Showing posts with label tutor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tutor. Show all posts
Tuesday, 9 May 2023
Sunday, 17 March 2019
Americans really pay a bribe for a good education? In Britain, we’ve got far subtler ways
The deviousness that some routinely resort to here puts the US scandal in the shade writes Catherine Bennett in The Guardian
Actress Felicity Huffman has been indicted in the university admissions scandal. Photograph: David McNew/AFP/Getty Images
Ditto Smith’s generous quotation from a statement provided for a girl who has been reinvented, apparently for scam purposes, as a “US Club Soccer All American”: “On the soccer or lacrosse etc I am the one who looks like a boy amongst girls with my hair tied up, arms sleeveless, and blood and bruises from head to toe.”
Not, of course, that’s there’s anything illegal, here or in the US, about reproducing personal statements from professional suppliers or collaborating with a teacher and/or parent – the latter, though risibly unfair, is routine. Another Varsity Blues alleged tactic, that of buying a diagnosis requiring extra exam time, may have no exact UK parallel but, according to a 2017 BBC report, one in five children in independent schools received extra time for GCSE and A-levels. David Kynaston and David Green, in a powerful critique of independent schools, recently pointed out various advantages, made possible by high fees: “Far greater resources are available for diagnosing special needs, challenging exam results and guiding university applications.”
If, mercifully, UK universities are low on dependable side doors, the shamelessness of some of the US defendants, as they appear to pursue their imagined birthright (Ivy League bragging rights) can still sound uncomfortably familiar. Many British parents, equally fearful of mediocrity, are similarly unabashed on local tricks and stratagems – not only private education, but house moves, music lessons (for reserved school places), intensive coaching, internships, resits, religious conversions, fake addresses, and, the Times now reports, FOI requests to Oxbridge, from disappointed parents – that will end up, added to financial and cultural capital, delivering much the same outcome as the US scandal. Legal or otherwise, the result is enhanced educational opportunities for the privileged and untalented, fewer for the talented but disadvantaged.
The pervasive cunning is hardly surprising given the official esteem for “sharp-elbowed” parental operators, who, David Laws once argued, set a fine example. It follows, as demonstrated by UK politicians on all sides, that extreme resourcefulness in, say, keeping places from less fortunate residents, is readily passed off as understandable dedication as opposed to insatiable self-interest. Don’t we all want [smiling face with halo emoji] the best for our kids?
Following some unspecified epiphany, David Cameron, of previously wavering faith, secured places at an oversubscribed church school, some distance from No 10, requiring proof of “Sunday worship in a church at least twice a month for 36 months before the closing applications date”. Equally instructively, my own, affluent MP, Emily Thornberry, had, earlier, hoovered up three of the few precious places at an outstanding, part-selective school in Hertfordshire, 13 miles from home, which tradition annually reserves for her Islington constituents. On Twitter, she has reminded critics: “All my children educated in the state sector.” There is no suggestion that either MP has broken any laws.
There must be, beyond legality, some ethically significant factor that makes non-paying wangling infinitely superior to the ugly, US variety. But you probably have to buy a place at Harvard to find out what it is.
‘Emily Thornberry hoovered up three precious places at an outstanding part-selective school.’ Photograph: George Cracknell Wright/Rex/Shutterstock
“Dude, dude, what do you think, I’m a moron?” Thus, one of the parents accused of involvement in the US college bribery racket. He’d been warned – by a wiretapped conspirator – not to reveal that he paid $50,000 for his daughter’s fraudulent test results, part of a system the fixer calls “the side door”.
Appropriately soothed – “I’m not saying you’re a moron” – the accused father is recorded, by the FBI, assuring the scam’s organiser that he’ll deliver, if required, the agreed fiction. “I’m going to say that I’ve been inspired how you’re helping underprivileged kids get into college. Totally got it.”
Although many of the best bits of an FBI affidavit – presenting the case against the accused parents – have been widely circulated, this sublime page-turner deserves to be enjoyed in full, if not put up for literary awards pending film adaptation (Laura Dern has been suggested for Felicity Huffman), and made compulsory reading in all admission departments. It’s not just that extracts can’t convey the fathomless entitlement and mendacity exhibited by affluent, ostensibly respectable parents. They can’t begin to do justice to the affidavit’s entertainment value as savage social comedy, something productions of Molière often attempt, but rarely achieve.
Even the dramatis personae, in the investigation the FBI named “Operation Varsity Blues”, reads like an updated Tartuffe: “Todd Blake is an entrepreneur and investor. Diane Blake is an executive at a retail merchandising firm.” Here, too, cultivated, fluent people, many of whom also sound deluded, greedy and hypocritical, appear to be playing with their children’s lives for no reason beyond self-gratification. But the dialogue, when not jaw-dropping, races along (“And it works?” asks a defendant. “Every time.”), the plots and motives are horribly plausible, and the jeopardy is evidently real to the alleged conspirators, even if the all-encompassing irony of their alleged scheme is not. “She actually won’t really be part of the water polo team, right?”
And from a fellow future defendant, on the risks, if this status-enhancing, child-perfecting scam were to be discovered: “You know, the, the embarrassment to everyone in the communities. Oh my God, it would just be – yeah. Ugh.”
Are FBI affidavits regularly as good as the tale of Operation Varsity Blues? If so, the death of the novel should be easier to bear. Although this document has one overriding purpose – to show that accused parents and witnesses colluded in fraudulent applications – special thanks are due to special agent Laura Smith, the author, who never writes a dull page. Maybe the individual cases were fully as compelling as this edited evidence suggests. Or maybe agent Smith’s organisation of her material really does indicate considerable, dry artistry? Either way, you cherish the detail when an accused parent replies, following an allegedly fraudulently extracted college offer: “This is wonderful news! [high-five emoji].”
“Dude, dude, what do you think, I’m a moron?” Thus, one of the parents accused of involvement in the US college bribery racket. He’d been warned – by a wiretapped conspirator – not to reveal that he paid $50,000 for his daughter’s fraudulent test results, part of a system the fixer calls “the side door”.
Appropriately soothed – “I’m not saying you’re a moron” – the accused father is recorded, by the FBI, assuring the scam’s organiser that he’ll deliver, if required, the agreed fiction. “I’m going to say that I’ve been inspired how you’re helping underprivileged kids get into college. Totally got it.”
Although many of the best bits of an FBI affidavit – presenting the case against the accused parents – have been widely circulated, this sublime page-turner deserves to be enjoyed in full, if not put up for literary awards pending film adaptation (Laura Dern has been suggested for Felicity Huffman), and made compulsory reading in all admission departments. It’s not just that extracts can’t convey the fathomless entitlement and mendacity exhibited by affluent, ostensibly respectable parents. They can’t begin to do justice to the affidavit’s entertainment value as savage social comedy, something productions of Molière often attempt, but rarely achieve.
Even the dramatis personae, in the investigation the FBI named “Operation Varsity Blues”, reads like an updated Tartuffe: “Todd Blake is an entrepreneur and investor. Diane Blake is an executive at a retail merchandising firm.” Here, too, cultivated, fluent people, many of whom also sound deluded, greedy and hypocritical, appear to be playing with their children’s lives for no reason beyond self-gratification. But the dialogue, when not jaw-dropping, races along (“And it works?” asks a defendant. “Every time.”), the plots and motives are horribly plausible, and the jeopardy is evidently real to the alleged conspirators, even if the all-encompassing irony of their alleged scheme is not. “She actually won’t really be part of the water polo team, right?”
And from a fellow future defendant, on the risks, if this status-enhancing, child-perfecting scam were to be discovered: “You know, the, the embarrassment to everyone in the communities. Oh my God, it would just be – yeah. Ugh.”
Are FBI affidavits regularly as good as the tale of Operation Varsity Blues? If so, the death of the novel should be easier to bear. Although this document has one overriding purpose – to show that accused parents and witnesses colluded in fraudulent applications – special thanks are due to special agent Laura Smith, the author, who never writes a dull page. Maybe the individual cases were fully as compelling as this edited evidence suggests. Or maybe agent Smith’s organisation of her material really does indicate considerable, dry artistry? Either way, you cherish the detail when an accused parent replies, following an allegedly fraudulently extracted college offer: “This is wonderful news! [high-five emoji].”
Actress Felicity Huffman has been indicted in the university admissions scandal. Photograph: David McNew/AFP/Getty Images
Ditto Smith’s generous quotation from a statement provided for a girl who has been reinvented, apparently for scam purposes, as a “US Club Soccer All American”: “On the soccer or lacrosse etc I am the one who looks like a boy amongst girls with my hair tied up, arms sleeveless, and blood and bruises from head to toe.”
Not, of course, that’s there’s anything illegal, here or in the US, about reproducing personal statements from professional suppliers or collaborating with a teacher and/or parent – the latter, though risibly unfair, is routine. Another Varsity Blues alleged tactic, that of buying a diagnosis requiring extra exam time, may have no exact UK parallel but, according to a 2017 BBC report, one in five children in independent schools received extra time for GCSE and A-levels. David Kynaston and David Green, in a powerful critique of independent schools, recently pointed out various advantages, made possible by high fees: “Far greater resources are available for diagnosing special needs, challenging exam results and guiding university applications.”
