Stephen Pollard • Should schools select? (Fabian Review)

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September	25
2003

Should schools select? (Fabian Review)

» Posted on September 25, 2003 11:06 AM » Category: Education

(This piece appears in the September issue of the Fabian Review.)

Let me begin with a challenge. I will give a quite astonishingly large sum of money to anyone who can satisfactorily explain the difference between selection by aptitude (good) and selection by ability (bad).

It’s a safe challenge for me to make. Since I first wrote about selection, and the attitude of the Left, in 1995 (when I was working for the Fabian Society), and first made the challenge, not one person has come even close to an explanation.

The reason is simple: there is no genuine difference. The two words are interchangeable and have no meaning beyond avoiding an idea – selection by ability – which antagonises the majority of the education establishment which has so ruined our schools over the past fifty years, and the Left, which is so ignorant of its own history that it despises a concept which it once saw as the engine of social progress.

There’s a similar piece of sophistry in the distinction between selection and specialisation. In order to specialise, they select. Today, specialist schools are allowed to select up to ten percent of their pupils. But they’re not selective schools. Oh no.

The greater the number of specialist schools – the government is committed to expanding their numbers - the easier it becomes to allow them to select more of their pupils – there are, quite simply, more schools to go round, catering for more types of pupil.

Clearly, both Downing Street and the DfES are now convinced that the only way to improve standards is to allow schools to specialise, to choose pupils who will most benefit from specialisation, and to teach a curriculum appropriate to that specialisation. Just as clearly, and a lot more importantly, parents and children - the only people who really matter, and the only people who should be able to decide these issues – support the idea.

So the real debate ought to have moved on to a realistic discussion of how best we can structure a selective or specialist - if you must - schools system. Instead, we are stuck in a pointless debate about the very idea of specialisation.

When the 1944 Education Act was passed, enshrining state-supported grammar schools, it was socialist thinkers who led the clamour. It was the likes of Tawney and the Webbs who argued that the most socially just and effective way of educating children – especially the poor – was by giving them all the same opportunity to benefit from schools which focused on academic stretching.

The real basis of opposition to selection is, of course, social engineering: the belief that only by forcing all children, irrespective of their individual abilities – aptitudes, if we must – to be educated together can we build a truly equal society. As Crosland put it in 1956: education should be seen “as a serious alternative to nationalisation in promoting a more just and efficient society.”

It hasn’t worked. And we all know it. The difference is that some are prepared to say so, whilst others come up with specious arguments to deflect criticism of their own personal response to this failure. ‘You know how much we believe in comprehensives, but there’s no way we’re sending little Jonny to that dump round the corner’; in other words, ‘It’s fine for the rest of the riff-raff, but not for our kids’. Or ‘Amanda is such a clever child but she just isn’t stretched at the moment, so we’re paying her to have extra tuition’; in other words, ‘We’ve got money, and we’re going to spend it how we like, thank you very much’.

We have selection now. But it is based on the cheque book: if you can afford to send your child to a private school, to pay for extra lessons, or to move into the catchment area of a decent state school, then you are fine. If however you are one of the majority, you take what you are given.

There are two left-wing responses to this: one is to argue for the abolition of private and grammar schools (which is at least consistent: the left has a history of destroying some of the best schools).

The other response is to obfuscate. Labour is against selection by ability, but in favour if by aptitude.

Rare is the left-winger who argues that equitable response is to say that the choice of a fully academic education (or another form of specialisation) which is available now only to a wealthy minority, or those lucky enough to live in areas which still have grammar schools, should be available to everyone. That means the state should fund a system which offered a multiplicity of schools – grammar schools, yes, but many other types of specialisms, too. Whatever parents, rather than politicians and bureaucrats, want, in other words.

In America, the most passionate advocates of specialist, selective schools are on the left: the poverty lobby and ethnic minority groups. They recognise the need for schools which can lift pupils out of the ghetto. So, too, does the left in Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Germany amd France.

But not here. Look at our respetive education records, and tell me which has got it right.

MessageSpace

Comments

Ability is what we actually have, in the here and now, irrespective of social causes.
Aptitude is what we would have, if we were all given the same upbringing, and 'life chances'.
Aptitude is therefore 'fairer'.
It is also immeasurable.

The distinction is, of course, bollocks, but this is as good as you'll get.

Where's my fiver?

Stated by: Peter Briffa on September 25, 2003 12:16 PM

Hate to sound too lefty but surely in strict terms:

ability noun (abilities) 1 the power, skill or knowledge to do something.

aptitude noun 1 (usually aptitude for something) a natural skill or talent

In other words

Aptitude is what you are born with

Ability encompases aptitude but could also be interpreted to include outside influences. ie He had aptitude for science, but was unable to go to University because Pollard and his mates made it too expensive. Had the aptitude but not the ability.

or put it another way - ability can be learned or obtained - aptitude can't.

where's my tenner?

