#3 in the Is a Tosser series. For his grauniad article Universities must cut private schools intake, says Simon Hughes. Disclaimer: I went to private school, and to Oxford. My son is also at private school [*]. But this article is *not* going to be about my own experience. Meta-disclaimer: in England, it is obligatory for middle-class parents and politicians of all varieties to agonise about education, its funding, and its quality. In the case of politicians, it is strictly required for them to only talk about the quality; they are forbidden from doing anything to improve it [#].
Let us begin with SH quote number 1:
I think my message to the universities is: You have gained quite a lot in the settlement. Yes, you’ve lost lots of state money, but you’ve got another revenue stream that’s going to protect you. You now have to deliver in turn. You cannot expect to go on as you are. It has failed miserably.
This is drivel. Universities have lost monies in the most recent settlements, and they might get it back if they charge the full fees (I don’t pretend to have studied the details, but I’ve chatted to an academic or two). Suggesting that the government has done something favourable for them, for which they are obliged to reciprocate, makes no sense.
And then we come to the non-sequitur “You cannot expect to go on as you are. It has failed miserably” – but what, exactly, has failed? Perhaps it is just too obvious to need spelling out. My best guess is that it is something about the next para: Just over 7.2% of pupils in England attend private schools but make up over a quarter of the intake at the 25 most selective universities, and 46.6% at Oxford.
Err, but aren’t universities supposed to select on the basis of quality, not proportions? No, apparently not:
Every university should… recruit on the basis of no more people coming from the private sector than there are in the public as a whole…
and
…most people in society go to local authority schools, not to private schools, and therefore most people from all universities, including Russell Group universities, should do that
But, that one isn’t going to be a flyer, because most people do believe that selection to the best universities should be on merit (even if we disagree slightly on what “merit” means. And a late-occurring thought: if you think selection should be just based on proportion not on merit, how are you going to select those from the state sector that do get in? Lottery?). Also, if you believe that, then you also believe that just as many people people from A deserve to go to Oxford as people from B (where A in this case is “pick your pet low-education-attainment area of the country with lots of poor people in it”, and B is “your pet leafy middle-class area with good state schools and good A-level results from same”. Like Cambridge, for example). Or, since we’re talking about politicians, you believe that as many bricklayers deserve to be politicians as do lawyers. Etc., etc. etc.. No, SH is going to have to tell some more porkies:
… I don’t believe you have to look to the private sector to give you the quality of exam results… to make up the numbers to fill the places.
Now we’re off to la-la land, because it is certainly true that private schools will get you better exam results (alright: it is *certainly* true that private schools *get* better results, as measured by grades in, say, A-levels (Privately educated children have a far better chance of getting into the most selective universities because their performance at GCSE and A-level outstrips that of pupils in the state sector [1] as the G puts it). Whether they also “value add” is perhaps harder to measure, since there is self-selection. But people certainly believe it, or they wouldn’t be handing over large piles of money). The words I elided above, BTW, were “and ability”; because I think he is deliberately muddying the water by mixing two different concepts, in order to lie to us by confusion.
Mind you, the grauniad will tell you that State school pupils ‘fare better’ at university (and in case you didn’t get the message, they’ll tell you the same thing again (did you spot the subtle change in headline?)). And to be fair, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this was true: private schools are indeed better at preparing people, so when that support is removed private pupils with identical grades to public ones are likely to do marginally worse. And universities know that, which is why they make efforts to adjust for the effect.
But the main issue is that all this stupid posturing by the politicians is a cover-up for reality: which is that the real problem is in the state schools (which are under their control) not the universities (which are not). So it is no great surprise to find them dumping on the side that doesn’t spread blame on them. The truth (that is universally acknowledged) is that there are a great many poor quality public schools in the UK (as well as a smaller proportion of good ones), and that the government hasn’t really done a great deal to make them better, at least at educating people (I was looking for a good article I read saying this, but I’ve lost it now, so please accept my apologies for a certain vagueness here).
</rant>.
[Update: as it happens, the school newsletter addresses this:
We support the current meritocratic system of university admissions and reject any suggestions that admissions quotas should be set for different types of school. Universities must be free to select students by ability and suitability and whilst educational background might help contextualise an application it should not itself determine the outcome.
The Perse has nearly 400 years experience [take that, colonials :-) -W] of successfully educating children from all backgrounds to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to capitalise on a university education. Such skills and knowledge cannot be acquired overnight, nor can universities, whose budgets have been cut, be expected to fill gaps in 3 years that have built up over the previous 13 years of schooling. Once the political arguments associated with the tuition fee debate have died down, I hope that common sense will prevail and universities will be left to run their own admissions procedures, whilst government concentrates on driving up educational standards across the primary and secondary age ranges. Meanwhile The Perse will continue to invest in its higher education programme to ensure that all our pupils are well prepared for successful applications to both UK and international universities.
No surprises there -W]
Refs
* [*] Note that in an effort to confuse the ROTW [+], in England “private schools” are actually called “public schools”. I believe this is a relic of the long-ago and far-away times, when anyone of any quality was educated at home by private tutor. Those too poor for this were reduced to sending their children to “public schools”. All this pre-dates state education, of course.
* [+] Rest of the world
* [#] This rule is unwritten, but may be deduced from observation.
* Is it worth it? As the cost of private schools soars, we look at what parents get for their money – Economist, 2008.
* Staying on board In both America and Britain recession has so far done little to dent the demand for private education – Economist again, 2009 (nice quote So why aren’t fees even higher? Sheer embarrassment may be one reason. Non-profit (or charitable) status is hard to defend with a straight face if fees are outrageously out of line. A more likely explanation, though, is that schools’ quality would decline if they simply sold places to the highest bidders. Part of what they offer is the chance to learn with clever classmates, and if fees were too high the pool of brainy potential pupils would become too shallow. Schools with stellar reputations have some room before their fees pass the point at which too few clever children apply.)
* Student Evaluations – Yawn by The Phytophactor.