If, mercifully, UK universities are low on dependable side doors, the shamelessness of some of the US defendants, as they appear to pursue their imagined birthright (Ivy League bragging rights) can still sound uncomfortably familiar. Many British parents, equally fearful of mediocrity, are similarly unabashed on local tricks and stratagems – not only private education, but house moves, music lessons (for reserved school places), intensive coaching, internships, resits, religious conversions, fake addresses, and, the Times now reports, FOI requests to Oxbridge, from disappointed parents – that will end up, added to financial and cultural capital, delivering much the same outcome as the US scandal. Legal or otherwise, the result is enhanced educational opportunities for the privileged and untalented, fewer for the talented but disadvantaged.
The pervasive cunning is hardly surprising given the official esteem for “sharp-elbowed” parental operators, who, David Laws once argued, set a fine example. It follows, as demonstrated by UK politicians on all sides, that extreme resourcefulness in, say, keeping places from less fortunate residents, is readily passed off as understandable dedication as opposed to insatiable self-interest. Don’t we all want [smiling face with halo emoji] the best for our kids?
Following some unspecified epiphany, David Cameron, of previously wavering faith, secured places at an oversubscribed church school, some distance from No 10, requiring proof of “Sunday worship in a church at least twice a month for 36 months before the closing applications date”. Equally instructively, my own, affluent MP, Emily Thornberry, had, earlier, hoovered up three of the few precious places at an outstanding, part-selective school in Hertfordshire, 13 miles from home, which tradition annually reserves for her Islington constituents. On Twitter, she has reminded critics: “All my children educated in the state sector.” There is no suggestion that either MP has broken any laws.
There must be, beyond legality, some ethically significant factor that makes non-paying wangling infinitely superior to the ugly, US variety. But you probably have to buy a place at Harvard to find out what it is.
Thursday, 14 March 2019
It's not just corruption. Entrance into elite US colleges is rigged in every way
An FBI sting revealed that wealthy parents are buying their children a place in top universities. But they’re not the only problem: the whole system is rigged writes Richard V Reeves in The Guardian
How elite US schools give preference to wealthy and white 'legacy' applicants
Or how about Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law? Kushner was accepted into Harvard shortly after his father donated $2.5m. An official at Kushner’s high school said there was “no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would, on the merits, get into Harvard. His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it.”
David E and Stacey Goel just gave $100m to Harvard. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that their children probably have an excellent chance of Harvard admission.
Even those parents who are not in the wealthiest brackets, but are squarely in the upper middle class, can use their money to boost their kids’ chances, through tutors, SAT prep classes, athletic coaches. Students who apply early have better chances of admission, which favors more affluent families since early admission precedes financial aid decisions. Many colleges prefer students who have “shown an interest” in their college. How to show an interest? By visiting the campus – easy for those with money for flights and hotels, less so for those on modest or low incomes.
Small wonder that at elite colleges, including most of those targeted in the corruption scheme such as Yale, Duke, Stanford and Wake Forest, take more students from families in the top 1% of the income distribution than from those in the bottom 60% combined.
So hats off to FBI special agent Bonavolonta and his team for exposing the corruption admissions. But it is in fact simply the most visible sign of a much deeper problem with college admissions. Elite colleges are serving to reinforce class inequality, rather than reduce it. The opaque, complex, unfair admissions process is a big part of the problem. From an equality perspective, it is not just Singer and his clients who are at fault: it’s the system as a whole.
‘Elite colleges are serving to reinforce class inequality, rather than reduce it.’ Photograph: Boston Globe/Boston Globe via Getty Images
Shock horror! Wealthy Americans are using their money to buy their children places at elite colleges. An FBI investigation, appropriately named Operation Varsity Blues, has exposed a $25m cash-for-admissions scandal. Coaches were allegedly bribed to declare candidates as athletic recruits; test administrators to change their scores, or allow someone else to take the test for them.
At the center of the cheating scheme was William “Rick” Singer, the founder of a for-profit college preparation business based in Newport Beach, California. Among the 33 parents caught in the FBI sting were Hollywood stars Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. Loughlin starred in the series Full House. Huffman is famous for her role in Desperate Housewives; now she will be more famous as a desperate mom. And she’s not alone. The breathless anxiety among many affluent parents to get their kids into the very best colleges is a striking feature of upper-class American life.
Singer’s bribery scheme allegedly allowed parents to buy entrance for their offspring at some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges, including Yale, Georgetown University, Stanford University, UCLA, the University of San Diego, USC, University of Texas and Wake Forest.
FBI officers were at pains to point out that the colleges themselves are not being found liable; though nine athletic coaches were caught in the net.
“Following 10 months of investigation using sophisticated techniques, the FBI uncovered what we believe to be a rigged system,” John Bonavolonta, the FBI special agent in charge said, “robbing students all over the country of their right to a fair shot of getting into some of the most elite universities in this country”.
But here’s the thing: the whole system is “rigged” in favor of more affluent parents. It is true that the conversion of wealth into a desirable college seat was especially egregious in this case – to the extent that it was actually illegal. But there are countless ways that students are robbed of a “fair shot” if they are not lucky enough to be born to well-resourced, well-connected parents.
The difference between this illegal scheme and the legal ways in which money buys access is one of degree, not of kind. The mistake here was to do something illegal. Meanwhile, much of what goes on in college admissions many not be illegal, but it is immoral.
Take legacy preferences, for example. This boosts the admissions chances of the children of alumni; and for obvious reasons the alumni of elite colleges tend to be pretty affluent, especially if they marry each other. (They are also disproportionately white.) The acceptance rate for legacy applicants at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Georgetown and Stanford is between two and three times higher than the general admission rate. If they don’t get in first time round, they might be asked to take a “gap year” and enter a year later instead, a loophole known as “Z-listing”. A Princeton study found that being a legacy applicant had the same effect as adding 160 SAT points – on the old scale up to 1600 – to a student’s application. Imagine if colleges gave that kind of admissions boost to lower-income kids?
As John W Anderson, the former co-director of college counseling at the Phillips Academy, an elite boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts, once admitted, of the students from his school who are Z-listed for Harvard, “a very, very, very high percent” are legacies. The Harvard Crimson estimates the proportion at around one in two.
Or how about donor preferences? Rather than bribing coaches, the wealthiest parents can just bribe – sorry, donate to – the college directly. In 2017, the Washington Post reported on the special treatment given to “VIP applicants” via an annual “watch list”. Applicants whose parents were big donors would have notes on their files reading “$500k. Must be on WL” (wait list). Even better, these donations are tax free!
As a general rule, the bigger the money the bigger the effect on admissions chances. Among elite aspirational alums, the question asked is “what’s the price?”. In other words, how much do you have to donate to get your child in?
Whatever the price is, those with the fattest wallets can obviously pay it. Peter Malkin graduated from Harvard Law School in 1958. He became a very wealthy real estate businessman, and huge donor. In 1985, the university’s indoor athletic facility was renamed the Malkin Athletic Center in his honor. All three of Malkin’s children went to Harvard. By 2009, five of his six college-age grandchildren had followed suit. (One brave boy dared to go to Stanford instead.)
Shock horror! Wealthy Americans are using their money to buy their children places at elite colleges. An FBI investigation, appropriately named Operation Varsity Blues, has exposed a $25m cash-for-admissions scandal. Coaches were allegedly bribed to declare candidates as athletic recruits; test administrators to change their scores, or allow someone else to take the test for them.
At the center of the cheating scheme was William “Rick” Singer, the founder of a for-profit college preparation business based in Newport Beach, California. Among the 33 parents caught in the FBI sting were Hollywood stars Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. Loughlin starred in the series Full House. Huffman is famous for her role in Desperate Housewives; now she will be more famous as a desperate mom. And she’s not alone. The breathless anxiety among many affluent parents to get their kids into the very best colleges is a striking feature of upper-class American life.
Singer’s bribery scheme allegedly allowed parents to buy entrance for their offspring at some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges, including Yale, Georgetown University, Stanford University, UCLA, the University of San Diego, USC, University of Texas and Wake Forest.
FBI officers were at pains to point out that the colleges themselves are not being found liable; though nine athletic coaches were caught in the net.
“Following 10 months of investigation using sophisticated techniques, the FBI uncovered what we believe to be a rigged system,” John Bonavolonta, the FBI special agent in charge said, “robbing students all over the country of their right to a fair shot of getting into some of the most elite universities in this country”.
But here’s the thing: the whole system is “rigged” in favor of more affluent parents. It is true that the conversion of wealth into a desirable college seat was especially egregious in this case – to the extent that it was actually illegal. But there are countless ways that students are robbed of a “fair shot” if they are not lucky enough to be born to well-resourced, well-connected parents.
