Four Types of Silence

Start a campaign? Asks the public campaign web-site 38 degrees. It's tempting, I must admit. I've never started a campaign before. I marched once against the closure of school libraries, and have signed some petitions, but that's about it. Sometimes, if I'm in a shop with my wife, and I want to make it more interesting, I play the game "if you were forced at gun-point to buy one thing right now what would you buy?" On a couple of occasions I've ended up buying it. The point is, when I was signing up to someone else's campaign for... I forget what exactly, I asked myself, if, at gunpoint, I had to start any campaign, what would it be?

I've been in teaching in comprehensive schools for about eight years now. I went to a private school, my wife, to a grammar school. Teachers, as any non-teacher will tell you, are not shy of talking about their work. However, the fact that we are operating within a system that divides children at a very young age into those who attend selective and those who attend non-selective schools, and the merits and failings of having such a system, represents, what I would call, something of an elephant in the room. I haven't heard anyone, not a single person, talk seriously about actually doing something to address the pitfalls of having such a system. Why not? If I could start only one conversation, this would be it.

A quick search on 38degrees.com for "selective schooling" brings up one local campaign, targeted at the Bexley school admissions team, from an understandably embittered father whose son narrowly missed out on a place at the successful local grammar school, and will instead have to attend the apparently less successful comprehensive. I genuinely feel for him, it sounds like a very difficult situation to accept. But quietly, in my head, I am thinking two questions: 1) would he have started this campaign if his son had been accepted? and 2) surely this points to a widespread national problem... why is there not already a nation-wide campaign underway? Why is there so much silence around this issue?

The fact is, there are different reasons why people do not want to talk about this issue. Imagine you were to divide people into four types:

Type 1: Went to a selective school, prospered.
Type 2: Went to a selective school, failed.
Type 3: Went to a comprehensive school, prospered.
Type 4: Went to a comprehensive school, failed.

Those '1's who have prospered, and indeed continue to benefit from the selective school system in this country, are evidently not predisposed to fight against it. The '2's who went to a selective school but failed, are not generally in a position to blame the system for their failings, a system which, to all extents and purposes, has given them the necessary tools and opportunities for success. Then there are those who attended a comprehensive school. They may have been successful (Type 3). These are inclined, and I can only speak for those I have met and spoken to, to feel, fairly enough, that they have earned this success through hard work, and despite the disadvantages they grew up with. Crucially, they are inclined to feel that their peers perhaps could have done so as well had they exerted the same level of effort. They are quite likely to be right of centre, politically. Michael Gove, of course, went to a state school. In fact, everyone in a position of power, who went to a state school, finds themselves in this category by definition. They are unlikely to campaign against the selective schools system in this country not least because it has manifestly not failed them. If anything, these are the people from whom I've heard the most passionate defence of selective schools, as they seek to translate their hard work into giving their children the social advantage that they were not themselves given.

Which leaves those (Type 4) who went to a comprehensive school and didn't prosper. In the past, these might have formed the core of a working-class protest movement. A brief aside - I was listening to an interview on the radio promoting the film 'Pride' the other day, and I learned that the Coal Miners Union, amongst other activities, sought to provide Union members, both children and adults, with books and classes such that they could be sufficiently educated to be able to recognise, and indeed stand up for their rights. This no longer happens. Today, all that seems evident to me, is a group of people who lack the necessary connections, the power (and, crucially, access to those with power), confidence in their own knowledge, understanding and skills of communication, to believe that they are in any way able to ask for, let alone affect change.

So you have, around this giant elephant in the room, four types of silence. Each of them different, but each of them equally quiet.

In the fourth category are the students, and parents, I generally see in my school. The main difference between the students I see, and those who attend a selective school, is the sense of entitlement. They latter grow up knowing that they will have the ability to follow whatever path in life they want. The children of type 4 parents (who themselves went to a state school and did not prosper) will grow up knowing that their own path will be equally difficult, potentially unsuccessful. It doesn't take much to see that the prophesies can quickly become self-fulfilling.

But we can't just all keep silent about it. Because the system is blatantly unfair, and designed in such a way as to hinder social mobility so profoundly. Put simply, we have a system in this country whereby students who are advantaged (maybe they come from wealthy or highly educated and ambitious families, or who live in a very good area) tend to go to a certain type of highly successful school, where they are surrounded by other children who are also advantaged in some way. They will do well in this environment, naturally. Children who are disadvantaged in some way go to a different type of school, a school where children from wealthy, educated and ambitious families, are markedly absent. These children, statistics and common sense dictate (Burgess, Dickson and MacMillan, 2014), are significantly less likely to be as successful as those who attend the school that has already selected only the 'advantaged' children.

Either way, the system is inevitably established such that the advantaged children will grow up into a position from which they are able to pass this advantage onto their children, and so on.

If we in this country want to pursue the worthy goal of greater social mobility, and if we accept that societies are happiest where social mobility is at its greatest, then this is a ridiculously unfair point from which to start.

I am someone who has benefited hugely from the selective school system. My grandparents were generous enough to fund my place in a successful private school. My wife's parents were educated and ambitious enough to secure for her a place in a very successful selective grammar school. Now here's the difficult bit. Our families have in the past worked incredibly hard to put themselves in a position where they are able to confer this advantage upon their children. They want nothing more than the best for their children, and they were willing to put in long, back-breaking shifts to obtain it. You know what? In their position I would have done the same. But this advantage that we were given, at a young age, has to come at the expense of others.

It shouldn't have to be this way. I would like to start a discussion in which the ultimate goal is a level playing field for all children, regardless of religion, wealth, or social class. An equal opportunities act that recognises that while we are live in a country in which schoolchildren are so clearly segregated into the haves and have nots, children simply do not have equal opportunities. Starting a campaign will be very difficult. As my wife correctly pointed out, there is nothing visible or tangible to campaign for, at the moment. But there are small, tangible goals. Taking away charitable status for private schools. Recognising them, essentially, as a hindrance to social cohesion, and taxing them accordingly. Curtailing their presence somehow, in some way. But at the very least I would like for there not to be this silence.