School Stories

I know that I’ve been a bit lax at updating this blog of late. Partly, this is because the job of teaching can, at times, be pretty manic. Partly, it’s because I have been directing my energies into writing a play for production next March. It is the latter of these two great time-consumers that has got me thinking about the whole issue of school-based dramas. I’m going to be honest: I don’t like them. I never have.

Perhaps the reason is that I was first introduced to school stories via the medium of 1970s humour comics. I’m not talking here about those behemoths of juvenile gag-mongering, “Beano” and “Dandy” (although they defined the genre), but lazily produced rags with titles like “Buster”, “Whizzer and Chips” and - my favourite at the time – “Monster Fun”. Being aimed at children, these featured many school-centred stories - stories that I simply did not understand. They were populated by urchin-like kids and teachers who were all old, dorky types with mortar boards and gowns. The world they inhabited was one in which bullies were buffoon-like clowns who were more-or-less harmless and easily outwitted. It was one in which phrases such as “six of the best” and “japes” were thrown around with great familiarity by the characters - only to go straight over my head. It was one in which every caper-heavy episode ended with a kid or kids getting a severe caning, despite having done nothing particularly evil. Still, nobody really got hurt because the brunt of the batterings was taken by magazines stuffed artfully down shorts.

As a normal suburban lad, I could not relate to the endless merry wars conducted between cheeky rapscallions and foolish “beaks” through the pages of those silly comics. It seemed to me even then that the real world was a more complex place than that familiar, old fashioned, narrative formula allowed. You might think, then, that the many attempts to update school dramas in recent years would have changed my mind. Er… no…

For me, the main problem is that schools are inherently un-dramatic places. This may appear a strange statement given the number of plays, films, TV shows and books that have taken schools as their settings. But, the truth is that a classroom is a static environment – it’s not that interesting to look at and what goes on there could hardly be described as packed with variety. Then there are the relationships in schools. If the focus is only on relationships between pupils, the setting becomes irrelevant. All the best kid flicks do not really take place in schools. In fact, many are about what happens when young people escape the confines of their schools (“Stand by Me”, anyone?). Even something like “The Inbetweeners” only makes occasional use of the school environment, most of the stories taking place in the world outside. Equally, if the narrative follows only teachers and their interactions, then, again, there is no particular necessity for the school setting, unless – as in “Half Nelson” – the aim is to highlight the dichotomy between a person’s respectable public persona and their private, very flawed reality. But, in that instance, the character’s job becomes purely symbolic and a wide range of figures would do just as well as a teacher – for example, doctors, lawyers and policemen.

The only relationship that makes a school indispensible to the narrative is that between pupils and teachers. Ignoring the degree to which that relationship has become increasingly complicated over the last couple of decades, it does, again, present an issue in that it only really lends itself to one plot, the one that we might call “Maverick Teacher”.  It’s a simple enough story (you’ve seen it many times): a new teacher arrives in a school that is either stuffy or under-achieving or both; he or she has an unusual background for a teacher (read: he or she is not institutionalized and, thus, has not had their imagination squeezed out of them); he or she is treated with suspicion by the head teacher and hostility by most of his or her colleagues (apart from the one who secretly admires him or her and probably becomes his or her lover); nevertheless, he or she uses all sorts of pedagogically dubious methods to have a permanent, inspiring impact on his or her pupils; he or she is sacked on entirely spurious grounds but has the consolation of leaving the school premises for the last time to the cheering/singing voices of his or her devoted pupils. The end. It’s “To Sir, With Love”, “Dead Poets’ Society”, “The Class of Miss MacMichael” – yawn, yawn – and so on and so on… The estimable Alan Bennett, for all of his peppering the dialogue with c-bombs, could only come up with a variation of this hoary old nonsense in the mysteriously lauded “History Boys”.

The deeper question, of course, is why does this narrative resonate so much? One simple answer is that it has conflict built into it and drama needs conflict. Think of a story in which a teacher joins a school, gets on with everyone and learns all the policy documents off by heart before achieving an “excellent” at the next inspection: fancy that one? Me neither.

