Theories rule in Labour thinking; facts take a back seat! All the egalitarian instincts of the best of the original Labour party have been swamped in a vicious class war which, in the dying days of this government, is intensifying. And the result has been precisely the opposite of what their professed objectives were.
The old system was not perfect but it, at least, provided a route from poverty for the talented and determined. But now the avenues for advancement have been closed one by one and the disadvantaged are trapped. Centres of excellence are under threat and hang-on by their eyebrows. This way is the route towards national disaster
Christina
TELEGRAPH
31.7.09
How the class war backfired and put social mobility into retreat
Universities are bullied, exams dumbed down- and still children cannot escape their schools for losers, says Jeff Randall
To make progress in Britain's most exclusive and powerful club, there is no substitute for family connections. Its composition reflects an egregious blend of nepotism and mutual back-scratching. The extent to which blood ties and marriages of influence determine who sits where at the top table makes the selection committee of White's resemble a thrusting meritocracy.
I'm referring, as you no doubt guessed, to the Labour Cabinet, which includes the Miliband brothers, Edward and David; the husband-and-wife team, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper, daughter of Prospect's former general secretary; Harriet Harman, the niece of Lord Longford (a former Labour leader of the House of Lords) and the spouse of the party's treasurer, Jack Dromey; Douglas Alexander, sibling of Wendy, the former leader of Labour in Scotland; Hillary Benn, son of Tony, who served as Harold Wilson's industry secretary and Jim Callaghan's energy secretary; and Peter Mandelson, grandson of Herbert Morrison, Clement's Attlee's deputy prime minister.
All of which presents an awkward challenge to an obvious conclusion in the report on social mobility from Alan Milburn, the latest in a long line of Labour campaigners to arrive at the startling revelation that life isn't fair: "Background and social network should not be the critical factors in determining or allocating… opportunities."
As the product of a council estate and a comprehensive school, Mr Milburn does, at least, bring the credibility of personal experience to his crusade. He has made the journey from disadvantage to distinction.
The same cannot be said of Lord Mandelson (grammar school and Oxford) who jumped on the social mobility bandwagon this week, dishing out yet another of those predictable speeches about "widening access" to Britain's premier universities. This, it seems, is a policy issue that a depressed and deflated administration still regards as working in its favour – a vote-grabber. It's hard to see why. After 12 years in office, and an unimaginable amount of taxpayer's money blown on dysfunctional schools and counter-productive welfare programmes, Labour's triumph for the faithful is a decline in social mobility.
Yes, it's going backwards. Mr Milburn's report confirms: "Social mobility has slowed down in our country. Birth, not worth, has become more and more a determinant of people's life chances." How so?
A report published this week by the Centre for Policy Studies shows that Britain's poorest five million households are now paying a bigger slice of the tax cake and receiving a smaller slice from the benefits box than they were before 1997. For the organised poor, those who work for low wages but aspire to something better, this reversal must be particularly galling. For many of them, the comprehensive system, which sits at the heart of Labour's redistributive philosophy, has been a disaster: a dead end.
As a percentage of Cambridge university's undergraduate population, there are fewer state-school students today than there were in 1980. It's true, of course, that entry to Oxbridge is only one measure – and a very narrow one – of the social ladders that can help those from humble backgrounds make their way into the professions, business and the media. Unfortunately, the picture at Britain's other leading universities is barely brighter.
Comprehensives are failing to produce anything like their share of winners.
The 20 Russell Group universities (including Oxbridge), plus a handful of other well-established institutions, make up the elite of Britain's higher education system. These are targeted by many employers who believe, rightly, that some degrees from new universities are worthless. I was shown a list recently by a global media company that comprised two dozen British universities in three groups – gold, silver and bronze. The company's human resources team prefers not to look beyond these for graduate recruitment. Experience tells them that trawling all 125 British universities for fresh talent is, sadly, a waste of time.
If all things were equal privately educated pupils would account for about 7 per cent of each university's intake, because that is the percentage of young people who do not attend state schools. The reality is very different. Setting aside Oxbridge, in 2007-08 the new intake at no fewer than seven other Russell Group universities had a penetration by those taught at fee-paying schools of more than four times that level, ie 28 per cent or above. At Bristol it was 38.5 per cent, Nottingham 30.5 per cent, and Newcastle 28.9 per cent.
Dig a little deeper and you will find that the story is even worse. Of those who do arrive at the best universities from state schools, a hugely disproportionate amount come from England's 164 grammar schools. This is not because, as Gordon Brown once suggested, the best universities are elitist. They are simply defending standards. As even Lord Mandelson has recognised, his party's class warriors are guilty of confusing "excellence and privilege".
No matter which way progressive educationalists spin it, the horror before them is unavoidable. Despite abolishing grammar schools, dumbing down GCSEs and A-levels (to create the illusion of rising standards in state schools), attacking private schools through the pernicious Charity Commission, rebranding dozens of polytechnics and technical colleges as universities, and bullying our best universities into accepting state-school students with below-par grades, social mobility is in retreat.
It should not be the role of our world-class universities to be tools of social engineering. In an increasingly global market for tertiary education, they cannot afford to debase their entry requirements. Anyway, as Mr Milburn points out, the damage to many of those at the bottom of the pile comes long before they can even spell UCAS, much less know what it stands for. Attainment at 16 is, according to his report, the "key to children's future life chances".
It's easy to blame teachers, but who today, other than saintly souls, would want to work at a sink-estate school where obscurantist thugs run amok, threatening and perpetrating violence? Research from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers revealed that nearly 40 per cent of teachers had been confronted by an aggressive parent or guardian, and about a quarter had been attacked by a student. Order has been lost, in part because too many expulsions by headmasters are over-ruled by appeal panels.
For the Conservative Party, hoping to rediscover the way back to Downing Street, reform of Britain's state-funded education system is an open goal. The ball is inside the six-yard box; all David Cameron needs to do is smash it in the net. He will not have a better opportunity to win over traditional Labour voters than by showing them how he can help their children escape from schools for losers. If he lacks the will to admit that grammar schools did more for working-class children than a thousand free school meals, he should at least promise to reintroduce with unambiguous rigour the standards, discipline and ambition that grammars delivered for people like me.
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