The solution that dare not speak its name

Its time for the Radio 4 Today program panic about social mobility again.

Guess what ? All the fixes, fiddles and plain bodges to get children who's education has failed at state schools into top Universities isn't fitting the targets which have been dreamed up.

They'll try anything - scholarships ( free money for some people taken from others ), summer schools, putting out information that a half consious monkey could figure out for themselves on A levels required. But it not working.

The system has failed since - the Grammar school ruled.

But we must not have selective education !

But of course we already do. Almost every secondary school will stream, and yet the monster comprehensives aren't achieving the same results with their top streams. Why ?

The answer has to to do with wider issues that you get when your in a school with people of similar capability, but not just in a class of them.

Because of the stranglehold the BBC and Guardian have on the windpipe of English education this question will never get asked.

And ugly of class warfare will be called upon instead.

Nick Clegg, David Cameron & David Willets should shut up

At least on social mobility.

Why ?

In short because they have no relevant life experience and are too conflicted by the temptations of political triangulation.

The longer answer is given by Allison Pearson in a spirited article in yesterday's Telegraph. ( If you missed it have a look ). I was thinking of a post on the same lines, but this one hits all the right notes.

At the same time we have attempts to tell the Conservative faithful that Grammar schools aren't the answer ( see this over on the Spectator's coffee house ). Even my leftwing family friends understand Grammar schools are great - as they have their kids in one ! We know the real reason the govt won't allow selection in schools is because of political triangulation, and the need to try to keep the BBC onside.

This reaching for what we engineers call tail pipe solutions of just fixing the results is what the socialists do and why so many of us despise them.

Frankly I'm not feeling very warm towards Messrs Clegg, Cameron & Willetts on this.

Its Labour's selfish hypocrisy that's the enemy of poor students getting to University

At last the Coalition has started fighting back at the muddled thinking and just plain ignorance of much of the "make taxpayers - including poor people who never went to Uni" pay instead of the future middle class.

There is a spectacularly good offer for financing University education with no risk and nothing to pay unless you succeed.

So the future careerist left wing hypocrites are left with just one self for filling and self serving argument. "The idea of debt will put off poor students" - well it might when you say it like that without explaining all the safeguards and no win no pay parts of the government loans offer. In fact its the left who are putting poor students off by wilfully misinforming them and running scaremongering schemes. But then what's new - the left's relationship with poverty has long been that of a drug pusher with his clients.

Now its true that anyone who aspires to go to University should be able to see through the naked political manipulation of the NUS and Labour cases - after all why do we want stupid people at Uni. ( And by the way weren't many of those interviewed over the last few weeks depressing for the shear scale of their ignorance. )

But we should all be supporting fair opportunities to succeed for all - like the Coalition is doing.

Lets also remember, if by some awful disaster, Gordon Brown had carried on as PM they would have been implementing the Browne review instead, and all the selfish careerist student politicians who hope to be Labour parasite MPs one day would have played their opposition down as it impact their future snouts in the trough of what we now call politics.

Academies improve children's education outrage

I've just heard a report on radio 4's Today that of the academies that have opened it's the well off kids make the greatest improvement. This seems to be shorthand in leftwing circles for injustice and failure.

Let's just think about this a little - does it not show that a particular group of kids are being cheated by the current system ? Indeed the kids of the parents whom pay the most taxes ( and hence for their own children's education and other peoples ) are getting the worse deal out of education they are compelled to pay for.

Of course one of the few socialist policies that works is the ability to destroy the life chances of those people socialists are biased against. Equality enforced by targeted failure.

A small example of this from the reign of failure of Ed Balls was given in the article - Balls insisted, no doubt to the left wing teaching unions delight, that new academies had to keep the bad teachers who had failed the old school and more importantly the children.

As I've said before you need to remember that Labour hate your children.

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The left want dependency not social mobility

I've listened to the reports on Alan Milburn's social mobility report, including the breathless party political broadcast issued by Mark Easton on the Today programme ( today it was trying to help Labour out in Norwich North by talking about Fox hunting - to fit in with Labour's current leaflet in the by-election ).

Like many of you no doubt I shouted at the radio - that's what happens when you destroy education, debase exams and close the good schools ( the grammar schools) [ And lets be far - past Conservative administrations have significantly contributed to this also ! ]. But its not what the left say they think. They think state action is needed - discrimination - but using a formula of words that won't scare the middle classes.

Milburn et al talk about social mobility - and as is Labour's tendency to murder the truth these days they forget the 1980's (the decade that cannot be credited with anything as "She" was there). But since they ignore the blinding obvious way of achieving this - a fair, rigorous and objective education system we must assume they really want something else.