The “Maverick Teacher” plot, however, serves another function. A teacher is a figure of authority. In the respect that he or she is largely responsible for passing on a society’s codes and values, he or she is possibly the ultimate figure of authority.  Drama has always had a strong anti-authoritarian streak to it. If we want to get all anthropological about this, we might say that drama originated in festivals and rituals that were deliberately intended to allow people to “let off steam” by challenging authority – the bigger picture being that, in doing so, they actually ended up reinforcing it. The maverick teacher is a challenge to established authority; he or she is never presented as an alternative to it. He or she is an outsider. Again, imagine a plot in which the maverick teacher’s colleagues have an epiphany and all start to use his or her methods in their work. The recent television series “Jamie’s Dream School” presented a fantasy in which all of a school’s teachers were, in one way or another, of the “maverick” variety. Touted as a documentary (although the “career destinations” of the school’s “graduates” suggested that there was more than a hint of smoke and mirrors about the whole thing), the programme eloquently illustrated what happens when outsiders become insiders – the status quo re-emerges. Jamie’s “Dream” School operated in exactly the same way as – that’s right! - a school.

The point, then, is that the maverick teacher also reinforces society’s values, but in a subtle way. Consider the authority that he or she challenges: it is invariably corrupt, insincere, unwholesome. Jamie began every edition of his series by talking about a “system” that “lets down” thousands of youngsters every year. What the maverick teacher represents is a more profound ethical agenda. Robin Williams in “Dead Poets’ Society” encourages his charges to express themselves and follow their dreams. Far from being the stuff of nightmares, these are cherished values of the society in which the film is set. Mr Thingy in “History Boys” takes a similar line, producing free-thinking intellectuals - in stark contrast to Mr Other-Thingy whose deadening concentration on the drier aspects of the academic process is seen to be hollow and destructive.

It’s a theme I’ve touched on before, but the maverick teacher negotiates the difficult border between the individual and his or her social context. He or she is the former, but in a way that maintains the latter.

In that respect, school dramas are interesting, but I have to say that I still don’t like the things…

Outlook Anxiety

Outlook Anxiety.

You’ve suffered from it. You’ll recognize the symptoms. A drying of the mouth. A raising of the heartbeat. Sweat on the forehead as the body’s temperature increases. That strange, existentialist feeling that you are utterly helpless and alone, despite being surrounded by colleagues.

And all brought on by clicking that innocent-looking little yellow icon on your computer’s ‘Start” menu. The icon that opens your work emails.

As the programme loads itself, your mind is a-whir at the possible horrors which it may introduce into your day. Someone making a request that adds to an already heavy workload perhaps. Or, even worse, the reminder about work that you should have done but forgot about. It could be a complaint from someone about something. Then there is the worst possibility of all – the summons to a “closed door meeting” with the boss.

Before your Inbox even appears on your screen, you are frantically searching for a “cancel” button, something – anything – that will keep you in blissful ignorance and give you plausible deniability in the event that worst case scenarios come to pass. But it’s too late. Clicking the icon is like plunging a detonator. Once it is done, no power on Earth can undo it – you can only wait until the explosion and pray that you survive it.

The window begins to build itself before your eyes and you spot the cruel design feature that some diabolical techno-geek has included, having, no doubt, fiendishly predicted just such a situation as you are now in. You can only see the names of your emails’ senders; you have no hint of what any of them say until you open one up. You scan the names in a state of growing panic.

On most occasions, you find nothing but the banal and the unsolicited. Relief hits you like a rainstorm after a drought. You take a few deep breaths, tell yourself that you’ve just been silly, that everything's okay, you're fine… but the clock is already ticking down to the next time that you must click the icon. You can hear it at the back of your mind, a quiet, patient sound that will grow ever louder and more shrill until you sit back down in front of that impersonal screen and again move the cursor over that sneering little icon, that terrifying, deadly –

That’s if there’s nothing to worry about. You enter a whole new dimension of fear when a name you did not want to see jumps out at you. Tentatively, you click on the message. More often than not, even now, the email contains the mundane – in which case, default to the start of the previous paragraph. Once in a while, though, you see such words as, “Can I see you for a meeting in my office/study at such and such a time?”