The difference between this illegal scheme and the legal ways in which money buys access is one of degree, not of kind. The mistake here was to do something illegal. Meanwhile, much of what goes on in college admissions many not be illegal, but it is immoral.
Take legacy preferences, for example. This boosts the admissions chances of the children of alumni; and for obvious reasons the alumni of elite colleges tend to be pretty affluent, especially if they marry each other. (They are also disproportionately white.) The acceptance rate for legacy applicants at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Georgetown and Stanford is between two and three times higher than the general admission rate. If they don’t get in first time round, they might be asked to take a “gap year” and enter a year later instead, a loophole known as “Z-listing”. A Princeton study found that being a legacy applicant had the same effect as adding 160 SAT points – on the old scale up to 1600 – to a student’s application. Imagine if colleges gave that kind of admissions boost to lower-income kids?
As John W Anderson, the former co-director of college counseling at the Phillips Academy, an elite boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts, once admitted, of the students from his school who are Z-listed for Harvard, “a very, very, very high percent” are legacies. The Harvard Crimson estimates the proportion at around one in two.
Or how about donor preferences? Rather than bribing coaches, the wealthiest parents can just bribe – sorry, donate to – the college directly. In 2017, the Washington Post reported on the special treatment given to “VIP applicants” via an annual “watch list”. Applicants whose parents were big donors would have notes on their files reading “$500k. Must be on WL” (wait list). Even better, these donations are tax free!
As a general rule, the bigger the money the bigger the effect on admissions chances. Among elite aspirational alums, the question asked is “what’s the price?”. In other words, how much do you have to donate to get your child in?
Whatever the price is, those with the fattest wallets can obviously pay it. Peter Malkin graduated from Harvard Law School in 1958. He became a very wealthy real estate businessman, and huge donor. In 1985, the university’s indoor athletic facility was renamed the Malkin Athletic Center in his honor. All three of Malkin’s children went to Harvard. By 2009, five of his six college-age grandchildren had followed suit. (One brave boy dared to go to Stanford instead.)
How elite US schools give preference to wealthy and white 'legacy' applicants
Or how about Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law? Kushner was accepted into Harvard shortly after his father donated $2.5m. An official at Kushner’s high school said there was “no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would, on the merits, get into Harvard. His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it.”
David E and Stacey Goel just gave $100m to Harvard. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that their children probably have an excellent chance of Harvard admission.
Even those parents who are not in the wealthiest brackets, but are squarely in the upper middle class, can use their money to boost their kids’ chances, through tutors, SAT prep classes, athletic coaches. Students who apply early have better chances of admission, which favors more affluent families since early admission precedes financial aid decisions. Many colleges prefer students who have “shown an interest” in their college. How to show an interest? By visiting the campus – easy for those with money for flights and hotels, less so for those on modest or low incomes.
Small wonder that at elite colleges, including most of those targeted in the corruption scheme such as Yale, Duke, Stanford and Wake Forest, take more students from families in the top 1% of the income distribution than from those in the bottom 60% combined.
So hats off to FBI special agent Bonavolonta and his team for exposing the corruption admissions. But it is in fact simply the most visible sign of a much deeper problem with college admissions. Elite colleges are serving to reinforce class inequality, rather than reduce it. The opaque, complex, unfair admissions process is a big part of the problem. From an equality perspective, it is not just Singer and his clients who are at fault: it’s the system as a whole.
Wednesday, 5 December 2018
‘An education arms race’: inside the ultra-competitive world of private tutoring
A growing number of parents and guardians are paying for children as young as four to receive additional tuition. What is fuelling this booming industry asks Sally Weale in The Guardian?
‘I’m trying to do something for him that I never got’ ... Geoff Clayton, Brooklyn’s grandfather. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Christopher Thomond/Guardian
“The world is very competitive and everybody is working very hard,” said Ijaz. “I know the school are doing very well, but there are 30 students in each class. It’s one teacher and support staff. They try their best to help, but I realise if I’m going to give my kids some extra help it’s going to be brilliant for their future. Anyone who does a bit extra always gets ahead.”
He is ambitious for his children. “I warn my kids they should be top – or among the top five at least – in class. They are doing well. I don’t mind paying extra. I’m investing in their future. I know the importance of education. My kids love it.”
Abubakar, a quiet, serious child, is planning to sit the 11-plus to win a place at grammar school. Sometimes he does not feel like starting work, “but when I’ve started I like to carry on”. Amna is a chatty livewire and wants to be a paleontologist. “I’m good at maths, but the thing I’m best at is history,” she chirps. “My brother does hard work. I’m doing the same now. I want to be the same as him.”
Geoff Clayton, a retired garage worker, has been bringing his 10-year-old grandson, Brooklyn, to Explore Learning for about nine months. Brooklyn lives with his grandparents and likes football, Minecraft and maths. “He’s done really well,” says Clayton. “His reading has got a lot better, everything’s got better.” The membership takes a significant chunk out of his pension, but he is happy to pay it to give Brooklyn “a bit of a leg up”.
“Nowadays, it’s all about exams and certificates and what you know,” he says. “When I left school, it was more: ‘Can you do the job?’ Brooklyn has done a heck of a lot better since coming here. Sometimes he moans, but he’s OK once he’s here. It does work if you’re prepared to put the time and effort in.”
The Sutton Trust, a charity that seeks to improve social mobility through education, has documented a huge rise in private tuition in recent years. Its annual survey of secondary students in England and Wales revealed in July that 27% have had home or private tuition, a figure that rises to 41% in London.
The Bradford outpost of Explore Learning, which now has 139 centres across the UK. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Christopher Thomond/Guardian
With tutoring commanding a fee of about £24 an hour, rising to £27 in London (although many tutors charge £60 or more), the trust is concerned that the private tuition market is putting children from poorer backgrounds at even greater disadvantage. To redress the balance, it would like to see the government introduce a means-tested voucher system, paid for through the pupil premium funding that schools receive to support disadvantaged pupils.
“We are in an education arms race,” says Peter Lampl, the founder of the trust. “Parents are looking to get an edge for their kids and having private tuition gives them that edge. But if we are serious about social mobility, we need to make sure that the academic playing field is levelled outside the school gate.”
Initiatives aimed at making tuition more accessible already exist: some agencies pledge a proportion of their tuition to poorer pupils for free, while non-profit programmes such as the Tutor Trust connect tutors with disadvantaged schools. Explore Learning offers “scholarships” that give a 50% discount to parents on income support or jobseeker’s allowance. Parents can also use childcare vouchers and tax-free childcare schemes to help pay for tuition.
Nevertheless, huge inequities in education persist. Nowhere is this more evident than in children’s battle to pass the 11-plus to get into grammar school. Research published earlier this year revealed that private tutoring means pupils from high-income families are much more likely to get into grammar schools than equally bright pupils from poorer families. John Jerrim and Sam Sims from the Institute of Education at University College London looked at more than 1,800 children in areas where the grammar school system is in operation. They found that those from families in the bottom quarter of household incomes in England have less than a 10% chance of attending a grammar school, compared with a 40% chance for children in the top quarter.
If we are serious about social mobility, we need to make sure the academic playing field is levelled outside school - Peter Lampl, the Sutton Trust
They also established that wealthier families are much more likely to use private tutors to prepare their children for the entrance exam. Fewer than 10% of children from families with below-average incomes received coaching, compared with about 30% from households in the top quarter. About 70% of those who received tutoring got into a grammar school, compared with 14% of those who did not.
Alexa Collins lives in Buckinghamshire, which operates a grammar school system. She could not afford tuition to prepare her daughter for the 11-plus; despite being a top performer at primary, she failed the test, but has since thrived at her comprehensive, gaining nine GCSEs.
Collins, who went to grammar school herself but received no coaching, says she is ideologically opposed to tutoring because it is unfair to those who cannot afford it. Although she can see the case for short-term tutoring on a specific subject when a child is struggling, she adds: “I think it’s awful, that idea of tutoring kids from seven to push them through this exam. How can you possibly put that pressure on them?”
Another parent, who wishes to remain anonymous but lives in Kent, which operates grammar schools, says her son tackled the 11-plus without a tutor. “It felt morally wrong to claim an advantage by paying cash. It’s so unfair.” As she tried to coach her son, she felt at huge disadvantage. “So much depends on a parent’s skills to teach. A tutor would know the best way to teach the 11-plus concepts. I was terrible at maths at school, so I was really stuck.”
“The government claims that expanding grammars will boost social mobility,” said Jerrim, a professor of education and social statistics at UCL, when the research was published. “But our research shows that private tuition used by high-income families gives them a big advantage in getting in.” One of the factors behind the increase in tuition, he says now, is the pressure exerted by school league tables and growing accountability measures. “Those schools might well be passing pressure on to parents,” he says. “It’s not a negative reflection on schools and the job that they are doing; it’s more a reflection of the pressure they are under to achieve results.”
