Tagged with Social Mobility

Ofsted chief exposes grammar school myths, but most are happy with nostalgia

Michael WilshawI cried yes, I would like to see all private schools and grammar schools closed down, and then told the man that sorry, the conversation would have to end, as I wanted to dance to Dusty Springfield. We had been arguing for what felt like half an hour. It had started off on another topic, but at some point along the way, my interlocutor saw cause to ask me “What’s wrong with private schools?”

Once again, I was in an argument about the British education system, and faced with simplistic and unintelligent arguments in defence of elitism. I hope I do not sound arrogant in this statement. Hearing an endlessly propagated but entirely unsubstantiated myth repeated again and again is enough to wear anyone down. The myth in question is that grammar schools assist social mobility, and it was rightfully ridiculed in Sunday’s Observer by Ofsted chief Michael Wilshaw. Continue reading →

Cracking open the middle class closed shop

I thought there was a really good debate after my post on social mobility. There were a few, though, who objected. Their concern was that I was basically arguing in favour of kicking the ladder beneath me, or even of reinforcing the class system.

In that case I probably didn’t explain my argument properly – because that certainly isn’t my position, or even close. Continue reading →

Social mobility is a dead end

I am a walking indictment of Britain’s class system. Because I was a middle-class kid who attended a primary school “located in an area of high economic deprivation in Stockport”, as Ofsted put it, I was uncomfortably aware of this from an early age.

Without inflicting my life story on you, my mother was a lecturer at Salford University, and my dad was an economic regeneration officer for Sheffield city council. I grew up in an educated milieu and simply followed in the footsteps of fairly well-paid, professional people who’d gone to university. I did not suffer from the instability and stresses that scraping by in life can cause a family. Even when my dad lost his job during the fag-end of the last Tory government, I still enjoyed relative financial security. Like all people with my background, I will almost certainly die as I was born: middle-class.

Contrast my upbringing with the kids I grew up with. “Most of their parents tended to have some kind of work, but it was very low-paid – like shops, local industry, or whatever was about,” says Helena Button, my old teacher. Not long after I left, my school was ranked in the country’s bottom 5% for test results. I ended up as the only boy in my class to go to university, not because of innate superior ability, but because all the odds were stacked in my favour. Here is the reality of social mobility in modern Britain. Continue reading →