From that moment onwards, you are a dead man walking. You can see no possibility of the meeting being for your benefit. Between the opening of the message and your attendance at the meeting, your imagination is a crucible in which various plotlines – most of which end up with your sacking/arrest/sacking followed by arrest/sacking followed by arrest followed by suicide – are constructed, deconstructed and re-constructed. Outlook has become your gateway to a personal hell.

Now, I am sure that this condition is not confined to education and people in other industries are always keen to point out that their removal from an organization can be effected far more easily than is the case for a teacher. That may be true, but so is the fact that in few other occupations is so much at stake. That there is a lot of pressure on education professionals is undeniable. If only Outlook was not so perfectly calibrated to add to it…

Reason Not The Need...

Since the publication of A Level results last Thursday, the media has been awash with all the usual stories and opinions, from those of the asylum seekers who could barely speak English in January but who have just earned dozens of A*s to that of the student with mega results who was turned down by all of the universities to which he or she applied to the constant quoting of statistics about how many people are now chasing each available university place. It is to be wondered why journalists bother to write anything new at this time of year since you could pretty much predict in advance what they are going to be saying. Then there’s the story that appears in newspapers every August with tedious regularity, the one that could be headed, “Who Needs University Anyway?”

You know it well: a newspaper’s restaurant critic or motoring correspondent (these supposedly being “successful” people) will pompously hold forth about how they never went to university but, instead, got a job with an insurance broker at the age of ten before working their way up through hard graft and “talent” – which, apparently, you need to be a newspaper hack. Their views will be backed up elsewhere by the story of some top A Level or International Baccalaureate student who has rejected the university option in favour of training on-the-job as an accountant or something in a bank. Such students will be quoted smugly opining that their chosen route is preferable because it will give them a career without the need to amass a huge debt gaining an “irrelevant degree”.

Yes, yes. No-one wishes to run such people down, but when their views are an implied criticism of those who do choose university, it is difficult not to leap to the defence of the thousands of young people who, every year, put their hearts and souls into securing a place in higher education.

The first question to ask is, in what way is going to university less a “job” than paid employment? The accusation that those who go to university are somehow avoiding reality often lies at the heart of the “who needs university anyway” article. But how is this the case? How is studying – often late into the night – any less “real” than pushing paperwork around an office from nine to five every day? And, in the sense that students make a massive financial commitment that is effectively an investment in a derivative valued solely on their future prospects, it could even be said that those who get a job and see money coming in from an early stage are taking the easy way out.

That said, the main reason for attending university really has got nothing to do with money at all. Over the years, I have, obviously, spoken to many pre-university students about their aspirations and what has more often than not come back is the sense that they have given little thought to the career they might eventually enter. Some have, of course. There will always be the student who has known since he or she was a toddler that they wanted to be a lawyer, sometimes at a particular firm. But, for the most part, students have a much clearer sense of what they want to do at university and where, ideally, they will do it. University is their goal, not what it will lead to. This is the problem with the “who needs university” articles: they are predicated on the false premise that university is exclusively about gaining job-market-relevant qualifications. It is not. It is a valid experience in its own right. Given the costs involved, it would be a foolish student who did not have half an eye on how he or she is going to pay back his or her debts, but that rarely seems to be the major motive for going in the first place. University is a rite of passage that changes the way you think and the way that you interact with others. If you go on to take a higher research degree, you can go further in making a fairly selfless contribution to the improvement of society.

The journalists who line up every August to poo-poo university and all it stands for are guilty of the assumption that everybody shares their worldview. Many do not. Many do not see the earning of money as the be-all and end-all, but place a higher value on the experiences, both intellectual and social, that university is uniquely placed to grant them. That is what is in the minds of so many of the students currently working their way through the grind of clearing and subjecting themselves to the kinds of anxieties that those working in offices or shops can only guess at. May they all get on to their chosen courses

Nepotocracy and the August Riots

What caused the August riots?

In the search for an answer, the first point to make is that we might question the appropriateness of the word “riot” in that it implies an agenda and a political consciousness that remained unarticulated by participants. Certainly, no leader emerged and no demands were made. To all appearances, the riots were what one commentator described as “shopping with violence”, an opportunistic orgy of shoplifting on a grand scale. It may be telling that no public buildings were attacked, no party headquarters were stormed and, if you were the proprietor of a bookshop, you had little to worry about. Instead, it was shops that stocked consumer durables and fashion items that bore the brunt, specifically, shops that stocked the types of consumer durables and fashion items that appeal primarily to teenagers.

