School reforms will bring real social mobility

Helene Davidson

It is interesting that in his interview, Milburn attributes his own success to the support of loving parents. Yet most of what Labour has done since it has come to office in terms of the structure of benefits and tax allowances has eroded this fundamental link in a healthy society.

Verity

The way to get children from dependence on state charity (we should stop dressing it up as "welfare" and "benefits") is grammar schools, to which the vicious Labourites took an axe. As they took an axe to our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our national boundaries and our civil society.

These people are toxic and any adherence to this belief system should be regarded as a sign of mental derangement. As observed in mental derangement poster boy Gordon Brown.

Marbury

I completely agree with your assessment of Grayling's response. I was shocked at how ham-fisted it was. The Tories should be applauding this but using it as an opportunity to point to Labour's poor record on this issue. It seems to me that the Tories should be trying to position themselves as the true party of social mobility, not of the status quo. Grayling's statement sends the opposite signal. Replace him with Ken Clarke (a good example of social mobility himself)!

LiverpoolTory

Don't forget that Labour have destroyed our University system in the name of social mobility. All you need these days is to have spent a few days at school to get into a Uni. Thus destroying the experience and chances of the people who genuinely deserve to be there. Also practically every profession now demands a specialist degree qualification. If anyone wants to have a career they need to spend thousands on education and if they want to change careers they have to spend thousands more. If Labour believed in social mobility they would scrap their communistic policies of putting everyone in University and allow strong skilled professions to be obtainable without a degree. But it won't happen, especially when it has kept millions of young people off the dole and paying for their own unemployment for the past eleven years.

Denis Frisk

Is poverty to be the only criteria or will intelligence also be taken into consideration?

Chris Grayling

James - your post misses the point about my comment. Of course the Conservative Party should be the Party of social mobility - but as the Government's own assessment of the problem in November shows, the issue is about educational failure, endemic worklessness and family breakdown. Instead of addressing the real issues, Brown immediately defaults to a gimmick which is nothing to do with any of the Cabinet Office's recommendations about social mobility but is everything about his approach to politics and is reminiscent of the Laura Spence affair. We won't improve social mobility in Britain today by stopping ambitious parents helping their children. Instead we have to tackle the root causes. An example is that the lack of single science teaching in most state schools makes it more difficult for pupils from those schools to get into the best medical schools. But instead of understanding and tackling issues like this, Brown just returns to the old politics of class. I thought we'd left that behind.

Chris Grayling

THX1138

Not much social mobility in the shadow cabinet more a case of a bunch of OE's haves & have mores, Dave needs to broaden the base bring back Ken & south LDN council estate boy made good David Davis.

I do agree with Gove & Fraser on education, we should park political ideology and do what ever works I was very taken with Fraser's article on Swedish schools.

Verity I thought Maggie as education Sec did the most axing of Grammars.

I don't think they were ever that popular with Tory parents either, remember the vast majority of children of Conservative voting parents were also condemned as failures at 11 and packed off to the local secondary modern too.

John Moss

Useful profile of Milburn here, including a photograph of him in his radical activist days when he worked at the bookshop, famously spoonerised as, "Haze of Dope". The photograph certainly suggests he was not unfamiliar with the reasons behind that!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5356016.stm

Cogito Ergosum

It is time that schools were organised in groups of six. One grammar, one special needs, and four midstream: this would match the distribution of intelligence and general ability amongst "homo sap".

Then a little tweak: permit one of the four midstream schools to ask for top-up fees, up to say ten percent of the basic cost. That school would become favoured for the dim rich kids, thus taking pressure off the grammar schools.

biggestaspidistra

one saddening aspect of contemporary Britain is how opportunity for the young working class has been reduced compared to a half century ago. The 'root cause' of this is lack of opportunity and can be remedied by a bright and creative intern system aimed at working class youth.

Chuck Unsworth

@ Chris Grayling

"Brown just returns to the old politics of class. I thought we'd left that behind."

