For tourists and occasional visitors, one of the most attractive features
of the UK is that atmosphere of the ancient that one can find in so many
beautiful corners of our cities and villages. One could almost see and hear a
carriage with Sherlock Holmes sitting inside when walking in certain areas
engulfed by an early morning mist. What these visitors fail to see and the
local population is not aware of, is the great extent these appearances can be
true when it comes to class differences. The rhetoric about class is, in all
modern countries except the UK, something everyone associates with the past,
with the times of Marxism and the post-industrial-revolution era. In the UK,
however, it is still “normal” to hear about “working class neighbourhoods” and “middle
class jobs”; people being labelled according to their “class”; and politicians
addressing voters from one or the other “class”. For any person regarding this
from the outside, this is as strange as a pink cow. But here no-one questions
the very reality of this. Many, of course, struggle against class differences,
and aspire to climb the socioeconomic ladder, but just in order to be in the
“upper” class and start behaving as such as soon as possible. Very few do
actually achieve this, but they soon will forget that there are others in that
struggle, and will begin to enjoy the privilege of having jumped the gap. This is the only possible goal of anyone in
the lower classes. Because they have been shown that class differences are part
of life, this is how society works. No one from “below” and of course no one
from “above” questions the existence of this weird anomaly in the world of the
21st century.
This can easily be understood when one sees that this segregation
becomes part of life from the earliest years in people’s lives. The education
system is designed to perpetuate the class differences in the UK. Yes, it is designed this way. Segregation in
schools is not something that happens in pockets of bad practice, it is built
into the system. “Good” teachers are the ones who will be most effective in applying
the disgraceful system of targets, by which children from the youngest ages are
CLASS-ified according to those targets, solely based on socioeconomic and
racial backgrounds. Not only through the use of postcodes to set these targets
(so as to ensure that in low achieving areas the same outcomes are obtained as
in the past), but even under the disguise of previous attainment – who do you
think would be the low attainers other than those who do not live in wealthy,
stable neighbourhoods with parents who can afford private tuition?
Young children are very permeable to quickly pick up things about how
society works. CLASS-ification is part and parcel of their time in school,
which is where they spend most of their time. All that time in school there
will be those who are offered to attempt the more advanced questions while
others are told to not even try, just be satisfied with the more basic ones, “you
are not bright enough for more”. When they reach secondary schools their final
scores in primary – already conditioned by the targets set initially – are
automatically converted into GCSE targets and pupils are grouped according to
the CLASS-ification of their targets and segregated into “higher tier” and
“foundation”. So, CLASS-ification is now materialized in actual groups within a
school year. There are the bright ones who will be entered to the “higher tier”
exams. As these are the only ones that count for the assessment of the quality
of the school, the teachers (individuals unworthy of this name) will ensure no
one will be included who poses the least risk not to get high grades. Then
there is the “middle class”, whose targets are to barely pass the GCSEs, and
the “lower class”, whose targets are Ds, Es, Fs or Us (or their current
equivalent numeric grades), and whose parents will be deceived as long as
possible, hopefully until it is too late to do anything, with reports saying
that their children are doing well because they are “on target”. In other
words, they will be great assets to maintain the current socioeconomic class
divide by ensuring that their families stay where they started.
It is hardly surprising that this apartheid is then transferred directly
into society when they leave schools. They will be sold nice leavers’ hoodies
and even have a prom, so they can live the dream for one night, with those
suits and ties, but the morning after the CLASS-ification will continue its
course. The high achievers with their triple As and A*s will go to university,
the “middle class” children will have access to “middle class” jobs or further
education courses that require about three Cs, and the lower class pupils,
being totally on target and therefore having done fantastically well according
to school reports and headteachers (“he is such a lovely boy”), will go where
they belong, which is where they came from.
Then we have the laudable yet pathetically ineffective efforts to
promote “widening participation”. Millions of pounds are spent by government
agencies and institutions of higher education to go out to recruit students for
university degrees and other courses of tertiary education from among young
people who have just left school after being told for about 15 years that they
are not worth to be considered for anything but low targets. Every day for
about 15 years apartheid in schools has chiselled into their brains and their self-esteem
that they belong to a lower class, that they are second- or third-class
citizens. Is it surprising in any way that the “widening participation” efforts
are mostly wasted? I once attended an academic talk on research about widening
participation at postgraduate level. I commented that by then the damage has
already been done, and that the widening participation target population had
already been filtered out by the education system at school level. While some
academics who obviously are very proud of the current education system looked
at me with horrified faces (how could I even dare to put this nearly perfect
education system into question?) the speaker admitted, jokingly, that maybe the
best way to invest in widening participation is to take all the money and pour
it into tackling the problem at school level. He may have said this as a joke,
but I truly believe that this is the case. Money alone, of course, will not do
the job: we need to start challenging this apartheid, which introduces
CLASS-ification in society at its roots, and so stop it from sabotaging true
“widening participation”.