A callout asking Guardian readers about their experiences of tuition drew hundreds of responses from tutors, parents and school teachers. One tutor told of being approached by parents of children as young as three or four; another had been hired to provide extra coaching for pupils whose parents were already paying for all of the privileges of private schools, including Marlborough and Eton. “We pay thousands of pounds a year on school fees,” said one parent. “If he needs a little help with certain subjects, why wouldn’t you help him?” There also appears to be a trend for university students to buy extra tuition. Most are already paying £9,250 a year in tuition fees, so why not spend a little more to ensure they get the best possible degree?
The Profs, which launched in 2014, specialises in degree-level and professional-qualification tutoring. According to its website, an undergraduate teacher with a master’s in the required subject costs upwards of £70 an hour (plus a £50 placement fee); tutors specialising in applications to Oxbridge and Ivy League universities start at £120 an hour, plus a £250 consultation fee. According to Leo Evans, one of the founders of The Profs, university lecturers can struggle to address individual learning difficulties. “Catching stragglers and helping them get on top of their studies is a useful social function. Also, for students with disabilities and impairments, it’s essential.”
I don’t mind paying extra. I’m investing in their future’ ... Malik Ijaz and his wife, Ayesha, bring a son and a daughter to the Bradford classes. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian
Other responses to our callout came from parents who were worried about schools’ increasingly limited resources due to budget cuts. Much of the additional support that was once available in classrooms is disappearing and some specialist teachers are in short supply. These parents see tutoring as a way of patching the gaps in their children’s education. “It’s only one hour a week, but the practice crammed into that time is like a full week of lessons at school,” said one parent, who is a teacher. “The ability to check every week how well the information is being retained is great. It also provides ‘real-time’ feedback that we don’t get from schools.”
Some parents buy extra tuition to support children with special educational needs such as dyslexia, which mainstream schools are increasingly unable to meet. The new, tougher GCSE exams are also a factor, with some parents hiring private tutors to help children who are struggling to secure the level 4 or above required in English and maths.
One mother from Nigeria said she sought extra support for her child as a practical response to racial discrimination: “Any child from a minority has to be many times better than their white counterparts to be able to get into the top schools and universities.” Another parent told of a daughter with cancer who missed a year of formal education, but got through with the help of a tutor. Another respondent claimed the shadow tutoring workforce “props up” some “outstanding” schools – private, grammar and state.
Not everyone was positive about the impact of tuition. “It can cause students to not work in lessons,” said one teacher. Another said: “The need for tutoring frightens me. Schools should be able to offer students the support they need in class sizes that are manageable.” While one parent said: “I resent it when having a tutor is seen as a class crime,” another acknowledged the unfairness at the heart of the system: “I feel uncomfortable that we can afford to pay for this privilege.”
The callout also revealed the appeal of private tuition for teachers, whose salaries have been depressed for years while the demands upon them have grown. Some said they did private tutoring to boost their income; others, tired of the one-size-fits-all approach in schools, have quit their jobs to do it full time.
Asked about the boom in private tuition, the Department for Education responded that standards are rising in schools and that the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils is shrinking. “While we believe families shouldn’t have to pay for private tuition, it has always been part of the system and parents have freedom to do this,” a spokesman said.
“Tutoring is huge, it’s getting bigger and it’s not going away,” says the Sutton Trust’s Lampl. “You can’t stop people from doing it. What we’ve got to do is make it more accessible for parents who currently can’t afford it.”
Clayton, the retired garage worker from Bradford, is not a rich man, but he wants to invest what he has in his grandson’s future. His hopes for Brooklyn are modest and honourable and shared by parents and grandparents everywhere. “I want Brooklyn to have a good start in life … Nobody gave me a leg up. I’m trying to do something for him that I never got. I hope he ends up being a decent person when he grows up and gets a decent job and doesn’t have to struggle.”
As dusk falls in the Girlington district of Bradford, a trickle of cars begin to arrive in front of a small parade of shops. Parents who have just collected their children at the end of the school day are dropping them off at the Explore Learning tuition centre for extra maths and English coaching. The children sit at a cluster of computer terminals, where they log in to begin their evening studies. The atmosphere is relaxed and lighthearted. The children stay for an hour to work through their lessons, helped where necessary by a member of staff, with 15 minutes’ playtime at the end.
Located next to a Domino’s and a Subway, the Bradford branch of Explore Learning is a tiny window into Britain’s booming private tuition sector, now worth an estimated £2bn. At one time, private tuition meant a weekly one-to-one session at home with a tutor, the preserve of the privileged few. It is still not cheap – Explore Learning’s standard membership costs £119 a month, plus a £50 registration fee – but it is now on offer on our high streets, in supermarkets and increasingly online, with tutors offering their services from as far afield as India and Sri Lanka. Tutees include children who are little older than toddlers, pupils at prestigious private schools and undergraduates struggling at university. All are caught up in an educational arms race, which experts say is exacerbating social inequality.
The success of Explore Learning reflects some of these changes. The business was founded in 2001 by Bill Mills, a Cambridge maths graduate, and now has 139 centres around the country (plus five in Texas run by a sister company). They are located mainly in shopping centres, so busy parents can get on with their weekly shop while their offspring perfect their times tables, punctuation and grammar. Most of the children, who are aged four to 14, come at least a couple of times a week – the membership allows for up to nine sessions a month. Saturday and Sunday afternoons are the busiest times in the Bradford branch, which has 290 children on its books. The tutor-tutee ratio is one to six, but the tutors are not usually qualified teachers; they may be students or mothers returning to the workplace. All are trained in the teaching materials and behaviour management.
The families who use the centre come from various walks of life. Some parents have their own businesses; others work at Bradford Royal Infirmary. There are families from Latvia, Poland and the Philippines. The parents talk about giving their children “an edge”, the “leg up” they never had. Among them are a shift worker, Malik Ijaz, and his wife, Ayesha, who have been bringing nine-year-old Abubakar and his seven-year-old sister, Amna, to the centre for nearly two years. It is a big expense for the family, but the children’s education is a priority. Ijaz works extra shifts to be able to afford it. A third child, four-year-old Ali, will come when he is older.
Located next to a Domino’s and a Subway, the Bradford branch of Explore Learning is a tiny window into Britain’s booming private tuition sector, now worth an estimated £2bn. At one time, private tuition meant a weekly one-to-one session at home with a tutor, the preserve of the privileged few. It is still not cheap – Explore Learning’s standard membership costs £119 a month, plus a £50 registration fee – but it is now on offer on our high streets, in supermarkets and increasingly online, with tutors offering their services from as far afield as India and Sri Lanka. Tutees include children who are little older than toddlers, pupils at prestigious private schools and undergraduates struggling at university. All are caught up in an educational arms race, which experts say is exacerbating social inequality.
The success of Explore Learning reflects some of these changes. The business was founded in 2001 by Bill Mills, a Cambridge maths graduate, and now has 139 centres around the country (plus five in Texas run by a sister company). They are located mainly in shopping centres, so busy parents can get on with their weekly shop while their offspring perfect their times tables, punctuation and grammar. Most of the children, who are aged four to 14, come at least a couple of times a week – the membership allows for up to nine sessions a month. Saturday and Sunday afternoons are the busiest times in the Bradford branch, which has 290 children on its books. The tutor-tutee ratio is one to six, but the tutors are not usually qualified teachers; they may be students or mothers returning to the workplace. All are trained in the teaching materials and behaviour management.
The families who use the centre come from various walks of life. Some parents have their own businesses; others work at Bradford Royal Infirmary. There are families from Latvia, Poland and the Philippines. The parents talk about giving their children “an edge”, the “leg up” they never had. Among them are a shift worker, Malik Ijaz, and his wife, Ayesha, who have been bringing nine-year-old Abubakar and his seven-year-old sister, Amna, to the centre for nearly two years. It is a big expense for the family, but the children’s education is a priority. Ijaz works extra shifts to be able to afford it. A third child, four-year-old Ali, will come when he is older.
‘I’m trying to do something for him that I never got’ ... Geoff Clayton, Brooklyn’s grandfather. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Christopher Thomond/Guardian
“The world is very competitive and everybody is working very hard,” said Ijaz. “I know the school are doing very well, but there are 30 students in each class. It’s one teacher and support staff. They try their best to help, but I realise if I’m going to give my kids some extra help it’s going to be brilliant for their future. Anyone who does a bit extra always gets ahead.”
He is ambitious for his children. “I warn my kids they should be top – or among the top five at least – in class. They are doing well. I don’t mind paying extra. I’m investing in their future. I know the importance of education. My kids love it.”
Abubakar, a quiet, serious child, is planning to sit the 11-plus to win a place at grammar school. Sometimes he does not feel like starting work, “but when I’ve started I like to carry on”. Amna is a chatty livewire and wants to be a paleontologist. “I’m good at maths, but the thing I’m best at is history,” she chirps. “My brother does hard work. I’m doing the same now. I want to be the same as him.”
