Educational Failure

There has been some discussion in this last week-end's Sunday papers about the new coalition government's plans for education and how - or if - it will benefit the kids of the future. Something has needed to be done about education for donkey's years and, indeed, something was done - 65 years ago - via the 1944 Butler Education Act. This gave us grammar schools open to all and I, personally, have good reason to be grateful for the opportunities that act offered to me. At the time I did not think too much about what was happening. I went to Bolton [School] and took their entrance exam and later [2 weeks] I went to the local secondary modern and sat the early version of 11+. I was summoned for an interview at Bolton School but, filled, with nerves, I failed to impress and I was rejected. Nevertheless, I did well enough in the other exam to be offered a place at Leigh Grammar School. This lead to Leeds University and a degree in Chemical Engineering. Along the way, I met other pupils and students from varied backgrounds from basic working class to the very rich. I got along with all of them and, in addition to my academic qualifications, I received an education. The economy will determine the usefulness of otherwise of technical qualifications but an education is a priceless asset.

Britain has a long track-record of general educational failure that goes back to the 19th century - and earlier. The Industrial Revolution had its origins in Britain. We were the workshop of the world and in the late 18th century it was said that there were more machines working in Lancashire than in the whole of the rest of the world put together. Whether this was really true, I know not, but the fact the it could even be suggested indicates how dominant Britain was in those years. The second Industrial Revolution came along in the second half of the 19th century. Where the first Revolution had relied on the ideas of great inventors - practical men like Richard Trevithick, George Stephenson, James Brindley, Thomas Telford and Joseph Bazalgette - the second grew out of science and technology driven by high levels of education. Britain failed dismally to provide such technical expertise. That greatest of all Victorian engineers, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was educated in France. Although it was not immediately apparent, Britain's decline as a manufacturing and exporting nation began in about 1875. Until the First World War, we could maintain our position, just. But from then on, old technology in old manufacturing premises allowed us to go down-hill. Our balance of payments deteriorated and we relied on money, insurance and financial services to balance the books. At the end of the Second World War, things were desperate and the Labour government did much to try to stop the rot. But after 1950 things carried on down-hill and, in the name of equality, in the 1960s a Labour government abolished the grammar schools. Since then the resurrection of the grammar schools has been a non-subject. In the name of equality of opportunity, everyone must go to a comprehensive. Everyone, that is, except those whose parents are wealthy enough to send them to a proper, good-quality, private, independent school. The make-up of the present cabinet in the coalition government is a crashing indictment of the failure of the policies of the last 40 years. Now there is not more equality; there is considerably less. People like me who come from working class backgrounds cannot have the benefits of a grammar school education. We just stuff everybody through the comprehensives, hand out meaningless bits of paper that suggest the school leavers are well educated and then send them to third-rate universities to get more useless bits of paper. Meanwhile the children of the rich are educated privately, go to the best universities and get all the top jobs. This last, unlamented Labour government even tried to socially engineer the universities by deliberate discrimination against applicants from independent schools. Social deprivation was now to be considered an essential element in qualifying for a university. I am sure that, in the future, this will be appreciated if any bridge designed by a socially disadvantaged engineer collapses.

The last 20 years have demonstrated the failure of our education system and of our economic planning. After the financial collapse, there is a realisation, at last, that we need to make things that people want to buy and that Britain has lots of bits that are not London. Manufacturing now accounts for about 13% of GDP and reversing the collapse will be a Herculean task. Are our politicians up to it? I am sceptical. After all, I am still waiting for Harold Wilson's "white hot technological revolution" of 1964.

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