Two totems: Grammar schools and university fees fee abolition

Last year, we had a big argument as a nation about grammar schools. Now we are arguing again about student fees. (EDIT: Some of my initial thoughts on the argument are in a storify here: https://storify.com/robfordmancs/some-thoughts-on-university-fees)

A lot of ink has been spilled on whether or not getting rid of fees is progressive. I have some thoughts on this, which I’ll publish later. I’d like to focus here on something else: why, as several have already noted, the policy has such political resonance, a feature it shares with grammar schools

The supporters and opponents of grammar schools and fee abolition don’t overlap much politically, but I think there are some important structural similarities between the two policies which produce similar effects on opposite ends of the political debate.

Proponents of grammar schools argue they are a way to provide the most talented youngsters of all backgrounds with an excellent education.Grammars, they say, are a “route to the top”, a way to level the playing field, by providing the most talented with the means to rise.

Opponents of grammars point out they have never operated this way, and instead most places in grammars are taken by kids from better off households. The reality is not meritocratic, it is providing the privileged with a powerful resource to reinforce their advantages, at state expense. There is a lot of very good research to support this view.

It also makes sense if we take a minute to think about it. It is the richer and more middle class kids who are most likely to go to the better primary schools (often private). Who are most likely to get 11 plus exam tuition. Who are most likely to live in homes stuffed with books and educational DVDs. Who are most likely to have parents who coach them on their homework.

But the *ideal* of meritocracy is powerful — and because some poorer kids do get in, and then go on to thrive, there are always strong voices to articulate that ideal — the “Alan Bennett effect”. Every grammar debate features people saying “I owe everything I have to grammar schools.” Such people are generally not impressed by the research on grammar schools’ overall effects.

Now let’s compare this with university places.

Opponents of fees typically argue that universities are a means to provide youngsters of all backgrounds with an excellent education. Universities are the providers of higher education which is every citizen’s right, and which society as a whole benefits from and has a duty to fund.

But just as grammar schools were never engines of meritocracy, so British universities are not and have never been institutions engines of educational equality.

University intakes have risen hugely over time, but there is one constant: inequality in access and uptake. Higher shares of the wealthy, the middle class, those whose parents went to university and so on achieve the grades needed to go, and higher shares of these groups actually go.

The universities themselves have a steep status hierarchy, and the more privileged the institution is, the more privileged its intake of students tends to be. Again, there is plenty of evidence and research to support these points. And again they are logical — wealthier and more middle class families provide all sorts of resources that encourage children into university, while one of the main points of private schools is to buy access to elite universities via lavish spending per pupil.

Universities are therefore not, in reality, egalitarian or democratising institutions on the whole. While they are theoretically open to all (as grammars were), they recruit disproportionately from the advantaged, because the advantaged get the better grades and are more likely to apply. Therefore now — as ever — they provide the privileged with a powerful resource to reinforce their advantages, at state expense. Again, the evidence on these points doesn’t seem to have much effect on proponents of fee abolition.

So, one peculiar feature of both the grammar school and the university debates is the principle ideals espoused by defenders of each are ideals they demonstrably do not live up to in practice, nor are likely to live up to in practice without drastic change elsewhere in society. Yet proponents of each don’t seem overly troubled by this.

A second peculiar feature is that these two issues — grammar schools and fees- loom far larger in education debates than their actual impact on social outcomes would seem to warrant. These are only two small pieces of a very large, complex educational system, with only limited influence on the even larger, more complex problems of inequality, social mobility, maximising the social gains from education and so on.

Yet, these are the education debates we fixate upon episodically in politics as a country. Not primary education or early years education. Not further education or vocational education. Not private schools and their selection into hugely well resourced elite institutions — and the huge privileges and advantages these bring — by wealth rather than merit. Grammar schools and fees. Fees and grammar schools. Over and over. Why?

I think one reason for the prominence and persistence of these two issue in our public debates relates to something entirely separate to their actual impact on any social outcome: both grammar schools and fee free university education are powerful symbols of particular political ideals. Their political power derives from the way they epitomise, for their defenders, *the kind of society they want to live in*.

Grammar schools are powerfully attractive to a particular kind of individual on the political right because they symbolise an ideal of meritocratic elitism. Right wing ideology does not generally regard inequality as inherently wrong. Those who work harder, and have greater talent, deserve to rise and deserve to receive more. The ideal of the grammar school is a powerful symbol of this. The talented minority shall rise above the disadvantages of their background, with the state’s assistance. Those who rise will do so on the basis of merit, not privilege or family connections. Society will be unequal, but the recipients of the greater rewards will be *deserving* of greater rewards.

It is a powerful ideal, and one a lot of people agree with to greater or lesser extent. I think those most attached to grammar schools recoil from the abundant evidence that they don’t work as advertised because the *ideal* of grammars is so powerful for them. They want grammar schools to be engines of meritocracy, grammar schools *ought* to work as engines of meritocracy, therefore they ignore (as people do) the inconvenient distressing evidence that the real world is not so simple. Instead, they seek out and attach themselves strongly to anecdotal evidence which support heir ideological predisposition. Hence all the Alan Bennett stories which appear whenever grammar schools are discussed — eloquent tales of the magical power of grammars to propel talented children (like Alan) from modest backgrounds to the top.

Things run in a similar way with the egalitarian left and tuition fees.

Supporters of fee free higher education believe very strongly in the ideal of a democratised, universalised higher education system open to all. In a perfect world, a fee free university system would meet that ideal. Fee free university education *ought* to be a right that all in society benefit from.

This is once again a powerful idea, and again it is one a lot of people agree with (as with grammars, roughly half support it to some extent). The strength of attachment to this ideal once again results in a refusal to engage with the inconvenient evidence that universities don’t really live up to the ideal: only half of young people go, and it is overwhelmingly the wealthier half, and this inequality doesn’t seem much affected by fees. As with grammars, every debate over fees features anecdotal stories from individuals who believe the perceived injustices of the current regime have hurt them, and of HE Alan Bennett’s — successful people from poor backgrounds, who attended before fees were introduced and believe their path through life would have been different under the current regime.

Grammar schools are very popular on parts of the socially conservative right in part because they epitomise a kind of meritocracy that doesn’t exist but many people dearly wish did exist: a world where smart poor kids are given the means to escape the disadvantages of their backgrounds. Such views are associated with a systematic overestimation by most parents as to the likely chances of their kids getting to go to grammar schools (often based on emotionally resonant but unrepresentative anecdotes), and a systematic underestimation of the effects of social background on who gets in.

Fee free higher education is very popular in part because it also epitomises an ideal, one where higher education is not just a tool used for advancement but a good in and of itself, open to all and accessed by all regardless of background. Such views are associated with a systematic overestimation by most proponents of the ability of many young people to access HE as it is currently structured (often based on emotionally resonant but unrepresentative anecdotes), and a systematic underestimation of the effect of social background on who gets in.

In neither case does the political or emotional appeal of the policy rest primarily on its real world effects. In both cases, the policies needn’t be regressive in an ideal world, but are highly likely to be regressive in the world that we have. I’m not saying there is anything inherently wrong with idealism in politics — arguments about what sort of society we want to live in are a fundamental part of political debate. But once policies become totems, symbols of an ideal, evidence based argument about them — or changing the subject to other important but not totemic aspects of the same issue- becomes much harder. And that is not without costs.

EDIT: The Bun & Only has done a great related piece on how the totemic status of fees undermines a broader debate about what universities are *for*. You can read it here: https://medium.com/@Aremay/free-us-from-fees-3ef5f59919d4