Geoff Clayton, a retired garage worker, has been bringing his 10-year-old grandson, Brooklyn, to Explore Learning for about nine months. Brooklyn lives with his grandparents and likes football, Minecraft and maths. “He’s done really well,” says Clayton. “His reading has got a lot better, everything’s got better.” The membership takes a significant chunk out of his pension, but he is happy to pay it to give Brooklyn “a bit of a leg up”.
“Nowadays, it’s all about exams and certificates and what you know,” he says. “When I left school, it was more: ‘Can you do the job?’ Brooklyn has done a heck of a lot better since coming here. Sometimes he moans, but he’s OK once he’s here. It does work if you’re prepared to put the time and effort in.”
The Sutton Trust, a charity that seeks to improve social mobility through education, has documented a huge rise in private tuition in recent years. Its annual survey of secondary students in England and Wales revealed in July that 27% have had home or private tuition, a figure that rises to 41% in London.
The Bradford outpost of Explore Learning, which now has 139 centres across the UK. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Christopher Thomond/Guardian
With tutoring commanding a fee of about £24 an hour, rising to £27 in London (although many tutors charge £60 or more), the trust is concerned that the private tuition market is putting children from poorer backgrounds at even greater disadvantage. To redress the balance, it would like to see the government introduce a means-tested voucher system, paid for through the pupil premium funding that schools receive to support disadvantaged pupils.
“We are in an education arms race,” says Peter Lampl, the founder of the trust. “Parents are looking to get an edge for their kids and having private tuition gives them that edge. But if we are serious about social mobility, we need to make sure that the academic playing field is levelled outside the school gate.”
Initiatives aimed at making tuition more accessible already exist: some agencies pledge a proportion of their tuition to poorer pupils for free, while non-profit programmes such as the Tutor Trust connect tutors with disadvantaged schools. Explore Learning offers “scholarships” that give a 50% discount to parents on income support or jobseeker’s allowance. Parents can also use childcare vouchers and tax-free childcare schemes to help pay for tuition.
Nevertheless, huge inequities in education persist. Nowhere is this more evident than in children’s battle to pass the 11-plus to get into grammar school. Research published earlier this year revealed that private tutoring means pupils from high-income families are much more likely to get into grammar schools than equally bright pupils from poorer families. John Jerrim and Sam Sims from the Institute of Education at University College London looked at more than 1,800 children in areas where the grammar school system is in operation. They found that those from families in the bottom quarter of household incomes in England have less than a 10% chance of attending a grammar school, compared with a 40% chance for children in the top quarter.
If we are serious about social mobility, we need to make sure the academic playing field is levelled outside school - Peter Lampl, the Sutton Trust
They also established that wealthier families are much more likely to use private tutors to prepare their children for the entrance exam. Fewer than 10% of children from families with below-average incomes received coaching, compared with about 30% from households in the top quarter. About 70% of those who received tutoring got into a grammar school, compared with 14% of those who did not.
Alexa Collins lives in Buckinghamshire, which operates a grammar school system. She could not afford tuition to prepare her daughter for the 11-plus; despite being a top performer at primary, she failed the test, but has since thrived at her comprehensive, gaining nine GCSEs.
Collins, who went to grammar school herself but received no coaching, says she is ideologically opposed to tutoring because it is unfair to those who cannot afford it. Although she can see the case for short-term tutoring on a specific subject when a child is struggling, she adds: “I think it’s awful, that idea of tutoring kids from seven to push them through this exam. How can you possibly put that pressure on them?”
Another parent, who wishes to remain anonymous but lives in Kent, which operates grammar schools, says her son tackled the 11-plus without a tutor. “It felt morally wrong to claim an advantage by paying cash. It’s so unfair.” As she tried to coach her son, she felt at huge disadvantage. “So much depends on a parent’s skills to teach. A tutor would know the best way to teach the 11-plus concepts. I was terrible at maths at school, so I was really stuck.”
“The government claims that expanding grammars will boost social mobility,” said Jerrim, a professor of education and social statistics at UCL, when the research was published. “But our research shows that private tuition used by high-income families gives them a big advantage in getting in.” One of the factors behind the increase in tuition, he says now, is the pressure exerted by school league tables and growing accountability measures. “Those schools might well be passing pressure on to parents,” he says. “It’s not a negative reflection on schools and the job that they are doing; it’s more a reflection of the pressure they are under to achieve results.”
A callout asking Guardian readers about their experiences of tuition drew hundreds of responses from tutors, parents and school teachers. One tutor told of being approached by parents of children as young as three or four; another had been hired to provide extra coaching for pupils whose parents were already paying for all of the privileges of private schools, including Marlborough and Eton. “We pay thousands of pounds a year on school fees,” said one parent. “If he needs a little help with certain subjects, why wouldn’t you help him?” There also appears to be a trend for university students to buy extra tuition. Most are already paying £9,250 a year in tuition fees, so why not spend a little more to ensure they get the best possible degree?
The Profs, which launched in 2014, specialises in degree-level and professional-qualification tutoring. According to its website, an undergraduate teacher with a master’s in the required subject costs upwards of £70 an hour (plus a £50 placement fee); tutors specialising in applications to Oxbridge and Ivy League universities start at £120 an hour, plus a £250 consultation fee. According to Leo Evans, one of the founders of The Profs, university lecturers can struggle to address individual learning difficulties. “Catching stragglers and helping them get on top of their studies is a useful social function. Also, for students with disabilities and impairments, it’s essential.”
I don’t mind paying extra. I’m investing in their future’ ... Malik Ijaz and his wife, Ayesha, bring a son and a daughter to the Bradford classes. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian
Other responses to our callout came from parents who were worried about schools’ increasingly limited resources due to budget cuts. Much of the additional support that was once available in classrooms is disappearing and some specialist teachers are in short supply. These parents see tutoring as a way of patching the gaps in their children’s education. “It’s only one hour a week, but the practice crammed into that time is like a full week of lessons at school,” said one parent, who is a teacher. “The ability to check every week how well the information is being retained is great. It also provides ‘real-time’ feedback that we don’t get from schools.”
Some parents buy extra tuition to support children with special educational needs such as dyslexia, which mainstream schools are increasingly unable to meet. The new, tougher GCSE exams are also a factor, with some parents hiring private tutors to help children who are struggling to secure the level 4 or above required in English and maths.
One mother from Nigeria said she sought extra support for her child as a practical response to racial discrimination: “Any child from a minority has to be many times better than their white counterparts to be able to get into the top schools and universities.” Another parent told of a daughter with cancer who missed a year of formal education, but got through with the help of a tutor. Another respondent claimed the shadow tutoring workforce “props up” some “outstanding” schools – private, grammar and state.
Not everyone was positive about the impact of tuition. “It can cause students to not work in lessons,” said one teacher. Another said: “The need for tutoring frightens me. Schools should be able to offer students the support they need in class sizes that are manageable.” While one parent said: “I resent it when having a tutor is seen as a class crime,” another acknowledged the unfairness at the heart of the system: “I feel uncomfortable that we can afford to pay for this privilege.”
The callout also revealed the appeal of private tuition for teachers, whose salaries have been depressed for years while the demands upon them have grown. Some said they did private tutoring to boost their income; others, tired of the one-size-fits-all approach in schools, have quit their jobs to do it full time.
Asked about the boom in private tuition, the Department for Education responded that standards are rising in schools and that the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils is shrinking. “While we believe families shouldn’t have to pay for private tuition, it has always been part of the system and parents have freedom to do this,” a spokesman said.
“Tutoring is huge, it’s getting bigger and it’s not going away,” says the Sutton Trust’s Lampl. “You can’t stop people from doing it. What we’ve got to do is make it more accessible for parents who currently can’t afford it.”
Clayton, the retired garage worker from Bradford, is not a rich man, but he wants to invest what he has in his grandson’s future. His hopes for Brooklyn are modest and honourable and shared by parents and grandparents everywhere. “I want Brooklyn to have a good start in life … Nobody gave me a leg up. I’m trying to do something for him that I never got. I hope he ends up being a decent person when he grows up and gets a decent job and doesn’t have to struggle.”
Sunday, 16 October 2016
Just 2.6% of grammar school pupils are from poor backgrounds
Daniel Boffey in The Guardian
Just 3,100 of the 117,000 pupils who currently attend grammar schools come from families poor enough to be eligible for free school meals.
The proportion of students (2.6%) is lower than previously reported, and was last night seized upon by critics of the government’s plans for more selection in the state system.
The average proportion of pupils entitled to free school meals in areas that currently select on academic ability is thought to be around 18%.
Lucy Powell, the former shadow education secretary, said the figures, compiled by the House of Commons library from Department for Education records from January this year, illustrated how selection was failing those from the least affluent backgrounds.
“Grammar schools have a shamefully low record when it comes to the number of children from poor backgrounds attending them,” said Powell.
Ofsted chief slams Theresa May’s ‘obsession’ with grammar schools
The government’s green paper on education reform proposes that existing grammar schools should be allowed to expand and new ones be allowed to open, while existing comprehensives could opt to be selective. It also proposes encouraging multi-academy trusts to select within their family of schools, in order to set up “centres of excellence” for their most able students.