Of course, it would be wrong to attribute all of the anarchy to one age group, just as it would be wrong to blame a particular ethnic community; numerous examples of people of all ages, not to mention socio-economic backgrounds, have appeared before the overworked magistrate courts during the last, vaguely surreal, week. That said, TV pictures, combined with court records, confirm that the riots were a phenomenon driven predominantly by the young – either teenagers (and, shockingly, some who are even younger) or those who, until relatively recently, have been teenagers. It is surprising that no-one seems to have noticed any significance to the timing: the riots took place in the middle of the long summer holiday when methods by which teenagers alleviate their boredom are at a premium.

In trying to account for the riots, a consensus is forming in the media around the notion that they are an inevitable consequence of a policy agenda that mollycoddles young people, that goes to often ludicrous extremes to protect them from everything – even, and, perhaps, especially, the consequences of their own actions. Teachers will recognize some truth in this, but it is surely not the whole story. Three youths interviewed on Sky News this week attributed their part in the riots to what they saw as inequalities in “the system”. They compared their relatively poor condition to those of wealthy bankers and other ill-defined groups favoured by “the government”. They spoke – sympathetically – of their failed attempts to get into the mainstream through employment and education. Their case was somewhat undermined by their acknowledgement that the looting in which they had been involved was no more than a method of acquiring the expensive goods that they could not otherwise afford, but they said enough to confirm that it is overly simplistic to see the riots as mere mindless thuggery.

What those youths and the many hundreds of others like them had done is to test the boundaries of the social contract that holds any Western country together. As history has shown again and again, people’s social compliance can only be forced by the application of massive resources and a willingness to use draconian measures of repression. In a “free” society, such as that of the UK, public order relies on people’s voluntary compliance, the police force being, for the majority, a largely symbolic presence. The limits of this dispensation were horribly exposed by the August riots: the rioters quite simply stopped agreeing and withdrew their compliance. In this sense, the riots were a profoundly political act, even if those responsible may not have been aware of it.

There is, however, a more immediate way in which they exposed a growing political and social problem in contemporary Britain. They can be seen as a response to the increasing extent to which power and influence in this country is concentrated in the hands of a narrow “nepotocracy”. This was precisely what Sky’s interviewees were saying in their rather clumsy and hostile way.

In order to explain this, it is worth making reference to the summer’s other big story – the hacking scandal. Although it went unremarked upon, the most telling moment of the House of Commons debate on the matter was arguably when Ed Milliband stated that his current spin doctor-in-chief once worked for Education Secretary Michael Gove. To me, this served to highlight the extent to which a relatively small number of inter-connected people in this country have their fingers in all the pies, particularly those that have a bearing on public debate. Politics, the media and the arts are now essentially run by a cabal of family members, old school pals and hangers-on who manipulate their address books in order to gain influence and promote their careers. Think about this. Three of the most powerful positions in this country – Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mayor of London – are all occupied by men who were members together of an exclusive club, the Bullingdon, within their already exclusive university, Oxford. Lest we mistake this for a purely Conservative characteristic, though, we should remember that four of the positions on Labour’s last front bench were occupied by a husband and wife team and two brothers. The numerous young female playwrights who have been presenting their glorified soap operas on subsidized stages in recent years almost all have connections that made their passage from slush pile to production easier than for most. Then we have the ubiquitous Speaker's wife who is set to become an MP – one of the people who runs this country – on little other recommendation than that she has the right contacts.

And the examples could go on and on… In fact, it is hard to think of any other time in recent history that has seen this country so completely in the grip of a mutually-back-scratching elite which rarely issues invitations to potential new members. There is little cause for smugness if you happen to be an American, since you come from a country of over 300 million that, nevertheless, has picked two of its recent presidents from the same family and, from a different family, another recent president and the current Secretary of State. Much the same, to varying degrees, could be said of other Western countries.

