How the Education Establishment Supports Inequality

How the Education Establishment Supports Inequality

It’s often difficult to convince people how low the expectations are for working class kids can be in schools. I have a lot of anecdotes from a lot of schools. So many times I have been told that I cannot expect much from “kids like these”. I have been told that I haven’t understood that a school being slightly above average for the number of students on Free School Meals means I cannot expect students to spend a whole lesson learning. I have been told that kids from a particular area “don’t have parents like yours” and so will not care about how they do in school. More than anything, low standards of behaviour are excused on the basis that being disobedient and disruptive is normal for the working class. They simply don’t know any better. The ability of middle class teachers to paint anywhere with council housing as the ghetto,never ceases to amaze me. The worst possible home environment is assumed, again and again, even in schools where the parents evenings indicate that most parents are actually interested, aspirational and articulate.

Probably the most dangerous version of this caricature, is the idea that this difference between the classes requires a difference in the curriculum. It is accepted that academic subjects are fine for our children, and, incredibly, so is didactic teaching and the expectation that children can control themselves. But working class kids won’t be interested in any of that. If they are going to cooperate they must be given a curriculum that isn’t too full of content; that would just demotivate them. What working class kids is something to motivate them; something which does not assume they are capable of being interested in anything more than what they are already used to. The middle classes can have knowledge of all that is worthwhile; working class kids just need to be motivated by being told about matters that are relevant to their lives. Middle class kids can study poetry and nineteenth century novels; working class kids can study text messaging and reality TV.

The worst examples of this sort of snobbery were probably those during the early days of the free school movement. Activists who were desperate to prove free schools were selective struggled to find anything to indicate this in their admissions policies. So, instead, they looked at the curriculum. The claim was that an academic curriculum would deter working class parents from sending their kids to a school. 

So we saw arguments like these:

it is not uncommon for free schools to market themselves in various ways as appropriate mainly for abler and more middle class families … eg compulsory Latin, lack of vocational provision, focus exclusively on Russell Group as a destination, expensive uniform, religious tests and so on. [my emphasis]

Education for Everyone blog

Numerous studies have shown that languages are a class and gender thing. Children from lower socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to be encouraged to learn them by their parents, less likely to see the point of them and less likely to have parents at home who can help with their homework. It is a particular problem for boys, whose parents are more likely to encourage them in science than in languages.

…When [founder of the West London Free School, Toby] Young says that all children will have to learn Latin at Key Stage 3 (and either Latin or a modern language after that), he excludes the kids of parents for whom Latin is a frightening prospect. So much for comprehensive entry.

From The New Statesman

What we have is a bun fight for the middle-class aspirational children: we have lots of glossy prospectuses and PR in order to recruit the children that are most likely to do well.

“And I don’t buy this idea that admission is open to all. The minute you put Latin on the curriculum for the first few years or put pupils in stripey blazers, you will only recruit one kind of child, regardless of how many times you say your school is for everybody.”

Headteacher quoted in the Guardian

I had hoped that people were a bit more circumspect about their low expectations for working class kids these days. But just this week I was amazed to see the following gem on the ASCL website, reacting to the discrepancies in access to academic subjects across the country:

it seems to me that there’s a big assumption behind the gloomy tone of his comments and indeed of the BBC coverage; that the government’s prescription for improving social mobility was right after all. As far as I can see, the ‘MorGovian’ way to get more pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds into Russell Group universities is to ensure that all such pupils study ‘academic’ subjects – an EBacc compatible Key Stage 4 curriculum, for example – and that they aren’t incentivised to study ‘vocational’ subjects, as was the case under Labour.

I would have thought a better way of improving social mobility would be to ensure pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds get the best possible results from a curriculum that motivates and inspires them, whether that be ‘academic’ or ‘vocational’. The trick is to get the curriculum right for each individual. After all, success breeds success; youngsters are surely far more likely to want to keep on with this education thing if they’re doing well at it. Staying on in education (taking respected, high-value qualifications, I should add) is surely the best bet for ensuring long-term success in the labour market.

In fact, I can’t help wondering if the whole question of advantage and disadvantage is a big red herring here. Doesn’t aptitude matter more than social background? Shouldn’t we be more interested in guiding youngsters into the various curricular paths according to where their interests and prior attainment suggest they are most likely to succeed? Okay, a disproportionate number of disadvantaged pupils may have fallen behind by Year 9, but surely such students need intervention and support rather than a curriculum pathway which risks even further demotivation.

This was written by a headteacher on the blog of an organisation representing headteachers across the country. If headteachers are willing to argue in publicthat students from deprived backgrounds need a curriculum based around motivation rather than academic achievement, what chance do they have? The education establishment still firmly believe that what is appropriate for their children is far too demotivating for other people’s children.

https://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/how-the-education-establishment-supports-inequality/

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