Theresa May wants more selective schools, but she is also very selective in the way she uses language. Here are five words that reveal a lot.<\/p>\n
Selective? <\/strong><\/p>\n The first is \u2018selective<\/strong>\u2019 itself. Take this sentence? \u201cWe help no one by saying to parents who want a selective education for their child that we won\u2019t let them have it.\u201d<\/p>\n Hold on. That would mean that any parent who wants a selective education for their child should have it. \u00a0But that cannot be. The clue is the word \u2018selective\u2019. It means schools select only some children. The best parents can do is put their kids into a selection process \u2013 one that typically picks out only around a quarter of applicants.<\/p>\n In an article headlined \u2018My debt to grammar schools\u2019, May told the Daily Mail \u201cI want every child to have the kind of opportunities that I enjoyed.\u201d But that can\u2019t happen either – because not every child can be selected for grammar schools.<\/p>\n Education secretary Justine Greening even said every school in the country could be a grammar school. So what do you do with those who fail the 11-plus? Deport them presumably.<\/p>\n Because there is also a word for those who aren\u2019t selected \u2013 which is \u2018rejected\u2019. But we didn\u2019t hear that one from May or Greening.<\/p>\n Binary? <\/strong><\/p>\n May said the new system would not be \u2018binary<\/strong>\u2019. My dictionary says \u201cbinary\u201d means \u201cinvolving two things\u201d. \u00a0If you have a test that divides kids into passers and failers, that sounds pretty binary to me.<\/p>\n Either the Prime Minister can\u2019t figure this out \u2013 or, more worryingly, she thinks we can\u2019t.<\/p>\n Gap?<\/strong><\/p>\n Here\u2019s another word Mrs May uses in her own way \u2013 \u2018gap\u2019. She proudly pointed out that \u201cthe attainment gap between rich and poor pupils is reduced to almost zero for children in selective schools.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s hardly a surprise, but the gap that matters is between the number of poor children (defined as those on free school meals) in the school system as a whole \u2013 14.9% – and the number in grammar schools – 2.6%. \u00a0(That\u2019s from House of Commons research this year.)<\/p>\n Mrs May wants to force grammars to take a proportion of their intake from poorer families. But again that\u2019s the wrong metric to measure social mobility. You don\u2019t measure the proportion of the people at the top who started at the bottom. You look at the proportion of the people at the bottom who get to the top. It\u2019s a different sum with a much larger denominator – and much greater relevance.<\/p>\n Enough maths \u2013 here\u2019s some English. Look at this question from a current 11+ revision website:<\/p>\n Find the letter which can be taken from the word <\/em>Halve and put into the word <\/em>Boat, leaving two proper words. You may not otherwise re-arrange the letters.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Did you get it \u2013 you move the \u2018l\u2019 to get \u2018have\u2019 and \u2018bloat\u2019? But would you have known the word \u2018bloat\u2019 when you were 11? Who\u2019s more likely to know it at that age \u2013 a middle class kid who was read to every bedtime – or a child from a tower block with a single parent who has barely read a book themselves?<\/p>\n Families? <\/strong><\/p>\n And this gets to the nub of it. The speech was not really about children \u2013 but \u2018families<\/strong>\u2019 \u2013 and in particular \u201cordinary working-class families\u201d. It wasn\u2019t about what children need but what parents want.<\/p>\n So what chance for the kid whose parents don\u2019t want anything much except a drink, a fix, a win on the horses, a week on parole – or just a bit of rest? Should education policy discriminate against those children and in favour of the children of \u201chard-working\u201d families?<\/p>\n We can have a separate debate about which parents deserve state support, but don\u2019t all children deserve a good education, regardless of who their parents are? And in fact shouldn\u2019t the system make a disproportionate effort to reach out to kids who otherwise risk drifting into unemployment, unfulfillment, crime and benefit-dependency?<\/p>\n Mrs May pointed out that \u201cThere are still 1.25 million attending primary and secondary schools in England which are rated by Ofsted as requiring improvement or inadequate.