Putting yourself in the position of the rioters, then, looking from the outside at a club you will never be asked to join and which will never pay any attention to your voice, the decision to rip up the social contract becomes more understandable. It also gets to the heart of the educational problem that, as was alluded to earlier, has been mooted as a key seedbed for the riots. Put simply, young people might well ask why they should bother with school if their future prospects will rely not on their educational achievements, but on who they know.

So what’s to be done? The first task should be to ensure that the frankly iniquitous system of unpaid internships be done away with; nothing restricts access to politics and the media quite so effectively as that particular closed shop. Next, choice of Parliamentary candidates should be truly local, central offices losing all power to influence such decisions; the Conservative “A List” at the last election was, in practice, just another mechanism by which the nepotocracy extended its range. Finally, there is a strong case for making all job applications anonymous prior to interview stage; this would allow applicants to be judged purely on their merits and achievements and not on their surname (or, in a happy side-effect, their probable ethnic origin).

Those who talk of “broken Britain” are usually referring to the lower end of the social spectrum. But, Britain is broken at every level, going right to the very top. If the social contract is to be renewed, it needs to be built around genuine opportunity for all. Education can play its part, but pupils have to see some purpose to it; if they perceive it as a cynical game that gives an illusion of opportunity while the nepotocracy goes about its business untouched, then we can look forward to chaos on the streets becoming a regular occurrence.

Liberal Versus Vocational

As I write, I can hear various exotic birds and beasties singing and calling in the Australian sun beyond my window. I am, as you have probably guessed, on holiday down under, but, before you start worrying that this has morphed into a travelogue blog (a traveblog?), there is a specific educational point that I want to make later related to my current geographical location.

For now, let’s go on a different journey – to a very famous public school some years ago. The occasion is a meeting of HMC Heads of English and I am in the audience. The speaker – who happens to be the Head of English at the very famous public school in question – is introducing the day with a passionate defence of “traditional” educational values. He speaks of the need to maintain standards, to focus on the literary cannon and to guard against the encroachment of easy options. He is, to use his own formulation, seeking to defend “liberal” education from the growing threat of the “vocational”. I am struck by the dichotomy, but not entirely certain as to what he could mean. What is the difference between the two and why should we be bothered if one is expanding at the expense of the other?

“Vocational” seems simple enough: presumably, it refers to education related to some specific job or occupation.  A lot of degrees fall broadly into this category. Exam boards are also offering more and more pre-university, post-16 qualifications of a similar type. Already, though, we have hit a problem: while a course like Hotel Management is pretty clear about which side of the divide it occupies, where would we accommodate such “traditional” subjects as Law and Medicine, both of which would seem to be very directly related to specific career options? 

If there are difficulties here, they are as nothing to those which emerge as soon as we attempt to define “liberal” in this context. Of course, it’s one of those concepts with which everyone knows what they mean, but can’t quite pin down in a satisfactory way. Liberal education is – well, you know... For what it’s worth, my view is that a liberal education is all about defining one’s individuality. Whether a liberal education creates the self, as John Locke appears to suggest, is open to debate, but it certainly helps to develop the self. A person has a clear sense of his or her personal capabilities and interests as a result of a liberal education. An education that is vocational, by contrast, allows someone to play a role in a pre-existing socially-constituted structure and, therefore, it might more properly be termed “training”. It is perhaps worth noting that this distinction is very ancient; if one examines school curricula from the past – even the distant past – they have never been about training. Aristotle did not teach the future Alexander the Great how to make weapons or ride a horse or even how to manage a group of soldiers. And Julius Caesar’s school days were spent mastering literature, philosophy and rhetoric – not boning up on the strategies that would allow him to conquer Gaul.

