Saturday 10 September 2016

The return of the Secondary Moderns (aka HQNSSs)


I recently read an article which pointed out that, if there were a school with  two dinner queues, a short one which specially attractive dishes reserved  for those pupils who scored As and Bs for their work, and a much longer one with more mundane food for the rest, we should be horrified.

But by selective education we do exactly that, and the reward for the selected is not just a tastier lunch, but all the best opportunities in life.

I trained as a teacher in the late 1950s and the evidence about grammars versus comprehensives has not changed much since then.  Research consistently shows that, in a selective system the "best" do not perform significantly better, but the "middle" do significantly worse than in a comprehensive system.  The reason seems to be that the presence of the "bright" stimulates and inspires the "less bright."  Analysis of the GCSE and A-level  results in areas such as Kent, which still has grammar schools, shows that their over-all performance is below that of areas with a comprehensive system.

Even if there were advantages, it is universally understood that selection at the age of 11+ is highly unreliable (children develop at different rates, even if they are not "hothoused" by private tuition) and the stigma of non-selection (ie rejection) can niggle for the rest of one's life, as this letter from a "late developer" Dr Michael Paraskos shows.

So Teresa May's  decision to allow grammar schools to be established where none exist at present will do harm rather than good.  If is yet another government decision based on prejudice rather than evidence.  What Mrs May does not emphasise is that for every 20% liberated from consorting with the the rest of society 80% will be rejected: each grammar school will be accompanied by three secondary-moderns (though in a piece of convoluted jargon Education Secretary Justine Greening has described them as "High Quality Non-Selective Schools" - who (she'd probably prefer "whom") does she think she's kidding?)

Mrs May claims that that the aim of the policy is to promote social mobility and create a more efficient meritocracy.  Not only is it more likely to do the reverse (the established middle classes will bust a gut to make sure their kids are in in the shorter dinner queue), we also need to ask ourselves if that is the sort of society we want.  Michael Young, who coined the term "meritocracy"back in the 1950s, regarded it as a warning, not as an ideal.  The concept had been satirised even earlier by R H Tawney, who in his Halley Stewart lectures of 1929 vividly described it as follows:



“It is possible that intelligent tadpoles reconcile themselves to the inconvenience of their position by reflecting that, though most of them will live and die as tadpoles and nothing more , the more fortunate of the species will one day shed their tales, distend their moths  and stomachs, hope nimbly onto dry land , and croak addresses to their former friends  on the virtues by means of which  tadpoles of character and capacity  can rise to be frogs”

Surely the purpose of true education is not to enable  a minority in climb higher up as social ladder but to
enable everyone to develop their talents, whatever they, are to the full, and to live a fullest possible  life in a society where all are equally respected.



6 comments:

  1. Politicians always much prefer to base education policy on their own experience at school, rather than any independent evidence.

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    1. Politicians always much prefer to base education policy on their own experience at school, rather than any independent evidence

      If that were true then there wouldn't be so many grammar-school-educated Labour politicians railing against the return of grammar schools, would there?

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  2. How true. Education and lots of other things too, but I suspect education suffers more than most areas. It's not just the school structure but also the curriculum - eg Latin because they learnt it. For my father it was being able to recite the rivers of Yorkshire in clockwise order.

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  3. I recently read an article which pointed out that, if there were a school with two dinner queues, a short one which specially attractive dishes reserved for those pupils who scored As and Bs for their work, and a much longer one with more mundane food for the rest, we should be horrified

    I wouldn't. The point of school is to do well and exams, so it seems perfectly reasonable to reward those who do, both as a reward for their talent and work, and as an incentive to everyone to try to get good marks.

    My school gave prizes (certificates and book tokens) to those who came top in each subject, each year; do you find that a horrifying thought too?

    Personally what horrifies me is saying to a bright kid, 'We are going to cripple your chances to become as good as you have the potential to be, in order to help out some of the less able kids, who will never be more mediocre, be slightly better than they might otherwise have been.' Which is what the 'the presence of the "bright" stimulates and inspires the "less bright"' argument boils down to, isn't it?

    Didn't our well-above-our-weight performance at the Olympics just show us what greatness we can achieve when resources are ruthlessly targeted on those with the potential to truly excel?

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    1. Sorry should read 'never be more than mediocre'.

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    2. Again, non-selective education does not "cripple" the chances of the bright. All the research evidence shows that they do just as well in comprehensive systems as in selective systems. It's the middle group who do less well in selective systems.

      Re the Olympics, I think your analogy here is more appropriate to higher education. Cramming "the very best" into Oxbridge and one or two other institutions does seem to generate more than our fair share of Nobel prizes in the same way that funding a small number of élite athletes has produced lots of gold medals. My views on this are set out in an earlier post.

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