Stated by: Kit Malthouse on September 25, 2003 2:39 PM

Hear, hear. It boils down to equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome. The 'one-size-fits-all' model of comprehensive education is designed to effect the latter outcome. It's a definition of fairness. It's not the definition. It seems to me the Procrustean nature of the modern state education system in the UK is one of the cruellest experiences we force our children to undergo. It fits almost no-one. I shudder to think what my life would have been like had I not had the chance to escape its clutches and flee into private education. The LEA in the Isle of Wight where I grew up was (and is) resolutely abysmal. Thank God for public school scholarships. If only that avenue were available to all who could benefit from it. Naturally I strongly favour education vouchers redeemable at any school, including independent ones. There's a host of other things I'd like to see too, including the abolition of the LEAs and those dreadful monasteries of progressive edu-think, the teacher training colleges. But give parents real choice and I doubt you'd be able to recognise schools ten years from now. (The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the NHS).

Stated by: David Gillies on September 25, 2003 5:07 PM

I think the arguments in favour of Grammar Schools are over simplistic. How does one square the fact that it is the middle classes that dominate entry to Grammar Schools? Paradoxically, Grammar Schools are more likely to lock poor children into a ceaseless spiral of below standard schooling.

It is undeniable that lower down the income scale one goes, the more likely it is that kids won't have the required abilities to pass the 11 plus. If these pupils then are left on the educational scrapheap while their peers flyoff without them, the chances are that their own offspring will also struggle academically. And so the rotten merry-go-round at the bottom of the social ladder continues.

Moreover, Kent LEA, which retains most of its Grammar Schools, has shocking standards of education; proving the point that Grammar Schools, far from raising standards in the districts where they exist, actually lower them.

I happen not to agree with the abolition of grammar schools at least until we reach a point where excellent standards are universal throughout the education system (cutting off noses to spite faces comes to mind). However there needs to be a realisation that the issue of education is far more complex than the simplistic grammar v comprehensive analysis presented here.

There are a myriad of issues which affect a pupil's ability in school and the ability of schools to cater for that pupil. They range from quality teachers, through to comfortable classrooms, intake, economic and social impact of catchment areas, individual academic ability and so on.

Stated by: Ben on September 25, 2003 6:17 PM

At the moment, we have a three tier education system in this country. The establishment, such as the prime minister, send their children to elite independent state-funded schools. They get the best of both worlds. In the middle are those that cannot afford a decent state education, they have to go private. The rest get what they are given in the name of equality. As someone who has friends who have taught in both the private and state sectors, I understand that there are two main differences between them. In the first place, in the private sector you teach more and are paid less ? but you don?t have to worry about the bureaucracy. The forms and assessments are an enormous burden on most teaches in the state sector, taking up almost a third of their time (this may be the exaggeration figure from several exhausted teachers, but it is still considerable). The second factor is discipline. I have known a newly qualified chemistry teacher, with a masters degree in chemistry from a very prestigious university, whose job was to baby-sit twelve boys with severe behavioural problems. Why? They were worth an extra four thousand pounds per pupil to the school. In a private school, they would have been out of the school within six weeks. No question. The headmaster would have been faced with several angry parents who would remove their children if the disruptive child did not go. As a result the atmosphere in a private school is simply much more conductive to education. Call me an idealist, but I think this atmosphere should be available to everyone, but it will only come when the power (i.e. the money) is in the hands of the parents. I understand the point about grammar schools pushing the less able into poor schools. The answer isn?t to abolish grammars. It is to abolish poor schools.

Stated by: Ed on September 25, 2003 8:18 PM

As a product of the grammar school system whose parents probably could not have afforded to pay fees, I take issue with the idea that the middle classes always dominate such schools. There was a very healthy working class contingent at my grammar school. No surprises there, given where it was located. When the educational vandalism of the Labour Party forced my school to go private just before I left, who lost out most? Bright boys whose parents couldn't pay the fees, of course. That was alleviated for some years by the Assisted Places Scheme but that too was then destroyed by Mr Blair, who still claims to believe in equality of opportunity. A crude cut-off at 11 was too simplistic and there wasn't enough active talent-spotting done in the primary schools. That said, the grammar school system provided a ladder of opportunity which simply doesn't exist any more. In the 1960's, most students at Oxbridge were from the STATE sector.

As for the ability/aptitude distinction, there may be something in what Kit Malthouse has to say but in practice, it is virtually impossible to differentiate between what is innate and what is acquired.

Stated by: Michael McGowan on September 26, 2003 2:08 PM

Is this supposed distinction between Aptitude and Ability something British? In American parlance, as best I know it, Aptitude and Ability are used interchangeably, but they are different from Achievement. With regard to grouping the operational difference is use of something like an IQ test (or aptitude test) on one hand, or a test of mastery of grade-appropriate skills and knowledge on the other hand. A perfectly useful distinction.

Stated by: Bas Braams on September 27, 2003 5:17 PM

Point being that what you ideally want is a situation where aptitude (the potential) and ability (the marked achievement) are as close as possible.

How you feel about this depends on whether you think that's at all possible, whether it's even a laudable aim and whether you think those without demonstrated ability are aptitude-less or simply have been denied the chance to demonstrate their abilities within the confines of exam or selection tests.

I'm not against selection, as long as we don't end up with a several tiered education system that forgets to allow those 'without ability' to achieve some or all of their potential. Some might argue that the dumping of grammar/tech schools and the ex-poly disease (i.e. concentrating on arts subjects at the expense of science and technology) mean we can't manage that properly in the current system.

Stated by: bobbie on September 29, 2003 4:14 PM

Nature is not anthropomorphic.

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