Poverty of aspiration; not poverty of talent

MikeC

Hear hear.

This point is particularly pertinent in relation to Oxbridge entry. Witness the tripe peddled by the media at this time of year, year in, year out:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/oxbridgeandelitism
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-oxbridge-walls-that-cant-be-scaled-918002.html
This one is particularly sickening:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/aug/05/accesstouniversity.highereducation

I'm a state educated Cambridge graduate. I count myself lucky because my 6th form encouraged and supported us in applying to top universities and took pride in helping us get there.

I have seen first hand the considerable efforts made by the university, admissions tutors and students to widen access I rapidly realised that the caricature painted by Toynbee et. al. is miles off the mark.

The failure to raise kids' aspirations (or indeed the proactive destruction of those aspirations) in many state schools is the crucial block to mobility.

Miranda

I'll tell you whose 'institutionally rascist', the public sector and all their grasping little cohorts. And it's the people who pay their wages who are at the receiving end of their wretched racism. Why don't they just go hang themselves in shame, and have done with it !! Are they academics or numpties?

David Stevens

or even a brake on social mobility - clearly went to the wrong sort of university.

catesby

From the report on the Wrwick study you link:

In 2007 44.9% of black Caribbean pupils, and 47.3% of pupils of mixed white and black Caribbean heritage, achieved 5 or more A*-C grades, compared to 57.3% nationally

An uncanny fit with the one to one-and-a-half standard deviation racial difference in IQ discussed in the Bell Curve.

Could Herrnstein and Murray have been right after all?

C Powell

Why are we surprised? The film Kes described just this poverty of expectations for working class boys in the mid-60s. It was considered so inflammatory then that the film took a year to find a distributor. Nothing that either Labour or the Tories have done since then has addressed this basic problem with our approach to education.

MartSharm

The first sentence is gramatically incorrect and makes little sense. There is a glaringly omitted apostrophe: "comprehensive pupils' ". "Brake" not "break" in the last sentence. The "devastating" statistics offer no comparison with the opinions of equivalent privately-educated pupils and are therefore meaningless. Another fatuous own goal from Mr Martin.

dilys

If private education has all the answers then make that the norm.

Why am I not surprised to read that it is the teacher's fault again?

canththinkofapunrightnow

Is the Guardian turning down this sort of article nowadays? No other reason for it to turn up here, full as it is of prejudice and assumptions.

Trumpeter Lanfried

catesby@5.53 PM. I have yet to read a convincing rebuttal of Herrnstein and Murray.

Frank Pulley

Gawd above! How can the editorial staff of this magazine have this prat Martin waffling on about education, when they have Melanie Phillips, the author of All Must Have Prizes, a click away under the same roof. Is he somebody's nephew, or something?

Roy

There is a sneaking suspicion here that some with an agenda are pushing once more the racist barrow. This is always done when coloured students don't show an even achievement level with their contemporaries. Always it is assumed this should be level, must be level, and it has to be level no matter what.

Chuck Unsworth

This 'study' is very crude undergraduate stuff. Why does it concentrate on schools and teachers? Simply because it's easier to research. If the authors had any wit whatsoever they'd be taking a closer look at the family and social backgrounds of the failing students, but that might involve a certain amount of genuine research and hard work. This a lazy, sensationalist, approach to what should be a proper academic examination.

Expectations are not imposed by schools. Expectations and aspirations are formed way before children even reach school age, and are reinforced throughout their school lives each and every day in the home and the community. It's not the lack of knowledge which is the problem, it's the lack of desire.

Professor Ga Ga

Another top article from Sean Martin. Obviously, the solution is to shut down all the church and private schools. Then, with zero social mobility for anyone, there wouldn't be any discrimination against the poor.