But Powell said there were now 23 Tory MPs who supported her campaign to force a government U-turn on their plans to introduce more selection. “All the evidence shows that selective education creates barriers for disadvantaged children rather than breaking them down,” she said. “These figures tell the real story. A minuscule number of children on free school meals pass the 11-plus.
“That these tiny, tiny few do well is no measure. The measure should be how can we ensure that every child gets an excellent academic education.
“Rather than serving a privileged few, ministers should focus on tackling real disadvantage and ensure that all schools have enough teachers and resources to deliver a world class education for all – things that are in serious trouble right now.”
The government’s policy was nevertheless given a boost last week when new “value-added figures” suggested that the 163 grammar schools in England had better progress scores across all attainment levels than the other 2,800 state secondaries, achieving about a third of a GCSE grade higher than pupils with the same prior results at other schools. The new “Progress 8 measures” record pupils’ progress across eight subjects from age 11 to 16.
Education secretary Justine Greening said the statistics gave the government “even more reason to make more of these good school places available in more areas”.
Rebecca Allen, director of Education Datalab and an expert in the analysis of large scale administrative and survey datasets, warned that ministers should be cautious in latching on to “crude” performance tests. Allen said that the Key Stage 2 scores used to test the progress of pupils in the years up to their GCSEs was a poor indicator of academic potential, as indicated by the fact that many with low scores passed the 11-plus.
She said that it would be better to examine progress across the board in local authorities that are selective. Those results show a marginally positive set of results in terms of progress of all pupils.
However, Allen said that even then the potential of a cohort of pupils in areas where grammars exist may well be higher in the first place because pupils could have been drawn from outside the area, distorting any analysis on a local authority by local authority basis.
Allen added that the statistics also did not take into account the distorting effect on the figures produced by those who would have otherwise stayed in private education who have moved into state grammar schools where they are available.
“These calculations are made only for those in the state sector, yet the presence of grammar schools changes the type of pupils in private schools,” she said. “About 12 per cent of those in grammars were in the private sector at age 10 and may well have stayed there had state-selection not been available.
“Moreover, large numbers who fail the 11-plus exit the state sector for non-elite private schools. It is very hard to assess how these private sector transfers affect local authority Progress 8 figures, so we must be cautious before using crude performance table measures to make claims about policy effectiveness.”
Just 3,100 of the 117,000 pupils who currently attend grammar schools come from families poor enough to be eligible for free school meals.
----Also read
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The proportion of students (2.6%) is lower than previously reported, and was last night seized upon by critics of the government’s plans for more selection in the state system.
The average proportion of pupils entitled to free school meals in areas that currently select on academic ability is thought to be around 18%.
Lucy Powell, the former shadow education secretary, said the figures, compiled by the House of Commons library from Department for Education records from January this year, illustrated how selection was failing those from the least affluent backgrounds.
“Grammar schools have a shamefully low record when it comes to the number of children from poor backgrounds attending them,” said Powell.
Ofsted chief slams Theresa May’s ‘obsession’ with grammar schools
The government’s green paper on education reform proposes that existing grammar schools should be allowed to expand and new ones be allowed to open, while existing comprehensives could opt to be selective. It also proposes encouraging multi-academy trusts to select within their family of schools, in order to set up “centres of excellence” for their most able students.
But Powell said there were now 23 Tory MPs who supported her campaign to force a government U-turn on their plans to introduce more selection. “All the evidence shows that selective education creates barriers for disadvantaged children rather than breaking them down,” she said. “These figures tell the real story. A minuscule number of children on free school meals pass the 11-plus.
“That these tiny, tiny few do well is no measure. The measure should be how can we ensure that every child gets an excellent academic education.
“Rather than serving a privileged few, ministers should focus on tackling real disadvantage and ensure that all schools have enough teachers and resources to deliver a world class education for all – things that are in serious trouble right now.”
The government’s policy was nevertheless given a boost last week when new “value-added figures” suggested that the 163 grammar schools in England had better progress scores across all attainment levels than the other 2,800 state secondaries, achieving about a third of a GCSE grade higher than pupils with the same prior results at other schools. The new “Progress 8 measures” record pupils’ progress across eight subjects from age 11 to 16.
Education secretary Justine Greening said the statistics gave the government “even more reason to make more of these good school places available in more areas”.
Rebecca Allen, director of Education Datalab and an expert in the analysis of large scale administrative and survey datasets, warned that ministers should be cautious in latching on to “crude” performance tests. Allen said that the Key Stage 2 scores used to test the progress of pupils in the years up to their GCSEs was a poor indicator of academic potential, as indicated by the fact that many with low scores passed the 11-plus.
She said that it would be better to examine progress across the board in local authorities that are selective. Those results show a marginally positive set of results in terms of progress of all pupils.
However, Allen said that even then the potential of a cohort of pupils in areas where grammars exist may well be higher in the first place because pupils could have been drawn from outside the area, distorting any analysis on a local authority by local authority basis.
Allen added that the statistics also did not take into account the distorting effect on the figures produced by those who would have otherwise stayed in private education who have moved into state grammar schools where they are available.
“These calculations are made only for those in the state sector, yet the presence of grammar schools changes the type of pupils in private schools,” she said. “About 12 per cent of those in grammars were in the private sector at age 10 and may well have stayed there had state-selection not been available.
“Moreover, large numbers who fail the 11-plus exit the state sector for non-elite private schools. It is very hard to assess how these private sector transfers affect local authority Progress 8 figures, so we must be cautious before using crude performance table measures to make claims about policy effectiveness.”
Wednesday, 12 October 2016
Grammar schools are unfair. Principled parents must refuse to encourage them
Louise Tickle in The Guardian
‘A gentle challenge will often prompt the mantra that’s endlessly parroted to justify a parent’s principles turning to dust in the lead-up to the 11-plus exam. ‘You have to do the best by your child, don’t you?’’ Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
When my son was six months old, I agreed to move to Gloucestershire. It’s lovely here in the Stroud Valleys – or it is until your child reaches the second half of primary school, and everyday chats about school stuff with friends suddenly start to veer off into shamefaced mumbles about tutoring, and how if Charlie or Clara want to take the 11-plus with their mates, “then who are we to stop them?”
You’re their parents, who make a heap of choices about your children’s lives based on your political beliefs, is my answer. So why crumble now?
As an education journalist who is opposed to selection – because it disproportionately benefits an already vastly advantaged middle-class minority, and actively harms the educational prospects of other, often poorer children – I find negotiating these conversations with people I know painfully fraught. I have not yet found a polite way to tell a friend who allows their child to take the 11-plus that, while I cling to the idea that they are not at heart a shit, they are doing an exceedingly shitty thing.
A gentle challenge will often prompt the mantra that’s endlessly parroted to justify a parent’s principles turning to dust in the lead-up to the 11-plus exam. “You have to do the best by your child, don’t you?” is intoned with a phlegmatic sigh, lips pressed together in wry acknowledgment that the situation isn’t ideal, but life’s a bitch, and one’s own child’s interests – obviously– trump every other consideration. The listener’s agreement is automatically assumed.
No, I increasingly want to yell. Given that their offspring, and pretty much all their friends, are among the luckiest children in the history of humankind, choosing to construct a more divided society via our taxpayer-funded education system that disadvantages other kids – some with unimaginably difficult home lives that make it harder for them to do well at school – is not something I think should be encouraged. But it appears to be viewed as aberrant or just plain weird by many middle-class parents not to grab every possible personal advantage and hug it tight to the family bosom, while still maintaining they want the best for all.
We’re animals. I get it. We’re programmed to chase advantage for our young, even to the detriment of other people’s children. And so while it’s particularly pernicious that some parents pay for months, sometimes years, of tutoring to get their child through an exam that they might well otherwise fail, I know it’s because they are desperate to secure for their child any extra benefit going in a country that is becoming ever more unequal.
But inside, I seethe. Often I do so silently, because with so many parents actively pursuing the advantages that selection confers, confronting them has become deeply socially uncomfortable.It’s incongruent with many people’s view of themselves as good folk who believe in fairness and equality. And facing this paradox head-on in conversation has, in my experience, become something of a taboo: how do you call out friends and stay friends, when you’re accusing them of hurting other people’s children? I try, but the discomfort it prompts is palpable, and defensiveness is rife. The fact that researchers have concluded that there is “no benefit to attending a grammar school for high-attaining pupils” makes the unedifying scrabble even more sad.
It’s the system that stinks, of course, and it has to be fought at the policy level, not by individuals at the school gates. Parents mustn’t set themselves against each other. While that is true, it doesn’t let parents off the hook. It may be possible – I guess – to be opposed to selection in principle even while sending your children to a grammar school. Yet in practice parents cannot challenge a system with any authority when they have cut the ground from beneath their own feet. When prominent people such as Shami Chakrabarti express concerns about selectionand then admit they opt out and write a fat cheque when it comes to their own kids, asking ordinary parents to stand up and be counted becomes tricky. Within the education sector too, people give up their power by acquiescing with a system they think is wrong: I know a headteacher who believes passionately in comprehensive education, whose child attends the local grammar: it is now impossible for that head to speak out without being called a hypocrite. We all make compromises in life, but this one comes at a high price paid by children who aren’t “selected” and who have no power and no say.
