Standards in state schools

Must do better

A provocative new book examines why so many children fail at school

Mar 3rd 2011

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The truth hurts

THE gap between the haves and have-nots in Britain is often clearest in the very place where the divide is supposed to be bridged: the nation’s schools. The lucky few whose parents can afford to educate them privately gain good exam results and sail into university. In the state-school system, meanwhile, standards are patchy, and comprehensive schools in the poorest areas tend to get the worst results. A new book by Katharine Birbalsingh (pictured), a teacher who rose to prominence after describing the failings of the state system at the Conservative Party conference in October, helps to explain why.
“To Miss With Love” is a lightly fictionalised account of Ms Birbalsingh’s experiences of teaching poor, urban children. It traces the erratic progress of pupils called Furious, Cavalier, Deranged, Stoic and Wholesome; they are steered by the teacher-narrator, Ms Snuffleupagus, whose colleagues hold dramatically different views on how to teach. “Snuffy” struggles, and mostly fails, to make her pupils realise that, once they have left school, they will have to compete for college places and jobs with luckier and better-qualified youngsters.
Ms Birbalsingh depicts what Michael Gove, the education secretary, likes to call “the soft bigotry of low expectations” (a phrase he borrowed). By choosing not to challenge poor children to behave better and work harder, she suggests, teachers condemn them to a bleak future. The evidence supports the view that failure is too readily tolerated. Almost half of all pupils leave school without passing five GCSEs, including English and maths, with acceptable grades. Yet inspectors judge most schools to be adequate: 89% of secondary schools visited last year were deemed satisfactory or better.

Teachers who criticise the comprehensive system are typically accused of undermining it. The fear is that middle-class parents who are alerted to the awfulness of their local school will opt out. There is some truth in that: rich urbanites tend to flee to the suburbs and beyond as their children approach school age. Ms Birbalsingh—whose family is Jamaican, and who was educated at a comprehensive school before going to Oxford—argues that concealing poor standards perpetuates them.
One of the reasons for the plight of the characters in her book is that their actions have few immediate consequences. Ms Birbalsingh did not get off so lightly: after her speech she was in effect suspended from her job. She later quit, and has struggled to find another post in the state sector; she is now planning to open a new state-funded “free school” in Lambeth. The school she left was already in trouble, having been judged unsatisfactory by inspectors. It has since proved terminally unpopular with parents and is due to close by 2013.

To Miss With Love. By Katharine Birbalsingh. Penguin; 293 pages; £9.99

The Economist