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Friday 18 July 2008

Balls wants a 100 per cent tax on inherited brains

Irwin Stelzer admires the Schools Secretary, and so regrets that his admissions policy prevents schools from taking account of a pupil’s prospects of success. Bad news all round

Fast forward to today, and the schools minister. ‘The City of London would never have flourished in the 1990s unless we had the reforms of the 1980s. I do not think as an economy and education system we will be excellent unless we use the talents of everyone.... I am determined to fight the battle for excellence for all,’ he told the Times.

The problem is that the experience in the City refutes rather than supports Balls’s thesis. Success in the City was based on opportunity for all, not ‘excellence for all’. Allow a thousand flowers to bloom, surely, but understand that some will surely wilt in the heat of open competition. No minister instructed firms how to conduct interviews, or which predictors of success to seek and which to ignore. Yes, general anti-discrimination laws were to be obeyed, but they do not require any firm to ignore differences in talent and ability, or to turn a blind eye to an applicant’s past aberrant behaviour. Naturally, some were not selected by the firm of their choice.

This is precisely the sorting — call it selection — process that Ed Balls wants to make certain does not happen in the education system. No matching of aptitude with available places. After Big Bang, City firms were free to choose those most compatible with their ethos. Balls is denying schools such freedom, and forcing admissions authorities to accept children ill-prepared to succeed at their institutions. His programme denies admissions officers something that those staffing City firms after the Big Bang could call upon — access to indices of future success. Consideration of parents’ ability and willingness to provide the home environment and resources that contribute to success in school is verboten. The consequences are predictable: frustration, failure, social ostracism, antisocial behaviour.

In essence, Balls is levying a 100 per cent tax on cultural and intellectual capital. It is unlike a tax on material inheritance (which I have supported in these pages, and the impact of which Balls and his colleagues have recently lightened, an odd thing for believers in equality of opportunity). A tax on intergenerational transfers of material wealth affects only the potential recipient. The Balls programme affects three parties: the applicant, the students with whom he will be learning (or not), and the institution — the school.

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