In light of the inequalities highlighted by Elitist Britain last month, alum Pooja Kumari takes a look back at the relationship between education reform and social inequalities over the last 70 years.

Elitist Britain 2019 shone a light on the pathways to power taken by the UK’s most influential people. While just 7% of the general population attend private schools, the research found that 57% of the House of Lords, 44% of journalists and 59% of civil service permanent secretaries were educated privately. However, as the report rightly points out, state school attendance is an imperfect marker of disadvantage: the best performing state schools are socially selective and have been for years.

Divided from birth

Elitist attitudes to schooling have a long history in England. In an attempt to rebuild the country after the Second World War, universal education was introduced through the Education Act of 1944. The Norwood Report advised the Government on reforms to the curriculum, distinguishing between types of pupil: the Grammar School pupil ‘who can grasp an argument or follow a piece of connected reasoning…Such pupils have entered the learned professions’; and the Technical School pupil, who has an ‘uncanny insight into the intricacies of mechanism whereas the subtleties of language construction are too delicate for him’.[1] Universal education was born into a divided system.

On top of this, there was no policy direction for reform from central government towards commitment to ‘common schools’.[2] Eventually, the ‘comprehensive principle’ was outlined in Labour’s 1964 election manifesto and consolidated into a national policy soon after. Comprehensives were described as an ‘equality machine’ which would reduce educational and societal inequalities.[3] However, the reorganisation of secondary schools was left in the hands of Local Education Authorities (LEAs) without any central drive, resulting in inconsistencies in its implementation.

In 1979, the ‘comprehensive’ legislation was the first to be dissolved when the Conservatives regained power. By this time 80% of secondary school pupils were in a comprehensive school, although selective schools were still producing better results than comprehensives.[4]

Here comes the market

Change was initiated under the Conservatives with their belief that competition through a market ideology could drive up standards in education. These reforms emerged through a number of acts. The 1980 Education Act introduced the concept of parental choice, which continues to be a strong theme in education reform. This principle was consolidated in the 1988 Education Reform Act which was considered to be one of the most radical pieces of legislation. It introduced a new funding regime alongside the policies of ‘open enrolment’ in school admissions. For the first time, parents could decide where their children could be educated, rather than ‘settling’ for the local school. Funding for schools was allocated per pupil; each pupil therefore had a price tag and so the more popular the school, the more funding it would obtain in order to expand.

The aim was to create competition for pupils between schools to drive up standards, so schools that performed well could expand and obtain more resources to uphold their educational quality. The least popular schools would lose both pupil numbers and funding as the more ‘informed’ parents decided to send their children elsewhere. But in practice, this did little to tackle social segregation in schools.

The more things change…

New Labour sought to tackle social divides in education by continuing to diversify the education market: firstly through the ‘Specialist Schools Programme’ and later the City Technology Colleges, Academies, and Faith Schools.[5] The competitive education market continued to be a feature of the Coalition and Conservative Governments; policies of mass academisation and free schools injected more diversity into the system.

Overall, a consistent feature of education reform in the past 70 years has been the consolidation and commitment to the market and diversity in schooling. Decades of policy reform has resulted in selection by mortgage and the entrenchment of socioeconomic inequalities. Writing in 1931, historian and socialist Richard Tawney wrote “The hereditary curse of English Education is its organisation along the lines of social class”. Whilst the education system has undoubtedly changed since the introduction of universal education, social segregation has remained a persistent feature.

The policy solution to this is clear: school admissions policies need to do more to recruit an even spread of students. If we don’t take the important steps outlined in Elitist Britain to dismantle these privileged pathways to power, we will continue to pay the price for the persistent inequality that has been a longstanding feature of our education system.

Pooja Kumari is a UK Summer School alum, Alumni Leadership Board member and works as Policy and Communications Advisor at the Royal College of Emergency Medicine.

[1] HMSO, The Norwood Report, 1943 http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/norwood/norwood01.html (viewed 5 December. 2010).

[2] Roy, ‘Education’.

[3] Dennis Marsden, ‘The Comprehensive School: Labours Equality Machine’ in (eds.) David Rubenstein and Colin Stoneman, Education for Democracy (Middlesex, 1972), p. 133.

[4] Ibid, p.134.

[5] DfES 2005, Higher Standards: Better Schools for all (Norwich: TSO), p. 4.