benefit to all. But there are plenty of areas where choice makes us, on the whole, less happy, and schools are one of them. Another is hospital treatment. There are certain times when the state can make our decisions for us, and when we would wish it to do so.

Really? Perhaps Brother Liddle would care to tell us what other times we should hand control of our lives over to the state. There remains, in many quarters, a baffling determination to pretend that truths we experience in other areas of our lives - namely that, most often and on balance, competition and choice increase standards and accountability - somehow do not apply to health and education. Presumably because health and education are, in some mysterious, never explained way, different.

But how are they different? Rod does't even bother to try and tell us. And why, if choice is so bad for us, is it ok for people to choose the university they attend, the airline they want to use, the car they buy, even where they want to live and the house they buy? Why not let the state make those decisions for us too? After all, one airline or one car is much like another, innit?

School league tables may be "artificially imposed targets" but there's little evidence, I think, that scrapping them lessens the likelihood that "middle class monkeys" (and really, what's wrong with being middle-class? By any reasonable standard more of us are middle-class these days than has ever been the case) will "shift around from area to area" to enroll their kids in what they consider the "best" schools. If there were then Scottish parents wouldn't move house to be in a given schools' catchment area. But they, or at least some of them, do move in just this fashion.

And if choice - that is free and functioning markets - really makes no difference then why does competition serve to drive up standards in the private sector? Or does Rod deny that this is the case? It's not just a question of cash: it's that private schools must react to consumer demand while the state sector, too often, remains in thrall to producer interests. The Tories, in England, seem determined to offer a stark lesson here: offering consumers power in education while handing control of the NHS over to the BMA. We shall see which works better. (Never mind, for now, the spectacular intellectual incoherence of the contrast in approach to these twin public services.)

For that matter, one of the arguments for choice is that the state has actually proved very bad at identifying failing schools, let alone "doing something about it". The market, however, is not so kind. We know this because we've seen bad private schools close, forcing pupils to move to better-performing schools. On balance this is a good, if painful, thing.

No-one, I think, believes that all parents will always take decisions that are in the best interests of their children. But it is perverse to think that the solution to that problem is to curtail everyone's freedom and coerce families into accepting whatever the state deigns to give them. To then argue that they should be grateful for receiving the meagre fruits of their taxes is to add insult to injury. Dislike the middle-class all you like, but let's not pretend that a determination to clip their wings won't also hit the aspirational working-classes.

No system is perfect, but Rod's preferences - throw more money at it! - are a recipe for continued failure. On the whole, choice is your friend, not your enemy.

Filed under: Education (55 more articles) , Lefties (11 more articles) , NHS (7 more articles)

Previous Back to Alex Massie Next

Blogs: Martin Bright | Susan Hill | Melanie Phillips | Coffee House | Faith Based

Actions: Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (8)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

Geoff Miller

November 3rd, 2009 3:38pm Report this comment

Competition is great. What Liddle proposes is impossibly Stateist but I can feel his frustration..

If we want to do the best for all children we have to take away the opportunity for parents to jump the queue and get tough on failing schools and failing parents.

We need to provide opportunity and channels for those who wish to improve their lot.

That does that mean that the 11+ should be back on the agenda?

Or is good education only available to those people who can afford to live in the catchment areas of good schools?

In the 60's I, like many kids living in the shadow of the Longbridge car factory, had the opportunity to become socially mobile by passing the 11+.

Now, the kids growing up there are in a dead end. Crappy Comprehensives, no way out.

Its not just a case of improving the school - by being able to get into an establishment that wasn't tainted by unaspiring kids and parents it allowed the ties to be cut.

They have no choice today and the culture denies them the opportunity to break free.

Today only money and connections get choice.

Liddle may not be a liberal - but then again liberal is a dirty word these days.

We say that the UK needs immigration to bring in skills. My Grammar school was full of working class kids who went on to become professors, doctors, lawyers, finance professionals etc etc.

Today the same catchment area just produces drones and benefit junkies.

We have Labour to thank for that.

Keep them down - and keep them voting Labour.

ndm

November 3rd, 2009 6:14pm Report this comment

I thought the point of Rod Liddle's blog was to provide comic relief from the 24*7 hatefest next door.

EC

November 3rd, 2009 8:23pm Report this comment

Choice is all fine and dandy when you get you get fees paid to a private boarding school set in in 300 acres of Perth and Kinross isn't it Alex?

Alex, you have your head stuck in the smug bubble. Many are not afforded the private education that you provided.

For many that live in towns and rural areas where there is only one accessible secondary school then THERE IS NO CHOICE.

For the many that live in a large urban or metropolitan areas if you are not lucky enough to live in the catchment area of a 'good' school, or cannot afford to move into it, then THERE IS NO CHOICE.

For the many, more often than not, the concept of choice is a fantasy. For the many, Rod is quite right to demand a uniform standard of secondary schools. If the French and Germans can manage to provide a decent secondary state education, a secular education without the 'tail' of any multi-cultural ethnic/religious nonsense being permitted to 'wag the dog,' then why cannot the British?

Eton Dave, if your reading this, then you need to get RGC Gove's head straight on this one.

ndm

November 3rd, 2009 8:33pm Report this comment

Many are not afforded the private education that you provided.

I was going to make some witty comment about this being an ufortunate byproduct of learning English as a second language - then I read the following:

If the French and Germans can manage to provide a decent secondary state education, a secular education without the 'tail' of any multi-cultural ethnic/religious nonsense being permitted to 'wag the dog,' then why cannot the British?

EC

November 3rd, 2009 8:47pm Report this comment

ndm, wots it like to be perfick?

Kittler

November 3rd, 2009 9:02pm Report this comment

Middle Class or do you mean Middle Income?
The Middle Class are small in number as are the Upper or Aristo's, and there are the two biggies, the Working and the Under Classes.

JohnBUK

November 3rd, 2009 11:21pm Report this comment

Geoff Miller Whilst I have sympathy with bringing back the 11+ all that would mean is that the same parents would play the same games with Junior schools. The fact is The State cannot run anything, least of all education. Schools should be run privately and therefore be accountable to the local "marketplace". All parents could be given "education vouchers" to spend at any school with the State paying the cost direct to the school - no LEA or other intermediate creaming off funds. No government or Teacher's Unions preaching political messages either or using them for their social experiments.

Fergus Pickering

November 4th, 2009 7:23am Report this comment

Ah well, we chaps in Kent have the grammar schools. Rod Liddle will send his children to the nearest school. That will work fine at primary level because he surely lives in a nice area. The primary schools round here which are dire are in poor areas, the sorts of places Rod doesn't live in, and neither do I. Secondary school is far away. There is plenty of time for him to rethink his position. As I said in a post which Rod has not seen fitto print, one of the Secondary schools nearby has bewen burned down three times. I think I would skip over that one. And if he says there is nothingnlike that round wnere he lives then I say he should get around more. To be frank, I didn't want my children mixing with incendiaries, so at bottom it is probably a class thing.

Post comment