What if Grammar Schools were Premier League Football Clubs?
I was recently discussing the Grammar School issue with a friend and I tried to explain why I didn’t think it all stacked up, particularly with regard to several ‘case studies’ that were trotted out in the media at the time. Here are my thoughts. There is often a line of argument in politics and elsewhere that justifies a particular strategy or policy on the basis of some very inspiring and brilliant case studies. One such case study was on the news following the Government’s announcement about Grammar school expansion and it profiled a number of pupils from inner city London who had been selected for entry into a grammar school. Don’t get me wrong, this was a truly inspirational and incredibly impressive achievement, however, it was four pupils. Four. It didn’t expand too much on the selection criteria, although it was very clear that the pupils carried on living in inner city estates while they attended and worked extremely hard. I am sure that they did and I genuinely believe that the charity (I WISH I could remember who they were..) are doing a great job. But. I don’t buy that this means there is a strong case for grammar schools to have the impact on social mobility and pupil attainment that I think people are making out. Now, back to me and my friend. We had this conversation in the aftermath of the announcement in May that Grammar Schools were getting the green light from government, David Lammy’s criticism of Oxford’s BAME admissions record and various media discussions from Radio 4’s Today Programme to Question and Time and beyond. My friend expressed support for Grammar School expansion and I expressed my lack of faith that it would be the magic bullet for education. Now, it started to occur to me that if a large majority of Grammar schools are rated ‘Outstanding’ compared to a minority of ‘Secondary Moderns’, when you read news reports that state that schools in white working class areas are unfairly stigmatised by School league tables. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-44196645 I started to suggest that it wasn’t the school, but the background of the pupil that was the determining factor in the success of the pupil. He wasn’t having it, so I tried an analogy instead. Here goes. Would Manchester City still be Manchester City if you changed the squad demographic? My analogy was that an average player, plucked from a lesser team or a lower league and placed in a Top 4 squad was bound to improve. A single player, surrounded by a team of world class professionals would be inspired to improve him or herself. If he had any sort of ambition he would try his hardest to improve and learn from all those around him. During the times when he wasn’t inspired to improve, the culture of the club and the incessant drive would require him to improve and work hard. Inspired and required. The player would be completely immersed in a wraparound culture that had one aim, to win by any means, to succeed by any strategy, to improve in all areas. If you are in a high performing environment like that, you are going to adopt a similar work ethic and a similar philosophy. If he turned up to training. If he was getting support at home. If he was getting enough sleep at night to enable him to perform well enough in training. If he was resilient enough to take the knocks and keep working through the tough times. But what if he wasn’t able to do all that? In football terms, this would be unlikely – the scouts would have done their homework. They’d have researched his performance and work ethic over a period of time. In all likelihood he was already a good fit for their organisation, his work ethic and performance being more or less aligned with the destination club. They’d be able to put in place a support package, a relocation strategy and there’d obviously be a significant financial reward to ameliorate any sundry inconveniences to make the move go as smoothly as possibly. Transition. But what if we were talking about education? Would it work for a working class pupil to get a big money transfer to a grammar school? Sure there’s a scholarship available, but for how many pupils each year? How far does that go? Does it pay for the uniform? The travel? The extra tuition? The correct nutrition? Does it compensate for the lack of support at home? Does it make up for all the cultural and social opportunities that have been missed in the pupil’s first 11 years of life? How far does it go? I suspect a highly motivated pupils from a deprived setting, with supportive parents and an ingrained work ethic may well thrive in a grammar school environment, but would EVERY deprived child? I suspect not. I also strongly suspect that the ‘success stories’ from the news bulletins are pupils who have been VERY carefully selected before being admitted. Even if the player didn’t make the first team, even if they weren’t an International, even if they didn’t become a world class icon, they would still have improved as a player. They would still have contacts in the upper echelons of the football business. They would still have a significantly elevated starting point in future career opportunities, either as a coach, pundit or agent. Doors would have been opened, opportunities would arise that wouldn’t have been there before. My friend started to see my point. So I pushed on. If that is the case for a single player/pupil, what does it mean for larger numbers? What if a top 4 club signed a player from The Championship? What