No unfair system was ever overturned by people carrying on using it for their own selfish ends while spouting their dismay. If the government sees parents urgently ushering their children into the 11-plus queue, then there is no debate left to win. Arguments against selection are fatally compromised when the very people one might normally expect to challenge unfairness, and who have the political heft to do it – articulate, middle-class parents – wave Charlie and Clara off to the local grammar every morning and, perfectly understandably, then feel too embarrassed to raise their voices.
‘A gentle challenge will often prompt the mantra that’s endlessly parroted to justify a parent’s principles turning to dust in the lead-up to the 11-plus exam. ‘You have to do the best by your child, don’t you?’’ Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
When my son was six months old, I agreed to move to Gloucestershire. It’s lovely here in the Stroud Valleys – or it is until your child reaches the second half of primary school, and everyday chats about school stuff with friends suddenly start to veer off into shamefaced mumbles about tutoring, and how if Charlie or Clara want to take the 11-plus with their mates, “then who are we to stop them?”
You’re their parents, who make a heap of choices about your children’s lives based on your political beliefs, is my answer. So why crumble now?
As an education journalist who is opposed to selection – because it disproportionately benefits an already vastly advantaged middle-class minority, and actively harms the educational prospects of other, often poorer children – I find negotiating these conversations with people I know painfully fraught. I have not yet found a polite way to tell a friend who allows their child to take the 11-plus that, while I cling to the idea that they are not at heart a shit, they are doing an exceedingly shitty thing.
A gentle challenge will often prompt the mantra that’s endlessly parroted to justify a parent’s principles turning to dust in the lead-up to the 11-plus exam. “You have to do the best by your child, don’t you?” is intoned with a phlegmatic sigh, lips pressed together in wry acknowledgment that the situation isn’t ideal, but life’s a bitch, and one’s own child’s interests – obviously– trump every other consideration. The listener’s agreement is automatically assumed.
No, I increasingly want to yell. Given that their offspring, and pretty much all their friends, are among the luckiest children in the history of humankind, choosing to construct a more divided society via our taxpayer-funded education system that disadvantages other kids – some with unimaginably difficult home lives that make it harder for them to do well at school – is not something I think should be encouraged. But it appears to be viewed as aberrant or just plain weird by many middle-class parents not to grab every possible personal advantage and hug it tight to the family bosom, while still maintaining they want the best for all.
We’re animals. I get it. We’re programmed to chase advantage for our young, even to the detriment of other people’s children. And so while it’s particularly pernicious that some parents pay for months, sometimes years, of tutoring to get their child through an exam that they might well otherwise fail, I know it’s because they are desperate to secure for their child any extra benefit going in a country that is becoming ever more unequal.
But inside, I seethe. Often I do so silently, because with so many parents actively pursuing the advantages that selection confers, confronting them has become deeply socially uncomfortable.It’s incongruent with many people’s view of themselves as good folk who believe in fairness and equality. And facing this paradox head-on in conversation has, in my experience, become something of a taboo: how do you call out friends and stay friends, when you’re accusing them of hurting other people’s children? I try, but the discomfort it prompts is palpable, and defensiveness is rife. The fact that researchers have concluded that there is “no benefit to attending a grammar school for high-attaining pupils” makes the unedifying scrabble even more sad.
It’s the system that stinks, of course, and it has to be fought at the policy level, not by individuals at the school gates. Parents mustn’t set themselves against each other. While that is true, it doesn’t let parents off the hook. It may be possible – I guess – to be opposed to selection in principle even while sending your children to a grammar school. Yet in practice parents cannot challenge a system with any authority when they have cut the ground from beneath their own feet. When prominent people such as Shami Chakrabarti express concerns about selectionand then admit they opt out and write a fat cheque when it comes to their own kids, asking ordinary parents to stand up and be counted becomes tricky. Within the education sector too, people give up their power by acquiescing with a system they think is wrong: I know a headteacher who believes passionately in comprehensive education, whose child attends the local grammar: it is now impossible for that head to speak out without being called a hypocrite. We all make compromises in life, but this one comes at a high price paid by children who aren’t “selected” and who have no power and no say.
No unfair system was ever overturned by people carrying on using it for their own selfish ends while spouting their dismay. If the government sees parents urgently ushering their children into the 11-plus queue, then there is no debate left to win. Arguments against selection are fatally compromised when the very people one might normally expect to challenge unfairness, and who have the political heft to do it – articulate, middle-class parents – wave Charlie and Clara off to the local grammar every morning and, perfectly understandably, then feel too embarrassed to raise their voices.
Tuesday, 9 June 2015
Aspirational parents condemn their children to a desperate, joyless life
George Monbiot in The Guardian
'But to what are we aspiring? A life that is better than our own, or worse?' Illustration by Andrzej Krauze
Perhaps because the alternative is too hideous to contemplate, we persuade ourselves that those who wield power know what they are doing. The belief in a guiding intelligence is hard to shake.
We know that our conditions of life are deteriorating. Most young people have little prospect of owning a home, or even of renting a decent one. Interesting jobs are sliced up, through digital Taylorism, into portions of meaningless drudgery. The natural world, whose wonders enhance our lives, and upon which our survival depends, is being rubbed out with horrible speed. Those to whom we look for guardianship, in government and among the economic elite, do not arrest this decline, they accelerate it.
The political system that delivers these outcomes is sustained by aspiration: the faith that if we try hard enough we could join the elite, even as living standards decline and social immobility becomes set almost in stone. But to what are we aspiring? A life that is better than our own, or worse?
Last week a note from an analyst at Barclays’ Global Power and Utilities group in New York was leaked. It addressed students about to begin a summer internship, and offered a glimpse of the toxic culture into which they are inducted.
“I wanted to introduce you to the 10 Power Commandments … For nine weeks you will live and die by these … We expect you to be the last ones to leave every night, no matter what … I recommend bringing a pillow to the office. It makes sleeping under your desk a lot more comfortable … the internship really is a nine-week commitment at the desk … an intern asked our staffer for a weekend off for a family reunion – he was told he could go. He was also asked to hand in his BlackBerry and pack up his desk … Play time is over and it’s time to buckle up.”
Play time is over, but did it ever begin? If these students have the kind of parents featured in the Financial Times last month, perhaps not. The article marked a new form of employment: the nursery consultant. These people, who charge from £290 an hour, must find a nursery that will put their clients’ toddlers on the right track to an elite university.
They spoke of parents who had already decided that their six-month-old son would go to Cambridge then Deutsche Bank, or whose two-year-old daughter “had a tutor for two afternoons a week (to keep on top of maths and literacy) as well as weekly phonics and reading classes, drama, piano, beginner French and swimming. They were considering adding Mandarin and Spanish. ‘The little girl was so exhausted and on edge she was terrified of opening her mouth.’”
In New York, playdate coaches charging $450 an hour train small children in the social skills that might help secure their admission to the most prestigious private schools. They are taught to hide traits that could suggest they’re on the autistic spectrum, which might reduce their chances of selection.
From infancy to employment, this is a life-denying, love-denying mindset, informed not by joy or contentment, but by an ambition that is both desperate and pointless, for it cannot compensate for what it displaces: childhood, family life, the joys of summer, meaningful and productive work, a sense of arrival, living in the moment. For the sake of this toxic culture, the economy is repurposed, the social contract is rewritten, the elite is released from tax, regulation and the other restraints imposed by democracy.
Where the elite goes, we are induced to follow. As if the assessment regimes were too lax in UK primary schools, last year the education secretary announced a new test for four-year-olds. A primary school in Cambridge has just taken the obvious next step: it is now streaming four-year-olds into classes according to perceived ability. The education and adoption bill, announced in the Queen’s speech, will turn the screw even tighter. Will this help children, or hurt them?
Who knows? Governments used to survey the prevalence of children’s mental health issues every five years, but this ended in 2004. Imagine publishing no figures since 2004 on, say, childhood cancer, and you begin to understand the extent to which successive governments have chosen to avoid this issue. If aspirational pressure is not enhancing our wellbeing but damaging it, those in power don’t want to know.
But there are hints. Mental health beds for children in England increased by 50% between 1999 and 2014, but still failed to meet demand. Children suffering mental health crises are being dumped in adult wards or even left in police cells because of the lack of provision (put yourself in their position and imagine the impact).
The number of children admitted to hospital because of self-harm has risen by 68% in 10 years, while the number of young patients with eating disorders has almost doubled in three years. Without good data, we don’t have a clear picture of what the causes might be, but it’s worth noting that in the past year, according to the charity YoungMinds, the number of children receiving counselling for exam stress has tripled.