Perhaps these examples should be borne in mind when the questions of usefulness that I touched on in a previous entry are considered. Advocates of vocational education might well argue that “defining one’s individuality” is all very well, but so what? Society doesn’t need a bunch of deep-thinking, but ineffectual, individuals – it needs people with the skill set required for future progress. Modern day Caesars, the great captains of industry, are often cited to prove that education, meaning a liberal education, is unnecessary for success in the world. Richard Branson left school at 15, we’re told, and Alan Sugar at 14. Neither enjoyed the benefits of any social capital to give them a start in life; they’re self-made men. Yet, as Katharine Birbalsingh has recently pointed out, it is wrong to state that Sir Dick and Lord Shuggs eschewed education in favour of making their own way. Yes, neither chose to pursue education beyond the minimum leaving age at the time, but they had perfectly normal, liberal educations up to that point. Far from proving the uselessness of a liberal education, they are paradigms of the advantages it confers; the mental disciplines they gained from school – a breadth of knowledge of different types, the ability to assimilate information critically, the ability to re-interpret information, numeracy, social skills – have been the bedrock of their business success. Indeed, they almost lead us to a conclusion: that a liberal education gives people the breadth to push new ideas and change whereas vocational courses are always going to follow in the wake of a pre-ordained occupational structure. Getting back to myself in Australia, I can say that I am able to operate here - and would even be eminently employable - because much of my education has been liberal and, thus, unconstrained by narrow parameters, making it international in scope.

However, the vocational should not be dismissed quite so lightly. It could be argued that Law and Medicine, as first degrees, are broad and academic and require further training to be converted into the truly vocational, but that is to ignore the fact that they still tend towards a specific career option. Vocational education is important, ensuring that vital knowledge and skills are preserved within society and passed on from one person to another. It is at our peril, though, that we move towards seeing that as the be-all and end-all of education. Those who would see a liberal education as “useless” ought perhaps to think again...

The Twilight Zone

This is the academic twilight zone. The still point of the turning year. Neither up nor down, neither from nor towards (and do not call it fixity). Exams have been sat and sent off, coursework has been marked and moderated. There is nothing to do but wait. Until August 18^th, that is, when all will be revealed – at least for A Level students. Like contestants on Noel Edmonds’ TV monstrosity “Deal or No Deal”, they will open the box of their results envelopes to find… Well, for some, the prize of the grades they need in order to get that place at a top university. For others, not the exact grades they hoped for perhaps, but enough for a place somewhere. For still others, disappointment, the grind of Clearing, the despair of dreams dissipated and ambitions re-adjusted.

But that’s for the future. Right now, there is only the wait. For both students and for that other constituency in this, teachers. The students just want to pass and get what they need to progress. For teachers, there is an altogether richer set of feelings at work.

An A Level student once accused me of not caring whether she passed or failed. She was wrong, but the truth is that if, as a teacher, you become too emotionally invested in your students’ outcomes, you risk a nervous breakdown every summer. On the other hand, your students are people you have worked with, watched develop and got to know as individuals; you want them to succeed for themselves. It is a genuine pleasure to see a student achieve what they set out to achieve and to start looking forward to the next step.

On a slightly darker note, you also, as a teacher, are aware that you are judged on the results gained by your students. This enters your thinking so profoundly that it is hard not to refer to “my results” whenever you talk about how your students have done. Seasoned teachers, of course, know that that formula is only to be used when results have been good; in years when results leave something to be desired, they become, “the group’s/class’s results” or “the results obtained by the students taught by myself and [insert name of any teachers with whom you may have shared the class here]”.

At this point in the trek through the twilight zone, it is doubtful that too many teachers will be worrying about their classes’ results. But worry they will. Only the most idealistic will delude themselves that their students will all have over-performed as a result of their teaching. The most fervent prayer will be, “Please God, don’t let them do worse for me than for any of their other teachers” because, as much as teachers want their students to do well, they also always want to avoid that bane of any professional’s life, Awkward Questions.

A Tale of Two Departments

Two hypothetical academic departments, both the same subject, but in radically different types of schools: Department 1 is in a state grammar school. As it happens, the school in general enjoys an enviable local reputation and its places are much coveted and not easy to secure. Our department, however, is in a poor state. GCSE results are disastrous with only 11% of pupils obtaining an A* or A grade – this in a school that is academically selective. A Level is better, but still well below the expected standard. There is no head of department and neither has there been for the last year. The rest of the department consists of two supply teachers, one NQT, a student teacher pursuing an on-the-job PGCE and a Second in Department who is the only full time, experienced professional. Department 2, by contrast, is in a famous public school. Results are outstanding, there being a 100% pass rate at both GCSE and A2, few students at either level falling much below the top grades. Of the department’s six members, four obtained their first degrees from Oxbridge. The fifth only managed to get into Oxford for his Masters, but, since his first degree is from Harvard, nobody’s complaining. The sixth member? Neither Oxbridge nor Ivy League, but his PhD makes up for it.

