Failings In Education

There are many people about this week telling us why the riots and looting across England occurred and what should be done to correct the faults in our society. Everyone is keen to find a quick fix — that will be the preferred solution. But no quick fix will work; the problems are far too deep-seated for that. Dominic Lawson writing in The Independent makes some valid points the central theme of which is the failure of education. Today, this year's A Level results were published and — predictably — the pass rate rose again; this has happened for the last 29 years in a row. It is not believable. Even more it is not believable because employers are complaining about the poor educational standards of school leavers. Lawson provides a statistic that suggests that 40% of black boys leave school with a reading age of seven. That is bad enough but it gets worse. Even with our immigration rates whites are still a majority and among this majority 63% of boys from working class homes also leave school with a reading age of seven. Some of this educational failing is obvious from the words spoken by some of those arrested in the riots. They can hardly string a sentence together and are obviously incapable of any slightly sophisticated reasoning abilities.

If we are to do anything about our sick society and its atmosphere of violence then we need to start with education. There needs to be some balance in equality of opportunity. Now, to get a good education means that you must come from a rich background. This is not exclusively true but it is not far off. When I was in secondary education, I passed the 11+ exam and went to a grammar school. I became one of the elite. The grammar schools were condemned by the liberal left as being elitist and denying the vast mass of the population the same educational chances that I got in a grammar school. And so they abolished the grammar schools. Everyone would go to comprehensive schools and all would have the same opportunities. And they did! They had equal opportunities of getting a third rate education. But there is more! Many of the old grammar schools — particularly the better ones — pulled out of the state system and became independent fee paying schools. They still provided excellent education and along with the old public schools [Eton, Harrow, Winchester and the rest] they educated boys and girls to much higher standards than any state comprehensive. In 2010, about half-a-dozen independent schools send more students to Oxford and Cambridge than 2,000 comprehensives. Now there is true elitism in education but it is an elitism determined by wealth. Every year the exam results get massaged to make things look good and more and more kids are sent to poor universities to spend their money on useless courses in subjects that don't matter and get qualifications that no one wants. The politicians of the Establishment refuse to do anything about it and get all their kids educated privately. All of this needs to change. We need to again expand grammar schools and give working class kids the chance that is now totally denied to them. We must remove this two tier education system. We should also cut down on the drive to send everyone to university and concentrate on getting people to A Level with proper qualifications in proper subjects. Then give them a real choice between university education or occupational apprenticeships. No longer will it be acceptable for children not to read fluently or to be unable to express their thoughts with clarity and understanding. And they must be mathematically literate as well.

This country has always been run by the wealthy. After the 1944 Education Act that started to change. We had grammar school educated kids from ordinary backgrounds finding their way to the top — the days of Harold Wilson, Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher. Now this route through the grammar schools is almost totally sealed off [one or two grammar schools still remain]. Now the country is run by the rich, for the rich and with the rich having all the connections into the corridors of power to ensure that nothing changes.

The indiscipline in schools and homes has to be tackled. It is not acceptable for children not to be chastised and infrequently but if necessary, beaten. The teachers who complain about violence and chaos in the classrooms should remember that it was their colleagues in the 1950s and 1970s who fought to eliminate corporal punishment from all schools, when we knew that it was only the threat of violence that kept order.

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