Segregation in the Education System

Discovering the English education system when coming from abroad, and in particular all the different types of schools, is a long journey. First, I was astonished by the significant number of state faith schools and their recruitment process based on the affiliation to a religion. Then, I heard about free schools and academies, and it took me some time to grasp the difference between a free school, an academy, and a state school. But the greatest stupefaction for me was, and still is, the system of private schools, also called independent schools.

Around 7% of English pupils are privately educated, but this figure disguises great regional disparities, from less than 3% in North-East England to 15% in inner London.[1] But the fact is that in London, when you meet parents from say the upper middle-class, they can’t even imagine sending their children to a state school. And if you happen to mention that your children are in a state school — and not even a religious one — you are very likely to observe expressions of concern and bafflement on their face. Sending your children to a state school is an obvious sign that you are not willing to offer them the best possible education and, in turn, the brightest possible future. The fact that independent schools provide a better education, or that they are ‘better schools’, is the common justification I have heard from parents who had taken the decision to pay at least 15,000 pounds per year and per child for their education.

I wonder what their definition of a good school is. Many would argue that a school performance can be measured by their students’ exam results. But can it? Private schools select their students not only on a strong financial basis but also on their ability via an entry examination. As for the first selection criterion, if wealthy parents do not necessarily generate smarter children, it does mean however that they are probably themselves highly educated, know how to create a stimulating environment for their children — and have also the practical means to facilitate this environment (e.g. time or a nanny, money for extra-curricular activities, etc.) — , and can help their children with their homework. They also probably value the importance of education and transmit this to their children. They also don’t struggle to afford basic needs, while one can easily imagine that families who do might not be in conditions to provide the best environment for their children. These are some of the factors that explain why children from a deprived background have more difficulties in performing well in school. Any direct comparison between private and state schools on the basis of exam results is therefore flawed, because selection by money is the first bias. In addition, independent schools aim via their entry exams to take bright children who have absolutely no learning problems. When students are to start reception in an independent school at the age of four, they are subjected to an assessment (called 4+) that allows schools to select those children who exhibit school readiness, i.e. who are able to sit quietly and listen, and exhibit already developed social skills (i.e., they share and socialise) — in short, children who are easy to teach. At some very academic and selective schools, and in any case for a later entry (7+ and 11+), the children are assessed via different tests on their school knowledge and cognitive abilities.

Furthermore, not only do independent schools take children after a sometimes fierce selection but some of them also maintain a (certainly defined as ‘healthy’) competition between their students by excluding a certain percentage of them every year. Students in the bottom third of each class are told alongside their parents that they are at risk of being excluded. In that way, parents feel pressurised to ensure that their children can stay in such a ‘good’ school, be it by spending a lot of time helping their children with their homework, or by hiring a private tutor — and at the least by putting pressure on their children. Students who are not able to cope with the high learning pace, for whatever reason, may then be expelled because they impair other students’ learning, as parents are told when they are asked to take their child to another school. There is no need to explain that selection by ability is an enormous bias if we compare independent/selective and comprehensive (non-selective) state schools on the basis of their students’ exam results or of the universities they attend after secondary school. Such comparisons simply don’t hold.

What could be the reason then that independent schools are considered to be better schools if it’s not on their exams results? Maybe because of their teachers? After having worked myself in both a state and an independent school, and heard stories told by some friends who work in independent schools, I can say that teachers in the independent sector are in no way better than in the state sector. The teacher qualification is the same for both sectors, and state schools actually have the obligation to hire qualified teachers while private schools do not. One striking difference is the better working conditions in independent schools, with better pay for less working hours in the year, less students (because of smaller classes) and less behaviour issues. However, it does not mean that better teachers are attracted to these conditions. Firstly, some teachers do prefer to work in state schools because it is where they feel they make most difference. Secondly, you may find lazy teachers in private schools as often the children do not need to rely on their teachers: either they understand in their own or they will go through everything with their private tutor at home anyway. And, indeed, many students in independent schools behave in the classroom as if they were in a coffee shop, where they show little consideration for their teacher.

One of the reasons for this strong drive for parents to invest all this money in their children’s education may be very different from the allegedly better education (with the only exception that the classes are much smaller, which certainly makes a real difference). And this can be simply summarised with one word: intake. Independent schools take in wealthy children without any major learning difficulties.