if they signed two? What if they signed four. All at once. Would all four succeed in the same way? Would the team be as successful as it was the year before? What if they replaced half their squad with players from the Championship? What if three new players were from League One? What if One player was from the League Two equivalent in an East European country? What if two players were injured for the whole season but had to be named in every matchday squad? What would happen to the team then? Would performances suffer? Would morale? Of course it would. What would happen to the self perpetuating momentum of the success machine? Would they still top the League Tables? Of course not. But that would be despite of the club’s previously outstanding ethos, resources and management strategies. A culture of high expectations and a relentless drive for success can only go so far without the right players to implement it. Results would suffer. It would take several seasons for the club to develop the same players and turn things around. To make progress. But top 4 clubs don’t sign players from the Championship do they? They sign them from other Premier League clubs or Top 4 clubs in other countries. Jamie Vardy is the exception that proves the rule, but how many Jamie Vardy’s are there? Where do Grammar schools get the majority of their pupils from? From already successful, high performing primary schools that produce already successful, high performing pupils. The difference is that football, while it has grossly inflated salaries and serious issues about its culture and ethics, is fundamentally meritocratic. If you’re not good enough, you don’t get picked. Ultimately you get dropped and eventually sold. The team gets relegated. You lose. But that’s not what happens in education. You don’t go to a ‘top 4’ school purely on merit. It has as much to do with your social background as anything else. My school has over 50% Free School Meals. The vast majority are delightful, hard working and a pleasure to teach. But there is no escaping the attendant issues commonly associated with pupils from a deprived background. These, even when you avoid inevitable stereotyping and remove it as an excuse, present real barriers to learning and swallow up vast amounts of time, money and resources. There comes a tipping point, a critical mass where the proportion of deprived pupils has a detrimental effect on the overall performance of the school. In a recent article The Telegraph reported that A Lancaster University study had identified that this tipping point was when 20 per cent of pupils were from a deprived background. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/02/schools-20-per-cent-pupils-poor-backgrounds-see-lower-attainment/ A grammar school can deal with isolated cases of deprivation, the child will be pulled up by those around them and they will be inspired and required to achieve. The extra support needed for a small number of pupils’ social and behavioural needs can be met. But after a certain point, the strain of deprived pupils’ needs takes its toll, from behaviour issues, poor attendance, poor diet, poor parental engagement, chronically low aspiration, poor prior attainment and a whole host of safeguarding issues. All of these issues detract from the core business of schools, namely teaching. If a Grammar School or a Premier League club had to deal with persistent absence, daily safeguarding issues and deprivation at the level of our school, I think performance would soon suffer. You also can’t ignore the fact that success breeds success. Once a Premier League club is well established, it attracts bigger signings both on the pitch and in the dressing room. Better coaching staff attracts better players and vice versa. But League positions, trophies and results attract better everything. You don’t get the best coaches managing teams in the lower echelons of the National League. I do think though that a meritocracy is at play in football in a way that we don’t get in education. The narrative is that if results are poor, the school is poor. If results are good, the school is good. There is little credit or recognition for achieving a decent set of results with a poor set of resources. In football, there is, to my mind a greater recognition of the way that money has bought success and how great an achievement it has been for a club to narrowly avoid recognition considering their humble budget and resources. I’d like to change that narrative and in recent months it seems that momentum is growing for pupils’ social backgrounds to be taken into account more when arriving at Ofsted judgements, but I don’t see how social mobility will be tackled more effectively until the admissions system is looked at with some common sense and with real evidence of outcomes. Maybe then Oxford and Cambridge will admit more BAME and ‘working-class’ students, we may even see more BAME and ‘working class’ CEOs and captains of industry. I’ll hold my breath for a BAME and working class Minister for Education… Now there are all sorts of ways that this analogy just doesn’t work and if you scratch the surface a little bit, trying to compare education with professional football is a bit silly, but I think I got the point across. And of course, unlike professional football we’re all in the same crazy League Table. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-44196645
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Mr W
Head of English in a northern school. ArchivesCategories |