Poverty need be no barrier to children succeeding at school

I HAVE a soft spot for sinners come to repentance, so I always read with great care anything written by Fred Forrester, the former depute general secretary of the EIS. I prize his attempts to come to terms with the terrible mistakes made in Scottish education policy in the last decades of the 20th century - mistakes that have left us with poor literacy and low secondary school completion rates.

I welcome Fred’s attempts to wean us off the current politically correct explanation for this dire state of affairs. The dangerous ideologues, who gave us dumbed-down "comprehensive" schools, excuse poor performance in ghetto housing estates on the basis that poverty is an absolute barrier to creativity, aspiration and scholastic excellence. According to this specious line of reasoning, the fact that state schools in such areas have disastrous exam results is not their fault or that of the parents or the children.

Fred has the sense to reject this guff. He sums it up brilliantly: "Almost uniquely among public services, education, if it is to be effective, requires a commitment from those being educated in terms of both individual aspiration and family and community support."

However, I have a few bones to pick with Fred. He says: "I do not believe most parents think exam results and general academic achievement are the only or the most important aims of education." Up to a point, I think I know what he means. Education is about growing the whole person, not just mechanistic passing of exams. However, he seems to imply one is possible without the other - it isn’t. Society has a responsibility to educate and socialise its young. But intrinsically that means setting them tests and rites of passage so the children know where they are in that process. Besides, gaining knowledge is not a passive thing, not the simple acquisition of facts, as Gradgrind claimed. Knowledge is about being critical and expressing yourself. That’s what exams and exam technique are about; exams are good for you.

That said, I think the majority of parents do think passing Highers or A-levels is what the school is there to deliver. That explains why, increasingly, parents of both middle-class and skilled manual workers either move to where there are good state schools - or choose independent.

Of course, the result is the ghetto schools are robbed of aspirational parents and students who set standards. I admit this was not true in my day. Back in the 1960s, Drumchapel was full of hard-working men from the shipyards and wives rarely worked. There were powerful community networks; I never met a social worker. My old secondary school - long since torched by local neds - was awash with competitive spirit. My generation turned out a Celtic captain, a Rangers player, famous film director and a major songwriter/producer.

How do we generate aspiration in our ghetto schools? Fred correctly points out aspiration is always associated with housing tenure. My parents’ generation left Drumchapel as soon as they could afford to buy a house "with its own door". The Glasgow municipal housing department then filled the scheme with single-parent families and the unemployed. That’s no reflection on individual tenants, but such ghettoisation imploded the Drumchapel economy and culture. One result - across Scotland - was to turn local comps into low-achieving sink schools.

Fred has a different solution: "We must continue to break up the housing ghettos and replace them with smaller, mixed-tenure developments." In the course of time, thinks Fred, these redeveloped areas will be more socially-balanced and better-achieving schools will result: "The closer Scotland can approximate to a Scandinavian-type society, the better will be the comprehensive schools."

Two problems here. First, the experience with regeneration of Scottish housing schemes has been patchy. Vast sums have been spent to little avail. There is still a strong tendency for the upwardly mobile to move out and the aspirational to avoid the district. Unless we completely dismantle and re-name traditional estates - always opposed by the public sector mafia - you can’t achieve the social mix Fred wants.

So how do they do things in Scandinavia? I was amused to read Fred’s reverence to a "Scandinavian-type" society. A look at what has actually happened in Sweden and Denmark is revealing in the context of how to create aspiration in schools. In 1992, Sweden realised it had to do something about poor performance in state schools.

Would you believe, the middle classes had fled from the underclass that grew up under Sweden’s daft social welfare system? Did the Swedes try to move the middle class back in? No, they tackled the problem at source - in the schools - introducing a radical plan to create competition.

Under this system, anyone can apply to set up an independent school and receive state funding provided they meet national educational standards and reject selectivity. These indy schools were originally funded 75 per cent of the average per pupil spent by the local council; now it is 100 per cent. Standards are monitored centrally.

The reforms gave parents educational choice. For the first time, they were free to send their children to any state school in their municipality or an independent school with public funding following the child. If The Scotsman suggested that, we’d be denounced as virtual fascists. Where did the Swedes get the idea? Denmark.

Today there are 300-plus indy schools in Sweden. One of the first, Botkyrka Friskola, was started by an ex-communist in a low-income, immigrant suburb of Stockholm. With an emphasis on individual responsibility, family involvement, and efficient use of technology, it now has more than 2,000 students waiting - the kind of success we want for our housing schemes. Opponents of school choice usually claim few parents in poor areas care enough to consider the selection of schools.

The lesson: if you want to incentivise parents and children, even in disadvantaged areas, give them a choice.