Schools: Pretty basic, isn’t it?

I’ve never really understood the argument for grammar schools. Or the argument for private/ public schools. Or for academies. Or free schools. Or any other ‘type’ of school.

To me, it seems to be pretty basic and fundamental that educational opportunity should be the same for any child born in the world. It’s a basic human right to have an education, so why should any country wish to dilute that right by creating selection? Any type of school which operates criteria for entry starts to compromise equality of education.

People who have a problem with social equality support selective education. Tories have always condoned and supported fee-paying education, the principle of grammar schools,and more recently the direct intervention of business into running what were previously ‘state’ schools. Isn’t it pretty obvious that these things are just an expression of the ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality of the right? They only appeal to people who feel that they will naturally be able to access a privileged education because they have money to spend, either on school fees, coaching, or by moving house to a better catchment area, or aspire to doing any of these things. That not everyone can do this is something that is rarely challenged in the MSM, where most people working have benefited from some kind of privileged educational background and want their children to as well, and therefore don’t want to rock that particular boat. Any argument against selection can be countered by finding a couple of people who anecdotally did well out of state education and might be prepared to say that that proves that everything is OK, the system sorts itself into equilibrium.

So here’s a simple plan. Abolish privilege in education. First close public and private schools over night. Liquidate their assets, many of which are now substantial. This is why it’s no longer enough just to abolish their charitable status (atrocious as that situation is), because as a former Eton headmaster revealed in a talk I heard, they have been investing in all sorts of corporate and educational deals all over the world. This is in order to build profits so that they could continue exactly as before when that status was revoked, and they could immediately stop taking the quota of ‘disadvantaged’ pupils which they are required to to pay lip service to being charities. No one is going to take their privilege away without them putting up a fight. So just close them.

Abolish all other selective schools. Abolish trusts and academy chains and free schools, and why not schools that select on the basis of faith at the same time? Any money saved goes into state schools. LEAs run them, as they did for a long time, seemingly without the number of scandals and scams that regularly come to light now we have schools sponsored by organisations which aren’t educational in nature. Let it be normal that children go to school in the area they live in. Not a bold social experiment, just something that seems fair. Sort of a national educational service. After all, we had the simple for the NHS and that’s a principle worth saving.

Also published on my blog with other lefty articles at https://leftologyblog.wordpress.com/2016/08/07/schools-pretty-basic-isnt-it/