Let me suggest what it is.

They want dependency. They want the people who get jobs to think they owe them to a set of anti discrimination laws and positive actions by the state - not their own merits. Once they achieve this they will be too scared to change the system, in case the talented people come and take their place.

There could be no better example of this than the current parliamentary Labour party. Blair babes ( the results of positive discrimination ) bombed. Those like Jacqui Smith who were promoted had no idea what to do - just had to be loyal or they would lose the job they had.

Brown now has to make people Lords over night to compensate for the startling lack of talent in Labour.

They would like your hospital consultant, surgeon, judge, lawyer etc not to be chosen by an efficient system of spotting talent, but by one that will ensure a new establishment owes its position of power to the state.

They want dependency with people as clients of the state, rather than social mobility and freedom.

Hence only the right can deliver the potential for social mobility.

PS A while ago I blogged on another problem with this objective of high social mobility in "The Social mobility myth" part 1 and then part 2 ( when David Willetts made his inadvisable comments on Grammar schools ).

David Blunkett doesn't get social mobility

I've just listened to the Today program (BBC Radio 4) give David Blunkett ( the disgraced former Labour home secretary ) time for a long rant that explains his basic lack of a grip on real life.

Oh yes he's had it hard - and then easy - and then was caught out. But what he said goes in part to explain why Labour just can't get to grips with the issue of helping people for fill their potential. ( I hate the term social mobility as it implies an element of class war and also losers being required as well as winners ).

As an example Mr Blunkett used a lad from Sheffield who's ambition was to become a air conditioning engineer. Mr Blunkett started to say there was nothing wrong with that - but then went on to imply the opposite by saying if he's been born in the right part of Sheffield he's have done work experience with doctors and lawyers. ( Not that doctors job prospects look too good under Labour ).

Now how can Labour politicians moan on about vocational qualifications and by implication jobs being of equal value and respect and then come out with that ? Perhaps this young man needed more options laid out in front of him, but if he follows his original idea he's going to do quite allright thank you. If the education system should be doing anything it should be adding to that ambition of making him an air conditioning engineer who runs his own business. This young man will make far greater contributions to society than a fist full of David Beckham studies, media studies, politics graduates ever will.

I know men in mid life who have degree and white collar jobs who are retaining to be plumbers and electricians so they can have more job satisfaction, work for themselves and contribute more. They are much more for filled for doing it.

Blunkett thinks the best idea is to tax higher earners on their child benefits. So the government takes the money in tax, pays to administer the child benefit system, pays the money back, then pays to administer a complex system to retrieve the money back again to spend on a scheme which will no doubt employ a lot of Guardian / Independent readers in a pseudo jobs preaching to kids. ( Do you see the only real effect is to bloat the state [ups Labour's payroll vote] and employ more youth specialists [assumed to vote - um let me see - Labour ] whilst taxing the people who disagree with the policy the most).

I suspect the underlying problem with a lot of Labour party politicians is guilt. Its guilt they developed at University as they tried to drop their middle class accents and hide their public/grammar school educations by campaigning for education for the 'under privileged and working class'. The problem is they have no idea what such people really want, but just assume it must be to be like them. The "I had the opportunity" which must be spread argument.

There are a good number of Conservative MPs who have exactly the experience many of these Labour champaign socialists lack who have come to different conclusions - David Davis, Nadine Dorries, John Major for example.

I've argued before very efficient social sorting by ability, which is what high social mobility means, will create an under class devoid of hope and talent which due to housing structure will be even more concentrated together. Does anyone think that will work well ?

The BBC should challenge Mr Blunkett's assumptions, only most of the BBC employees had the same University experience of middle class guilt, which makes thinking differently impossible for them also.

The social mobility myth - part 2

There is an article in The Sunday Telegraph which explores the point I was making earlier in the week on social mobility. Its worth reading in its entirety ( sorry I can't identify the author to credit ), but I leave a few quotes below (highlighting with underlining is mine):

Most people would probably share Mr Willetts' two assumptions. They certainly now amount to the orthodox view within much of academic sociology, which has for decades taken it for granted that differences in achievement between individuals and groups must be explained by some form of social injustice: if society were completely fair, so the orthodoxy goes, there would be no differences in what people were capable of achieving.

There is, however, an increasing amount of evidence that this is not true. "Just about all the research that has been done on this topic demonstrates that intelligence is not randomly distributed across society," says Ben Sacks, a former professor of psychiatry at Charing Cross Hospital. "Intelligent, well-educated women tend to marry intelligent, well-educated men, and they tend to have intelligent children who end up being well-educated.

And latter on ...