\u201d<\/p>\n So her answer is \u2026? To create more novelty schools. We\u2019ve already had faith schools, free schools, specialist schools, direct grant schools, grant maintained schools and academy schools. Now we get new selective schools and sponsored schools.<\/p>\n Why can\u2019t we just have schools? Schools for everyone. And if 1.25 million are in struggling schools (which is probably because they have to deal with more challenging kids to start with) then why not fix those schools instead of screwing up the system even more?<\/p>\n Because this isn\u2019t an education policy, it\u2019s a political pitch \u2013 a sugar-coated sweetie dangled in front of parents to buy their votes. It will mean a few more kids get into new grammars; a lot more get rejected and demotivated; all-ability schools lose good pupils; private schools scoop up kids whose parents want to avoid the 11-plus; and struggling schools sink further.<\/p>\n Able? <\/strong><\/p>\n One last word to challenge \u2013 \u2018able<\/strong>\u2019. It\u2019s clear the government wants to select out those regarded as \u201cacademically able\u201d \u2013 or \u2018bright\u2019. But what is a \u2018bright\u2019 kid?<\/p>\n People who failed the 11-plus include the author Michael Morpurgo, the actor Tom Baker and the playwright, John Godber. \u00a0Were they not \u2018bright\u2019? Of course they were, just not the right sort of \u2018bright\u2019.<\/p>\n 11-plus style texts measure verbal and logical intelligence \u2013 the kind used to solve word puzzles and sums. This type of intelligence has been prized by the education system in the West for centuries – but there are those who say it\u2019s much too narrow a concept.<\/p>\n Harvard\u2019s Professor Howard Gardner says there are at least eight types of intelligence: verbal, logical, visual, musical, bodily\/kinaesthetic, naturalistic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. The last two are broadly what are often called \u2018people skills\u2019.<\/p>\n He says \u201cIt\u2019s great to have verbal and logical intelligence because most tests focus on that and as long as you stay in school, you think you\u2019re smart. But if you ever walk out onto a highway, into the woods or into a farm you then find out that other intelligences are at least as important.\u201d<\/p>\n Exactly. Farmers don\u2019t do anagrams. Actors don\u2019t need algebra. On the other hand, business leaders need interpersonal skills as much as the ability to crunch numbers.<\/p>\n By not getting this, not only are we denying opportunity to people whose intelligence is not the verbal-logical kind, but we\u2019re advancing people who are sharp, but not always wise.<\/p>\n Maybe that is why we live in a world where we can send people into space but not end famines and wars.<\/p>\n I went to a grammar but was deeply aware that for every me there were three boys labelled failures at the local secondary modern. The two I knew best became a priest and a top 40 musician \u2013 they had talent but the test missed it.<\/p>\n We need a system that caters for all those who are \u2018bright\u2019 in all of the kaleidoscopic shades of brightness, not one that rewards children who can solve puzzles and rejects the rest. And that doesn\u2019t mean eight types of school for eight types of intelligence. Everyone has their own unique blend of the different types of intelligence.<\/p>\n Here is something Theresa May said that I agree with 100%: \u201cEvery child is different \u2026 with different talents, different interests, different dreams. To help them realise their potential and achieve those dreams we need a school system with the capacity and capability to respond to what they need.\u201d One might ask how.<\/p>\n Well here\u2019s an idea \u2013 create a school in every neighbourhood that has the capacity and capability to help every child discover and develop their unique talents. You could call it \u2018comprehensive\u2019. \u00a0Now there\u2019s a word Mrs May didn\u2019t use once.<\/p>\n PS By the way, Mrs May\u2019s \u201cgrammar\u201d school, Holton Park, became a comprehensive when she was 15. Yes, the Prime Minister is in fact a comprehensive school success story.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Theresa May wants more selective schools, but she is also very selective in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13388,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13387"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidvigar.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}