At this point, I would like to mention many studies that investigated the influence of prior schooling to students’ achievement in higher education. Against all expectations, they show that “state school students tend to do better in their degree studies than students from independent schools with the same prior educational attainment. This improved performance is not affected by the type of state school. Students from community schools, foundation schools, sixth form colleges and voluntary controlled or aided schools all tend to do better than their independent school counterparts with the same prior educational attainment.”[2] And even leaving aside academic achievement, I cannot help but think of the terrible, narrow, and single-sided vision of humanity that children attending a private school from an early age must develop. They sadly miss its beautiful diversity — as German people so nicely say, “die Welt ist schön, weil sie bunt ist.”[3]

Faith schools have also an important place in the education landscape, and de facto mean a partial religious segregation in schools. While Church of England schools are obliged, as voluntary controlled schools, to open at least 30% of their intake to children who are not affiliated to the Church of England, catholic schools often take only catholic children. The importance of faith schools in England is probably particularly surprising for me because I have inherited the French idea given by Jules Ferry that religion is a private matter and, as such, should not play any role in schools. This certainly reflects different societal views between both countries, with different, valid arguments for both. However, even if one adheres to the view that children of a given religion should be educated with other children of the same religion, it is interesting to note that some parents seem to experience an intense revival of their Christian faith when their elder child approaches the transition to secondary school. Christian schools are undoubtedly seen by many as a way to avoid Muslim children who often come from deprived backgrounds and are not from white ethnicities (and I don’t know which of these features is seen as the most prohibitive). All this could be funny if the effect on some of the non-religious, comprehensive state schools was not so dramatic. Simply because the proportion of children from deprived backgrounds can then be so high that proper teaching becomes almost impossible, and teachers are reduced to spend all their energy on behaviour management. As a PGCE student, when I was not able to teach the lesson that I had planed because of three or four kids in my class who were looking for trouble, I felt sorry for all the other kids who were patiently waiting for me to resume my lesson. This is a double punishment for these children who, in addition to a possibly hard life at home, find a harsh environment at school and cannot be proper taught.

Another interesting, and for me new aspect of the organisation of English schools is the grouping of children inside schools according to their ability. Research shows that ability sets at best allow most able students to perform better at the expense of the less able, and at worst have only negative outcomes for the less able and no effect on the most able[4]. I do believe actually that it can be positive for more able students to be in a mixed ability class. They have then the opportunity to explain to their peers some lesson content, which is a very powerful method to deepen one’s understanding. And the function of role models played by attentive, engaged and keen students is incredibly valuable indeed for other students. For these reasons, and also because I do believe that diversity in schools is the best way to build a united society, I did not like ability setting at first. But one day I heard a broadcast on a French radio station[5] that argued that having more learning opportunities in state schools for more able students (the discussion followed a draft bill to cut the so-called ‘bi-language’ classes, where students start learning two MFLs from year 7) was a way to entice more middle-class families to send their children to state schools in large cities. This convinced me that ability setting might have positive aspects after all — and that how schools are organised and above all the issue of their intake is complex, to say the least.

This segregation problem seems to concern many large cities in Europe. It appears that if people can choose which school to send their children to, segregation is very likely to occur. It might be a common feature of human nature. However, I believe that when considering an education system, it is important to come back to what a society wants to achieve with its schools. I dealt with this in a previous post (What Is the Purpose of Education?), exposing some different views one can adopt in regards to the purpose of schools. If you believe that schools are part of our scheme to construct a better world with solidarity, social justice and inclusion as core values, then any type of segregation in schools is at odds with your ideals — and therefore shocking. If instead you think that schools are to serve your individual interests, then there is nothing wrong with paying high school fees so that your children are educated together with similarly wealthy children, coming from the same world (or rather class) and having no learning difficulties. ‘Better schools’ actually means in this context schools that educate only able children from a privileged background.

To conclude, I believe that education should certainly have a higher purpose than merely training children to their future job. Education is not only about ensuring that the economic machinery works; it is foremost about opening up children’s minds to the world around them, transmitting knowledge to them, and developing their thinking skills so that every child can become a free-thinking and responsible citizen in a society where they can play an active role. As such, education should be considered a public good — and with this I have in mind two essential principles: equality and solidarity. Equality in the sense that all children should have equal opportunities to succeed, that is, all children should have access to high-level education wherever they live and whatever their background. And solidarity because schools should be paid for by the society for the society. Our education system should serve our collective interest, as a society, and not follow an individualistic logic that leads to reproduction of inequality and privileges. Finally, schools should strengthen the ties between all of us instead of segregating us from an early age.

[1] These values were taken from https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2013 [accessed on 14/12/2016]

[2] Differences in degree outcomes: Key findings. Uploaded from http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2014/201403/ on 21 November 2016. See also e.g. R. Naylor and J. Smith (2002) Schooling effects on subsequent university performance: evidence for the UK university population, Warwick economic research papers No 657.

[3] Meaning literally ‘The world is beautiful because it is colourful’, with ‘colourful’ meaning here in a figurative way ‘diverse’.

[4] See e.g. Schofield, J. W. (2010). International Evidence on Ability Grouping With Curriculum Differentiation and the Achievement Gap in Secondary Schools. Teachers College Record 112 (5): 1492–1528 and Gamoran, A. (2010). Tracking and inequality. New directions for research and practice. In: Apple, M. W., Ball, S. J., and Gandin, L. A. (Eds), The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education. New York: Routledge.

[5] https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/le-billet-de-nicole-ferroni/le-billet-de-nicole-ferroni-13-janvier-2016