Social Mobility

Debate between Kelvin Hopkins and Hazel Blears

Thursday 28th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Kelvin Hopkins]

As I said, I think that the divisions have rippled forward. I think that we have also failed in education. We are addressing the problem now.

[Hazel Blears]

We had this debate in the all-party group. Does my hon. Friend agree that an implication of the 11-plus and a selective system is that the more academically able are inevitably creamed off? In the past, what was left was not a comprehensive school, or even a very good secondary school, but a secondary modern in which the choices that young people had were often very limited and directed specifically to the kinds of jobs that they were expected to get in the long term. They did not do a foreign language or English literature, but woodwork, metalwork and needlework. It was a very narrow curriculum, which was certainly not good for social mobility or the country as a whole.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My right hon. Friend is right, and those divisions have continued. They have become more rigid due to the failures of our education system.

What I am going to say now will annoy teachers. What I wanted from comprehensive education was a grammar school education for everyone. We did not get it. At the same time as creating comprehensive schools, we introduced informal child-centred teaching methods, which were a disaster. We have had two or three generations of such methods, which are fine for kids from middle-class families, who have books, educated parents and extra tuition to get them through exams, but not fine for working-class kids whose only chance is school. They need rigour. We are now all talking about the need for rigour in schools, particularly in primary education.

We have made some terrible mistakes. The juxtaposition of comprehensive education with informal teaching methods and attitudes caused the problems. One can only look at what has happened on the continent of Europe—I do not have much time, but I want to tell hon. Members about one of my closest friends, who lives in France. His children go to French schools and the rigour for six and seven-year-olds is astonishing. We do not take that seriously. I have upset many of my wife’s dear friends. A head teacher at one of her schools said, “You’d have them all sitting quietly in rows, wouldn’t you?”, and I said, “What’s wrong with that?” It is interesting that we are now doing it in academies. We do not need to call a school “an academy” or change the nature of it, we need to change what is done in the classroom in the school.

We need to tell young people when they are very young, “You have a chance to have a life beyond your imagining, if you follow education. There are people who started where you are now, who have a life you cannot imagine. If you talk properly and learn well, you will have a more exciting and rewarding life, in every sense, not only financially and in terms of living standards. A more exciting and interesting life.” Getting that across to children when they are very young is vital. We need to say to them, “That’s why you’re going to sit down, be quiet and listen to me—because I’m going to make sure you have that good life.”