So as a society comes to the egalitarian ideal of treating everyone equally, it will not see social mobility increase: on the contrary, social mobility will decrease. One consequence is that decline in social mobility could be an indicator of a fairer, more just society.

Now I've missed out a lot of the argument presented. Of especial interest is how social mobility is measured and the underlying assumptions.

But now let me add something - if all this is true, and I think it is - then the measure being proposed to create social mobility will be anti-meritocratic ! In effect a sort of educational 'A' list will be created where those who will win will be decided before the process is started, and many deserving and capable people (ie the children of the middle class) will have their life chances ruined in the name of political correctness.

Also those uplifted children will never know if they really had merit or not. To be sure a non-objective system run by the educational establishment can be guaranteed to be politically correct - ie discriminatory.

David Willetts and David Cameron are betraying peoples children - other peoples children they perhaps reassure themselves. So perhaps they don't care, as long as this gets them what they want ( I suspect that's a bit harsh on David Willetts - but no more so than the spin being used against those in the party that wanted this thought through and agreed.). David Cameron's attempt to bounce the party and then insult its membership by talking about the "shallow end" of the educational debate is equally unimpressive. My opinion of them has suffered considerably over the last week.

Update: Nadine Dorries has been in great form this week - see her last post here on the subject of the education policy announcements.

Also see this article in The Daily Telegraph on the abilities of students and their social backgrounds.

The social mobility myth

We have a new Holy Grail - as presented by David Willetts and David Cameron - social mobility. This has been used to justify withdrawing support from the Grammar School movement. ( Man in a Shed is not an automatic Grammar school supporter - but thinks they are the best proven system for given fair life chances to children - the other systems are unproven. MiaS didn't get in himself at 11+ - he was out of the catchment area and competition was very tough - and his parents could afford to send him to a private school since when he achieved good results. He only stared to shine academically at 13 - so I really do see the case for other systems, but I know that Grammar schools are effective even if I didn't benefit.)

The papers tell us that social mobility has declined under the current government, and of course as a Conservative this seems like a good fact to throw back in their faces. But we should perhaps explore some of the unspoken assumptions behind these statements.

A while ago, maybe 100 years ago, class mattered a lot. It determined what you would do when you grew up, (or in the upper classes case if you needed to do anything at all !). You were born in, maybe you married out, but few would change.

Hence you had the factory worker or miner who has far more talent that the factory/mine owner forever forced to stay in his position. This is why I assume people in the trade Union movement encourage education and tried to break down these barriers.

What you inherited from your parents was class and entitlement.

Now days, despite the inefficiencies of the education system, most bright children achieve what they are capable of. They meet, fall in love with and reproduce with people of similar background. If Darwin knew what he was talking about then their children are going to be of similar capability, given some statistical variation. They should achieve similar positions in society based on their own individual merit. Social mobility will have slowed and even died. But fairness and equal life chances will still have been the norm.

What you now inherit from your parents is intelligence and capability.

The problem is that there is an underlying assumption that we are talking about the old Victorian issue of social mobility with its class based in built in inefficiencies, rather than the modern talent based society we perhaps live in today. (Okay things aren't perfect - but what I want to show is that social mobility and social justice are not always guaranteed to be the same things. Indeed with an efficient and fair education system for all they will diverge.)

With David Willetts joining the Guardian, Independent, BBC and "partner" of Alastair Campbell in the great hatred of the middle classes it is clear he has lost his grip on logic and reason. They do these things for reasons of deep seated hatred of the middle class, why is he going along with them ?

Parents who love their children and do their best for them are stigmatised as pushy and with sharp elbows. When in reality they are the back bone of our country. They have no case to answer and Mr Willetts should not be accusing them of taking advantage of the schools they have paid for through their taxes - with some money left over for other peoples children too no doubt.

This is going to poison the Conservative party unless some deep grovelling apologies and retractions follow very fast...

( As it happens the actual policy may have elements of reason about it - but the justification for it is abhorrent and the way it has been released is just crass. David Willetts should consider his position carefully. )


Note: This has already caused people to leave the party - Man in a Shed had to think very carefully about his position yesterday. Its not Clause 4 - its crass stupidity.

PS One of the things that has kept me in the fold has been Tim Montgomerie and Conservative home being able to give voice to the members so effectively, and fast. I doubt you can change party policy through membership but I think Conservative home provides some of the counter. Lets see if we are listened to.

Update: Iain Dale has info on Nadine Dorries' theory that Willetts has been allowed to go out and hang himself. Well that may be - but they are words he has spoken. I don't think you can argue that he should have been protected from himself. ( By the way I think Mr Whippy may be round for a quiet word with Nadine over this one. I hope she stands her ground. )