An international survey of children’s wellbeing found that the UK, where such pressures are peculiarly intense, ranked 13th out of 15 countries for children’s life satisfaction, 13th for agreement with the statement “I like going to school”, 14th for children’s satisfaction with their bodies and 15th for self-confidence. So all that pressure and cramming and exhortation – that worked, didn’t it?
In the cause of self-advancement, we are urged to sacrifice our leisure, our pleasures and our time with partners and children, to climb over the bodies of our rivals and to set ourselves against the common interests of humankind. And then? We discover that we have achieved no greater satisfaction than that with which we began.
In 1653, Izaak Walton described in the Compleat Angler the fate of “poor-rich men”, who “spend all their time first in getting, and next in anxious care to keep it; men that are condemned to be rich, and then always busie or discontented”. Today this fate is confused with salvation.
Finish your homework, pass your exams, spend your 20s avoiding daylight, and you too could live like the elite. But who in their right mind would want to?
Perhaps because the alternative is too hideous to contemplate, we persuade ourselves that those who wield power know what they are doing. The belief in a guiding intelligence is hard to shake.
We know that our conditions of life are deteriorating. Most young people have little prospect of owning a home, or even of renting a decent one. Interesting jobs are sliced up, through digital Taylorism, into portions of meaningless drudgery. The natural world, whose wonders enhance our lives, and upon which our survival depends, is being rubbed out with horrible speed. Those to whom we look for guardianship, in government and among the economic elite, do not arrest this decline, they accelerate it.
The political system that delivers these outcomes is sustained by aspiration: the faith that if we try hard enough we could join the elite, even as living standards decline and social immobility becomes set almost in stone. But to what are we aspiring? A life that is better than our own, or worse?
Last week a note from an analyst at Barclays’ Global Power and Utilities group in New York was leaked. It addressed students about to begin a summer internship, and offered a glimpse of the toxic culture into which they are inducted.
“I wanted to introduce you to the 10 Power Commandments … For nine weeks you will live and die by these … We expect you to be the last ones to leave every night, no matter what … I recommend bringing a pillow to the office. It makes sleeping under your desk a lot more comfortable … the internship really is a nine-week commitment at the desk … an intern asked our staffer for a weekend off for a family reunion – he was told he could go. He was also asked to hand in his BlackBerry and pack up his desk … Play time is over and it’s time to buckle up.”
Play time is over, but did it ever begin? If these students have the kind of parents featured in the Financial Times last month, perhaps not. The article marked a new form of employment: the nursery consultant. These people, who charge from £290 an hour, must find a nursery that will put their clients’ toddlers on the right track to an elite university.
They spoke of parents who had already decided that their six-month-old son would go to Cambridge then Deutsche Bank, or whose two-year-old daughter “had a tutor for two afternoons a week (to keep on top of maths and literacy) as well as weekly phonics and reading classes, drama, piano, beginner French and swimming. They were considering adding Mandarin and Spanish. ‘The little girl was so exhausted and on edge she was terrified of opening her mouth.’”
In New York, playdate coaches charging $450 an hour train small children in the social skills that might help secure their admission to the most prestigious private schools. They are taught to hide traits that could suggest they’re on the autistic spectrum, which might reduce their chances of selection.
From infancy to employment, this is a life-denying, love-denying mindset, informed not by joy or contentment, but by an ambition that is both desperate and pointless, for it cannot compensate for what it displaces: childhood, family life, the joys of summer, meaningful and productive work, a sense of arrival, living in the moment. For the sake of this toxic culture, the economy is repurposed, the social contract is rewritten, the elite is released from tax, regulation and the other restraints imposed by democracy.
Where the elite goes, we are induced to follow. As if the assessment regimes were too lax in UK primary schools, last year the education secretary announced a new test for four-year-olds. A primary school in Cambridge has just taken the obvious next step: it is now streaming four-year-olds into classes according to perceived ability. The education and adoption bill, announced in the Queen’s speech, will turn the screw even tighter. Will this help children, or hurt them?
Who knows? Governments used to survey the prevalence of children’s mental health issues every five years, but this ended in 2004. Imagine publishing no figures since 2004 on, say, childhood cancer, and you begin to understand the extent to which successive governments have chosen to avoid this issue. If aspirational pressure is not enhancing our wellbeing but damaging it, those in power don’t want to know.
But there are hints. Mental health beds for children in England increased by 50% between 1999 and 2014, but still failed to meet demand. Children suffering mental health crises are being dumped in adult wards or even left in police cells because of the lack of provision (put yourself in their position and imagine the impact).
The number of children admitted to hospital because of self-harm has risen by 68% in 10 years, while the number of young patients with eating disorders has almost doubled in three years. Without good data, we don’t have a clear picture of what the causes might be, but it’s worth noting that in the past year, according to the charity YoungMinds, the number of children receiving counselling for exam stress has tripled.
An international survey of children’s wellbeing found that the UK, where such pressures are peculiarly intense, ranked 13th out of 15 countries for children’s life satisfaction, 13th for agreement with the statement “I like going to school”, 14th for children’s satisfaction with their bodies and 15th for self-confidence. So all that pressure and cramming and exhortation – that worked, didn’t it?
In the cause of self-advancement, we are urged to sacrifice our leisure, our pleasures and our time with partners and children, to climb over the bodies of our rivals and to set ourselves against the common interests of humankind. And then? We discover that we have achieved no greater satisfaction than that with which we began.
In 1653, Izaak Walton described in the Compleat Angler the fate of “poor-rich men”, who “spend all their time first in getting, and next in anxious care to keep it; men that are condemned to be rich, and then always busie or discontented”. Today this fate is confused with salvation.
Finish your homework, pass your exams, spend your 20s avoiding daylight, and you too could live like the elite. But who in their right mind would want to?
Sunday, 3 February 2013
After school tutors priced out the grasp of middle class parents
Middle class parents who want to prepare their children for school entrance tests face being priced out of the market by the super-wealthy who are willing to do "almost anything" to secure the best tutors.
Wealthy families from overseas are offering the best-qualified British tutors up to £80,000 a year as well as housing in order to coach them for the Common Entrance exam and guide them through GCSEs and A-levels.
Competition for the services of the best tutors has seen one family offer a prospective tutor an internship at an exclusive art gallery in Mayfair. The family wish their children, age 7 and 10, to gain places at Eton, Harrow or St Pauls.
So-called 'super-tutors' with track records of getting children into the best schools are able to command ever-increasing salaries from parents from Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia. Many foreign tycoons settle in London in part because of the reputation of Britain's independent schools.
As a result, middle-class parents face being priced out the market by those for whom cost is "not an issue", according to tutoring firms.
The cost for an average tutor has doubled in four years to around £40 an hour, but those who can guarantee results can charge many times more.
The Common Entrance exam is at the age of 13 for pupils applying to many leading independent schools. It is routinely taught at prep schools but not in the state sector. Growing competition for places means some schools now demand a result of 70 per cent in every paper.
"There’s been a demographic shift," said Nevil Chiles, who founded Kensington & Chelsea Tutors a decade a go.
"A lot of money has come in from Eastern Europe and Russia. These parents are prepared to do almost anything to get the best, and the cost is not really an issue for them.”
“We get people who have heard of tutors from their friends. They’ll phone us and say: ‘I know this person works for you, we want that person and we’re prepared to pay for that’.”
Salaries of more than £50,000 a year are now commonplace for tutors working in Britain, rising to £80,000 for a top-class tutor willing to work abroad, according to Woody St John Webster, co-founder of tuition agency Bright Young Things. They can expect to receive housing and food on top of their salaries.
Asked whether middle-class families who want their children to have extra help risk being priced out of the market, he said: "Yes. That’s partly because the best teachers are so in demand their price keeps on going up and up and up."
He said the best tutors cost this much "for good reason".
“These are very important people in their lives so you’ve got to get it right and if they [the parents] get it right, the up-side is enormous.
"If you want a top graduate, who’s very energetic, knows their subject backwards and can teach it very well, then you've got to pay. These people are treated like a top-class butler. "
He added that Bright Young Things has a range of tutor options for parents, depending on ability and experience.
One recent Bright Young Things advert asked for a tutor willing to travel between Greece, Switzerland and a yacht in the Mediterranean to teach a pair of three-year old twins. The job offers an annual salary of £40-50,000.
In another, a family from Moscow offered £40,000 a year, an apartment and travel ‘in very smart style’ to an Oxbridge graduate who could provide ‘intellectual stimulation’ to a six-year old boy.
“The work is not too taxing, it mostly involves playing with the boy and doing some basic English work,” the advert says.
Another advert for a family in England calls for an after-school tutor who can coach for the Common Entrance exam and ‘get involved in extra curricular activities such as music, sport and games’. It pays £50,000 a year, plus full board.
Parents spend £6bn a year on private tuition and more than a quarter of families are using tutors to boost their children’s education, according to the survey conducted by EdPlace, which provides educational resources for parents.
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