Further proof has emerged today to show that school selection favours the middle classes and is disproportionately biased against the poor.
It turns out, from a sample study of three Education authorities, that schools were selected pupils on the basis of whether the parents were married or not, if they attend church and if they cared to make a "voluntary" donation to the school when applying.
Now let's look at these things again.
Which social group has the highest rate of divorce or unmarried unmarried mums ?
Which social group is least likely to attend church ?
Which social group is least likely to be able to afford to make a donation ?
And to think some people still maintain that selection is a fair method.
Putting aside the argument that selection, or parent choice as it is called at the moment, is already biased in favour of the rich and middle classes who can afford to have two cars and can afford to drive their children to the other side of town. Anyone working in a poorer area knows that for the deprived who might have no car, there really is no parent choice at all.
3 comments:
You seem to be saying that because some parents have no choice, choice must be removed from all. The alternative, of course, is to make sure choice is available to all.
The consequence of what you're saying is for the government to choose the school for every single child, banning all private education and home schooling. Do you really think that the government is better able to choose what's best for your children, if you have them, than you are?
Or, you could say that anti-selection discriminates against the middle classes.
We need choice in education. Funny that when real choice is offered, its the poor who actually take it up. Yeah, the middle classes may concentrate in a few schools, but let the poorest have the choice too and they seek to improve their education.
Currently, only the rich can choose to escape poor education at the hands of the state. Lets let the poorest do that too, and then we might get a fair system.
Bizarre logic Tristan. Your argument centres on that removing a bias in the system from one group against another, you are discrininatihng against that lucky group.
It's like arguing that the racial discrimination act discriminates against white people beuase it removes their rgiths to discriminate against other races.
Very odd indeed.
As for the other points, what was wrong with catchment areas ?
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