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November 10, 2005
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The Thursday rant #7

This week’s ranter: Ken Owen blogs at Militant Moderate, and his chief interests are cricket, constitutions and controversy. Occasionally he even has something amusing or relevant to say.

Motivations, motivations, motivations

Tony Blair made a big thing of “education, education, education” in 1997, yet his record has been unimpressive. Let’s leave aside that the massive increases in spending haven’t achieved remotely proportional returns. Because the real disgrace behind Blair’s record is his continued manipulation of the educational system to suit his political ends.

Why does he want 50% of young people to go to university? Is it because he thinks that a university education is desirable for all? No, it’s because he knows that, in the UK at least, getting to university is considered an objective standard of a good education. Never mind if the real standard of universities is dropping – if more people are getting into higher education, the government must be doing something right. Right?

The same principle lies behind the means used to ‘encourage’ the top universities to take a higher proportion of state school students – the most notable one being continued threats of withdrawn funding. A simple statistical argument doesn’t hold up; A-Levels are not the ideal form of training for university entrance, and when 20% of students are getting A grades then making arguments on such a basis is perverse. Of course, they wouldn’t want to introduce A+ or A++ grades at A-Level, because then the private schools would come out on top.

Fiddling the system this way is like making up your bank balance – it might make you feel better, but at the end of the day it doesn’t help much. Sure, manipulating the education structures gets you a nice headline (and boy, wouldn’t Blair want one of those today?), but what does it actually achieve? Pupils aren’t better educated; the reputation of our universities flounders; millions of pounds are pumped into educating students who would be better off doing something else. If the education system is to improve, we need to stop fiddling the figures, and actually make state schools work.

7 comments
  1. Paul said:

    Always be a little bit cautious with the whole ‘prv schools would do better with a new top grade’ argument. Prv schools instil more of a work ethic into their kids, so even the smart ones, that can get the As in their sleep, are made to work harder still, and end up with high As. In crummier schools like wot i went to, we just slept instead.

    Were a new grade to be introduced, the prv school kids probably would do a little better at the top (given that new grades would still be prone to old marking habits, and the paid-for coaching works pretty well) but it wouldn’t be as bad as it’s made out to be.

  2. Katherine said:

    There is also the matter of potential as well as actual results. If someone goes to a crummy school and gets an A, is it not logical to think that perhaps they might have the same, if not more, potential than someone at a not-crummy school, with coaching and cramming, who also gets an A?

    My personal experience of top universities taking state school pupils is that both sides of the fence need to so some work – state schools at encouraging their pupils to apply, giving them help with the forms etc, and top universities getting out there to tell state school pupils that this is an achievable aim and that they shouldn’t be put off by perceptions of poshness and privilege.

    A quick look at the state/private school proportions at Cambridge colleges, for example, will show that a college such as Kings takes on a much higher proportion of state school pupils than, say, Peterhouse without any appreciable difference in results at the end. Some of this is to do with the proportions of applicants, but it does also suggest that the pools from which certain colleges choose their intake is rather more limited than others.

  3. Katherine says:

    Oxbridge colleges are a funny lot: they are relatively small – perhaps only 100 undergrads in each year – and each one has a specific feel. What you are seeing here is perhaps less a difference in admissions policy (indeed, the fact that there results are similar would suggest that they are recruiting students of comparable quality, no?) but more students choosing to stick with their own.

    If a college (Queen’s at Oxford might be an example of this) is known to have a strong “Northern” feel to it, northerners are more likely to apply (and non-Northerners might – God forbid – be less inclined to apply) because of the particular esprit-de-corps and desire to fit into a very small and tightly knit group of people.

    Whether or not you think that this is a good thing (perpetuating elites/ghettoisation whatever), it is undeniably a facet of human nature – you will find exactly the same thing in, for example, officer recruitment to a small infantry regiment, as opposed to one of the larger Corps (e.g. Engineers, Artillery). Self Selection is key.

    This is the kind of small/local effect that make a total mockery of the centralised approach, but yet it is a key ingredient in the success of the Oxbridge college system.

    The problem the colleges have is this: it is to show that the real toffs (pace Boris recounting a Bullingdon Club incident in the Torygraph today) are a) a tiny, tiny minority and b) largely keep themselves to themselves; that there is room for a bright kid from a local comp and that it is not all “champagne and traffic cones” or whatever.

    Choosing the right college to which you should apply is the real complication – but it is an undertaking that repays the effort.

    Toodle Pip!
    PG

  4. Sorry – baffled by the blockquote…

    My comment should be headed by a quote from Katherine. I was responding to her last paragraph:

    “A quick look at the state/private school proportions at Cambridge colleges, for example, will show that a college such as Kings takes on a much higher proportion of state school pupils than, say, Peterhouse without any appreciable difference in results at the end. Some of this is to do with the proportions of applicants, but it does also suggest that the pools from which certain colleges choose their intake is rather more limited than others.”

  5. Ken said:

    Paul, my remark there is based on what the exam boards say about the statistics based on points, rather than any inherent bias towards or against private schools. My personal view is that it’s a shame we need private schools in this country, because ultimately I’d like us to be in a position where the state schools would be so good that they would prove unnecessary.

    Katherine, your point about state school pupils needing to apply and that their schools should encourage them more is definitely true. It’s often overlooked in statistics that acceptance rates of state school pupils at Oxbridge tend to be pretty close to the application rates, too.

    The biggest problem universities like Oxbridge have, though, is that the media and the government are so determined to run them down. Anyone at Oxford would tell you that except for certain small groups, what school you’ve been to isn’t an issue at all. There are pockets of nastyness and elitism, it’s true. But just because the media seizes on them so quickly, doesn’t mean that it’s representative of the place. When Charles Clarke talks about Oxford’s “Brideshead” image, he’s the one who is perpetuating it.

  6. dearieme said:

    Mucking about with A+ and A++ grades wouldn’t really answer Oxbridge’s needs. Comparing two youngsters who scored, say, 94% and 96% on exams that are far, far too easy to test them properly might be objective but it is also irrelevant. They need exams where they score, say, 60% and 75%; then you might have something useful for the exam-based part of an entrance assessment.

  7. Chris Williams said:

    I work for a university which lets everyone in regardless as a matter of principle (saves a bundle on admissions overhead!), but on the rare occasions that I get to choose, I’d sooner give a job/place to someone who got a B from Crown Hills than an A* at Eton. Teaching at Eton is bloody fantastic (well, it was 20 years ago when I met some of the teachers there), thus it’s possible to do very well indeed there even if you are a bit innately dumb. A levels in the humanities are essentially a test of ability, not a recognition of knowledge.

    On the other hand, once you get to BA level, this no longer operates – partly because grade inflation at many places ensures that degree results are not level playing fields like A levels. Given the choice between someone with a 1st at Oxford, and a 2.1 at Luton, I’d go for the former, if what I was after was sheer ability.

    P-G is right about Oxbridge colleges, although there are time lag effects – such as in 1988, when all those private school kids who were desperate to meet state school kids swamped the admissions of one college which had a reputation for selecting lots of state school pupils. Still, they were nice to us oiks on arrival.

    I disagree with Ken entirely about how alienating Oxbridge is to people without the private /grammar school background. Oxford certainly was, and I think it still is. But this is not the fault of the University; merely a manifestation of a wider high vs low culture snobbery thing.