Education and Social Mobility

Debate between Andy Burnham and Carol Monaghan

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I begin by declaring an interest: I was a physics teacher and spent 20 years working in the comprehensive sector.

My father sat, and failed, the 11-plus exam. He ended up in the local secondary, St Roch’s, in an inner-city area of Glasgow. Pupils at St Roch’s were not expected to achieve. School was simply a holding area until they were old enough to enter the workforce. My dad set out on the path that was laid in front of him. Most of his classmates went on to work in the shipyards, but he went on to work in the Glasgow parks department, where he remained for over 40 years. He has some good memories, but work was simply something he did to provide for his family. There was no element of choice: you were grateful you had the job, and he was grateful.

By the time my siblings and I went to school, grammars had been completely abolished in Scotland. We also attended the local secondary, but now it was comprehensive and there were no preconceived ideas or restrictions placed upon us. My father watched with pride as one by one his five children went on to university—possible, of course, because we paid no fees and were awarded maintenance grants.

By coincidence, early in my career I taught in my father’s old school. It was, however, transformed. By now, St Roch’s was a comprehensive and a much happier place. The walls were a celebration of past pupils’ achievements—some academic, some business and some vocational—but the real difference was the expectation of achievement. Every young person entering the school was seen as a human being with potential and every young person felt the weight of that expectation. The real problem with selective education is not that we end up with good schools and poorer schools, and not that one set of teachers works harder than another; it is that whole swathes of our young people will be labelled—wrongly, of course—as having failed. With that, social mobility falls.

It might be argued that for those who have the intellectual maturity, or whose parents can pay for the tuition to pass the 11-plus exams, grammar schools offer a more sheltered experience, but the Government should be concerned with every single child. With grammar schools on the horizon, that is simply not the case.

[Andy Burnham]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the major flaw in the Secretary of State’s speech was that she could not bring herself to acknowledge that if she pursues this policy it will lead to the creation of more secondary modern schools? That is the truth that Government Members will not face up to.

[Carol Monaghan]

Absolutely. I actually think there was another flaw in the Secretary of State’s speech. Listening to her speaking in such glowing terms about grammar schools, I wondered why we do not just make every school a grammar. That would solve the problem.

Many secondary schools choose to set their pupils according to academic ability. However, the educational evidence for the benefits of setting is scant. Certainly when pupils are working on the same curricular content, the evidence is clear: mixed ability classes are far more successful in raising attainment. The most able pupils succeed in whatever class they are in. The least able pupils do a bit better in mixed ability. The massive advantage, however, is for the swathes of average attainers who, within a mixed ability class, have no ceiling placed on their ambitions. In fact, when the Government use one of their buzzwords, “aspiration”, it is indeed this large group of middle pupils who embody and can embrace that idea. Conversely, when decisions based on ability have been imposed on pupils, it sends out strong signals about what that particular group is expected to achieve. In other words, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rolling this out on a much larger scale, as is being considered with the return to grammar schools, means that we have young people who have had decisions made on their future attainment before they even have a chance to attain.

The damage that that does cannot be underestimated. To be told at age 11 that you are not good enough is an incredibly difficult thing to overcome. Despite the best efforts of teachers, that labelling is a blow to confidence and self-esteem that can remain throughout a person’s life.