Why on earth did you think that? Brown will continue to exploit class jealousies for all he's worth. It's about voting demographics and absolutely nothing at all to do with 'tackling issues'. Let's face it, even if Brown was/is at all remotely serious about dealing with these problems, the results would not be seen and acknowledged until way after the next General Election - so he's never going to benefit from a feel-good, is he? No, it's the usual relentless pursuit of the headline.

Carol

The system can do all it like to encourage children of working class backgrounds, but the problem facing most disadvantaged children (whatever their class) is not SO much the system, as their parents' attitude to personal advancement and education.

Polly and Alice's mum

Well done, Chris Grayling, for reading this blog and for responding so intelligently.
Can we hope that other shadow cabinet ministers also read speccie coffeehouse, and note the comments that follow.
If there is one thing that I would like to get over to you lot is that Gordon Brown fights DIRTY and you have to fight back dirty. Every time he lies, spins, distorts etc (every time he opens his mouth in fact) you have got to get in there and put the record straight.
You seem to be making a good start, but you need to be a great deal more ruthless. This is no time for good manners.

Polly and Alice's mum

Having said that, my husband disagrees with me. He says you should not sink to their level and degrade the whole political shebang.
But I say, SOMEONE needs to point out the truth, repeatedly, to the vast populace who either believe Gordon or who think ALL politicians are liars.

oldtimer

I agree with Mr Grayling`s interpretation. It is Brown seeking to redefine the class war battle line. This attitude is burned deep in the Labour mindset.

Fortunately for me, I am of an age when Direct Grant schools were accessible by dint of passing examinations and thence offering the opportunity to attend University without running up colossal debts. This was a route to social mobility. It benefitted many, many thousands in the early post war years, including me. Most of my contemporaries at my college arrived there by the same route.

Fergus Pickering

My children went to grammar schools and I thank God for them. Grammar schools are popular with me. Thirty per cent of the children in East Kent go to them. Keeps out the riff-raff, don't you know.

Marbury

I'm afraid Chris Grayling is being politically naive if he thinks that most voters are going to hear the subtlety of his argument. What they'll hear is: Labour addresses the problem of social mobility, and the Tories cry "class war". It's an own goal.

Fergus Pickering

Marbury - bollocks. Labour addresses the problem of social mobility. No they bloody don't. The greatest instrument for social mobility was - you've guessed it - the grammar school. The comprehensive keeps people just where they are. And sending a few ignorant layabouts from housing estates to university won't do any good. You have to stop them being bleeding ignorant in the first place.

TGF UKIP

Sorry to embarrass you by completely agreeing with you, Fergus Pickering and perhaps I can point out to all Coffee Housers that the UKIP policy is a grammar school in every town.

One of the many reasons I shall be voting for them and not the Cameron Tories at the GE.

J H Holloway

TGF UKIP...

So you're voting UKIP...how long have you been thinking about taking this step?

Fergus Pickering

TGF UKIP, I'm never embarrassed by agreement. If Robert Mugabe were to agree with me that wouldn't shake my calm certainty that I'm am right about this. Your UKIP thing is no more than a charming eccentricity. Why, the great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself believed in fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Livia

Grammar schools - the elephant in the room for new and old Labour alike.

There is one key reason why the education system in the '50s and '60s enabled social mobility and the current system does not: the role of parents.

Back then going to a grammar or direct grant school depended on the kid and not the parents. If you passed the 11-plus you went to grammar school, regardless of social class, parental income, or where you happened to live. I lived on a council estate in south London and went to a direct grant school. My father hated the school. It offended all his socialist instincts but short of actually refusing to allow me to go, and he was far too law abiding for that, there was nothing he could do about it. That simply could not happen today.

Getting into a good school now depends almost entirely on the parents. If they choose (and can affor) to live in Kent and a few other places, there are the grammar schools, but don't be fooled by the fact that these are in the maintained sector. These schools are dominated by affluent kids whose middle class parents have ensured a place by the power of their wallet, paying prep school fees and/or private tutors to get the kids through the entrance assessment. The other alternative are those few academies which are achieving success, largely, it would seem, because those same middle class parents work the system to get their kids to the schools with the best teachers and the best facilities.