The astute reader will have realized that the degree of fictionalization here is slight. The two departments are given to illustrate the huge gulf that exists in teaching and learning between the state and independent sectors. Remember that the example state school is not a failing comprehensive, but an academic institution that grants entry only to those who can demonstrate specific levels of ability.

That independent schools are “more successful”, by various measures, than their state-funded counterparts is readily apparent. The “stark divide” between the two sectors in their ability to get students into top universities has again recently been in the news with the revelation that five schools (four of them independent) account for more Oxbridge offers between them than the bottom 2,500 state schools combined. Although we are often told that independent schools account for only 7% of the pupil population, their representation in all of our elite universities and medical schools is vastly disproportionate to this humble figure. How did it come to this?

Two factors are key. The first is family background. Research has consistently indicated that the chief determinant of a pupil’s attainment is the extent to which education is valued and promoted at home. Bleak conclusions can follow from this: were there no independent schools, it could be argued, the socio-economic composition of an elite university’s student body would not differ much from how it is today. Also, we should not forget Department 1 above. While its parents do not make the same financial sacrifices as those in the independent sector, they are often forced into major commitments of time and inconvenience in order to keep their children in the school. They value and support education. Yet, the overall level of attainment in the department is significantly lower than that for the example independent school.

To digress briefly, this last point suggests that it seems wrong-headed of successive governments to attack independent education, since that is to deal with the manifestation and not the cause of under-achievement. Of course, independent schools are easy targets; political capital can be made by railing against apparent privilege while the next-to-impossible task of changing the anti-education and under-achievement culture of some young people within their family environments can be quietly left off the agenda. Independent schools, for their part, know that their position is relatively safe. After all, if a government had been serious about getting rid of them, it could have done so at any time. The fact is that the government cannot afford to abolish independent education. To do so would be to take several hundred thousand pupils into the state system with no extra resources to call upon - those children’s parents already make their contribution to state schooling through their taxes. Indeed, the spend per pupil in the state sector is higher as a result of some pupils being voluntarily removed from it and this could be viewed as an additional hidden subsidy by those parents who pay for private provision.

All of that notwithstanding, the second factor in independent schools’ levels of achievement – one brought out clearly by Departments 1 and 2 – is the high academic calibre of staff that they are able to attract and retain. A moment’s research on the internet reveals that teachers at independent schools are seven times more likely to be Oxbridge graduates than those in the state sector and twice as likely to hold first class degrees. Even within the state sector, most Oxbridge graduates head to grammars and not comprehensives.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4185215/State-schools-fail-to-get-graduates-from-Oxbridge.html)

This would appear to be a major distinction between Department 1 and Department 2. Another is the - to put it bluntly - chaotic nature of Department 1 as a team; for whatever reasons, it is dysfunctional and this must exacerbate other weaknesses that it exhibits. It is not suggested that the members of Department 1 are bad teachers, or lacking in impressive academic credentials, but, given the constraints within which they are forced to work, they might as well be.

Department 2 is the way it is, perhaps, because there is often an academic culture at institutional level in independent schools: they will boast about those members of their staff with degrees from top universities or those with higher degrees. In state school staff rooms you will sometimes hear academic achievements among colleagues being talked down. Such places can also be afflicted by the “you don’t need to be an academic to be a teacher” fallacy. According to this, there is a specific set of skills that are required for teaching which are not necessarily linked to intelligence, such things as communication skills, enthusiasm and empathy. While these are undoubtedly important, they are not sufficient in themselves. Think about this; would you agree to be operated on by someone with a poor grasp of surgical techniques? Would you even let someone without a driver’s licence be your driving instructor? Why, then, do we find it acceptable for someone who has not been capable of reaching a high grade at A Level to tell youngsters how to do it? As the two departments highlighted above indicate, the route to improvement is to encourage the brightest and the best to become teachers in state schools - and to provide an environment in which they can flourish and develop. As things stand, that is quite a challenge…