Roxanne Connelly, University of Warwick
On September 9th Theresa May declared her desire for Britain to be “the world’s great meritocracy – a country where everyone has a fair chance to go as far as their talent and their hard work will allow”. May’s vision of meritocracy could have been plagiarised word for word from the pages of Michael Young’s dystopian novel “The Rise of the Meritocracy”. Young describes a meritocratic system as a political ideal whereby social position is achieved through “ability and effort”.
It is disheartening that May’s comments seem shockingly and dishearteningly to echo Young’s description of the development of an unpleasant and dehumanising society. Misplaced use of the political concept of meritocracy is not new, it was also a favourite of the Blairite government and their consistent misinterpretation of the meaning of meritocracy caused Young himself to exclaim “Down with Meritocracy” as the term he coined has been continually used to describe a political ideal which is the antithesis of its intended message. Here Young (1958, p.38) accurately and eerily describes the present day:
“Englishmen of the solid centre never believed in equality. They assumed that some men were better than others, and only waited to be told in what respect. Equality? Why, there would be no one to look up to any more. Most Englishmen believed, however dimly, in a vision of excellence which was part and parcel of their own time-honoured aristocratic tradition. It was because of this that the campaign for comprehensive schools failed. It was because of this that we have our modern society: by imperceptible degrees an aristocracy of birth has turned into an aristocracy of talent”.
May wants “Britain to be a place where advantage is based on merit not privilege; where it is your talent and hard work that matter not where you were born, who your parents are or what your accent sounds like”. May asks “Where is the meritocracy in a system that advantages the privileged few over the many? How can a meritocratic Britain let this situation stand?” The irony however is that a meritocratic Britain means exactly that – the success of the few to the detriment of the many. Meritocracy is at its core a political ideology based on legitimised inequality. As Michael Young states, “It is hard indeed in a society that makes so much of merit to be judged as having none. No underclass has ever been left as morally naked as that”.
The Evidence?
Whilst May is not as explicit as Gove in stating that Britain has had enough of experts she is certainly keen to ignore the exceptionally large volume of high quality evidence on this issue that is being shouted from the rooftops by some of the most talented analysts in this field. The IFS report on the available evidence is very clear – there are benefits of the selective system for those who get in, and those who get in are likely to be from more advantaged families. Selective schools increase educational inequalities and inequalities in later earnings, as those who fail to get into grammar schools tend to do worse than they would in a comprehensive education system. Lindsay MacMillan also describes international evidence on school selection stating that countries with grammar schools create greater earnings inequality, and that countries with selective education systems are more segregated in terms of socio-economic status.
The sociology of education also provides a wealth of accounts as to why selecting on the basis of test scores at the end of primary school privileges those from advantaged backgrounds. Willis (1977) famously described the antagonistic relationship between working class boys and education, which often led to disengagement and disinterest in educational attainment. This cultural approach to understanding processes of educational disadvantage has also been highlighted more recently by Reay (2006) who described the alienation and disaffection of working class children. More advantaged children and young people also benefit from their parent’s knowledge of the education system and cultural capital. More advantaged parents often engage in focussed organised parenting practices to develop their children’s skills, encourage a wide-range of cultural interests and foster an appreciation of education. Lareau (2011) describes these middle class parenting practices as ‘concerted cultivation’. The pipelining of young people based on a test score clearly cannot overcome the complex and multifaceted nature of inequality which will continue to be reproduced in the grammar school system.
What happens to those left behind?
What strikes me as most troubling is that we have heard very little about what happens to those children who do not get into the Grammar schools. How are we preparing the education system to help these young people fulfil their potential? How are we designing the education system so that there are second, third and fourth chances and that no young person who could benefit from Grammar school education is neglect? It appears from May’s speech that there is no clear additional plan for those children deemed not suitable for Grammar school education. May states that grammar schools will “provide a stretching education for the most academically able”, perhaps we are to assume from this that those who do not get into the grammar schools will not be given the opportunity to be stretched?
The plan for those who don’t get streamed into the grammar school system is that they will remain in the education system as it currently stands. Pupils will be distributed (unevenly) into Free schools, University schools (I believe there are only 2), faith schools, and of course you can always pay for an independent school. A review of evidence on the effectiveness of these different types of schools tends to indicate that the best performing of these schools are successful because they are able to select a proportion of their intake.
If the current education system is not serving the needs of working class kids, how does a grammar school system help them fulfil their potential? The proposition seems to be that they will be left inhabiting a residual version of today’s education system, but one in which the highest performing kids are syphoned off. It is not clear to me how this is “a future in which Britain’s education system shifts decisively to support ordinary working class families”.
Young, M. (1958). The Rise of the Meritocracy. London: Thames and Hudson.
Lareau, Annette. (2011). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Reay, D. (2006). “The Zombie Stalking English Schools: Social Class and Educational Inequality.” British Journal of Educational Studies 54 (3):288-307.
Willis, P. (1977). Learning to Labour: How Working-Class Kids Get Working-Class Jobs. New York: Colombia University Press.
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