Parents have a huge impact on their children for good or for evil, but whichever it is, you are more likely to share your parents' social milieu than break from it. Social mobility depends precisely on children breaking out of the social constraints imposed by their parents milieu. So design an education system that does this and the problem is solved. Simple as that!

I'm not sure if reintroducing grammar schools across the country would help given what happens in the areas where they exist at the moment. But at the very least, acknowledging that the old system did work and analysing fully why it did would get us on the road to finding a solution. There's a challenge for Milburn.

Fergus Pickering

Livia, what is it that happens in areas where grammar schools are at the moment. Specifically, what is it that happens in East Kent. Let me tell you that many of my daughters' friends were, and are, as common as you like. Come to that, my daughters aren't exactly top drawer either. Their accents!!!

Carol

Fergus - Don't know specifically about east Kent, but in general do agree with Livia.
MP John Bercow has said that Bucks' grammar schools are dominated by children of parents who made sure the children were coached/tutored. In Kingston, Tiffin Girls this year had more than 2000 applicants for 90 places. You can bet your bottom dollar that most of the lucky intake will have been coached in verbal reasoning. Coaching is an industry in that area - twenty five pounds a lesson once or twice a week for six months. So, who are the parents who can afford that?
As from my earlier post on this thread - yes, so much is down to the parents.

Fergus Pickering

Kent is different, firstly because we're not so rich, secondly because THIRTY PER CENT of the intake go to Grammar Schools. Plenty of averagely lousy working class parents about, or not about, at parents' evenings. Rich kids go to public schools, of which there are a good number, some of them quite cheap as these places go. East Kent is the ONLY place to study how grammar schools would work everywhere, because it's such an average, even down-at-heel (Herne Bay to Thanet)sort of a place.

Livia

Fergus, East Kent might be a bit different but in West Kent the grammar schools are all dominated by ex-prep school or privately tutored kids. The excellent local primary school where I live sends a load of kids to the grammar schools too but the parents mostly live in £500k+ houses. Whereas the primary school on the nearest social housing estate sends virtually no one to the grammar schools. Now, I for one don't believe it's because there aren't any bright kids living there but I do believe that they are probably not getting anywhere like the help and support that the middle class kids are getting.

And now, with school fees on the rise and city bonuses non-existent you can bet your life that even more pre-school kids will be piling into the grammar schools. Indeed, that probably explains Tiffin's 2000 applicants, Carol.

Jeremy

If Labour had not devastaed the education system and in particular the grammar school system, it would not be having to thrash around at the 11th hour to rebuild what it destroyed.

It's a joke!

Carol

Livia - I quite agree.
Also, the problem for Kingston is that it would seem there are not enough grammar school places (per head of population) compared with East Kent. This is also not helped by the fact that Tiffin schools allow applicants from everywhere outside Kingston. This means your ordinary kid in Kingston is up against the parent driven child across the whole of SW London and Surrey.
I completely understand how putting excellent children in excellent schools pushes them further than average schools - I don't have a problem with that per se - but when the excellent children get the places only because of their own parents' wealth or pushiness, it's hardly social mobility in action.

Fergus Pickering

Livia, Carol. Do it my way. Perhaps my daughters mix with the low-lifes and there are all these posh kids. I just haven't come across them. Daughters of van-drivers, daughters of heating engineers, daughters of taxi-drivers, daughters of schoolteachers, daughters of African immigrants. The only posh dad I know is a Prison Governor - and a very nice man.

Livia

Fergus, that's fantastic! Maybe someone should do a study focusing on East Kent because it sounds like you've got something that works. I wonder to what extent this is because of the geography - it's never been that accessible to London and so not that attractive to the commuters, but I'm guessing this is changing with the rail link. Will that make a change to the grammar schools too I wonder?