{"id":6764,"date":"2016-09-12T06:27:32","date_gmt":"2016-09-12T06:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6764"},"modified":"2016-09-12T06:27:32","modified_gmt":"2016-09-12T06:27:32","slug":"no-ones-using-the-c-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/09\/12\/no-ones-using-the-c-word\/","title":{"rendered":"No one's using the C word"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is their alleged power to enhance social mobility that seems to dominate the argument for more grammar schools in England, but what's the evidence? \u00a0Toby Young, in a recent Spectator article<\/a>\u00a0finds\u00a0little to show\u00a0that such schools have ever\u00a0created or helped much mobility, despite anecdotal evidence that this does happen in individual cases. \u00a0I am one such case; my wife another; but not, of course, our children.<\/p>\n

Young writes:<\/p>\n

\"At their peak in the 1950s and 60s, when around a quarter of Britain\u2019s schoolchildren in state-funded secondary education were at grammars, the main beneficiaries were the sons and daughters of the middle class and lower-middle class. \u00a0According to the 1959 Crowther Report, around 36 per cent of the sixth-form pupils at grammar schools were classified as members of the \u2018professional and managerial\u2019 class, 18 per cent as \u2018clerical\u2019, 36 per cent \u2018skilled manual\u2019, 7 per cent \u2018semi-skilled manual\u2019 and 3 per cent as \u2018unskilled manual\u2019. \u00a0Moreover, those in the last two categories were unlikely to go to university. \u00a0Another report (Gurney-Dixon, published in 1954) revealed that two-thirds of the children of semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers at grammars left without two A-levels.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And now? \u00a0Young\u00a0goes on:<\/p>\n

\"Today, grammar schools do even less to help the children of the least well-off. \u00a0The Department for Education defines \u2018disadvantaged pupils\u2019 as those eligible for free school meals at some point in the last six years, a measure known as \u2018FSM Ever 6\u2019. \u00a0In all of England\u2019s state-funded secondary schools, 29 per cent of children are in this category; in England\u2019s 163 remaining grammars, it\u2019s less than 5 per cent. On average, grammar schools admit four times as many children from fee-paying prep schools as children on free school meals.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The last sentence seems to say it all about a failed policy.<\/p>\n

What is odd, to\u00a0me, is that there has been no mention of the C word \u2013 curriculum<\/em>. \u00a0It's as if new grammar schools will just be teaching the same stuff as other schools \u2013 and being better at it, I suppose, where, sadly, \u00a0\"better\" equates with more GCSE Grades A* and\u00a0A\u00a0per capita. \u00a0What nonsense. \u00a0The whole point of the 1960s\u00a0grammar school I went to was that it had a different curriculum from the other school in the town, a curriculum\u00a0that opened up a route to high status knowledge and skills.<\/p>\n

The point of the (often ineffective) Eleven Plus examination was to identify those who would (and would not) likely be able to benefit from such a\u00a0curriculum. \u00a0It was through such access to knowledge and skills that social mobility came for working class children like me, along with\u00a0the alienation that was all too often the flip side of\u00a0that Faustian bargain. \u00a0A long article, and an editorial, in yesterday's\u00a0Sunday Times also had no mention of curriculum.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this is understandable. \u00a0Just as comprehensive schools democratised school choice (up to a point), and the shift from GCE \/ CSE to GCSE democratised exams choice and entry (well, sort of), so the national curriculum democratised the curriculum making all that high-status knowledge and skills available to everyone (providing that ...). \u00a0In this logic, there is no need to mention curriculum as it has been sorted out.<\/p>\n

As I said, what nonsense; there's always a need to talk about curriculum. \u00a0We're promised a white paper, so expect more on this. \u00a0Meanwhile, you'll find a 2016 House of Commons Briefing Paper (No. 1398)\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0(thanks to Mike Fertig for this), and some historical stats, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is their alleged power to enhance social mobility that seems to dominate the argument for more grammar schools in England, but what's the evidence? \u00a0Toby Young, in a recent Spectator article\u00a0finds\u00a0little to show\u00a0that such schools have ever\u00a0created or helped...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}