Yesterday, on the 24th October 2017, Teach First held its first ever Challenge the Impossible Conference in the Wembley Arena to not only celebrate it’s fifteenth birthday but to also highlight that a child’s upbringing should not determine its achievement or outcomes in life.
Many of the speeches were outstanding and suitably inspiring. Marcus Shepherd’s speech on the turnaround of the Merrill Academy and the performance of the school’s first ever choir was tear-jerking. The wildly breathtaking Muzoon Al-Mellehan spoke about her journey from war-torn Syria to her A-Levels in England and then becoming the youngest ever UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Co-founder and Honorary President, Brett Wigdortz, reflected on his hills of happiness and valleys of death over the last fifteen years of leading Teach First. Ultimately, it was an inspiring day and, if you missed it, you can catch up with #TFChallenge on Twitter.
Most interestingly for me, however, was a comment made by Lucy Crehan who said boldly that ‘perhaps the problem in the UK is that we focus too much on social mobility and not enough on educational equality.’ In this blog, I aim to dispel my thoughts on this topic.
Educational equity > social mobility:
In order to fully access this debate, we must first define two key terms and highlight the difference between equality and equity. The terms below are defined as according to the Oxford Dictionary.
- Equality = the state of being equal or the same, especially in status, rights or opportunities;
- Equity = the state of being fair or impartial.
I believe that most of us strive for a starting point of educational equity, where a student’s background does not limit their academic achievement, in order to later achieve a state of educational equality. As shown in the picture, it is important to clearly distinguish between these terms.
So, where does the issue of social mobility come into this debate? Social mobility, meaning the ability of individuals and families to move within or between layers of society’s class system, is important to teachers as we wish to ensure poorer students (those on FSM, for example) have access to further education establishments, like Oxford or Cambridge. As Sonia Blandford said, ‘being working class does not mean that you’re destined to fail.’ After all, this seems fair, the right thing to do and will have a long-lasting impact on multiple lives. However, social immobility is a sickening symptom of educational inequity. Surely it is better to cure the illness rather than merely treat its effects?
Why do we focus on social mobility, then?
Social mobility is easily measurable. It is clear when poorer students get into Russell Group universities and it is clear when students with low socio-economic backgrounds fail. For example, 25% of TeachFirst participants were on free school meals and 40% of them were the first people in their families to go to university. On the other hand, not one pupil premium student from the entirety of North Eastern England gained a place at either Oxford or Cambridge University last year. These examples are both clear and shocking and, because of this, it is easier to simply work towards moving the number and think that we’re doing a good job, but this really doesn’t touch the surface.
Rather, measuring educational equity is much more challenging and is unfortunately much easier to ignore. In order for our education system to be based in equity, we must:
- Realise that social mobility (and immobility) is a symptom and that the disease must be cured for long term effect, rather than simply treat a symptom in the short term.
- Find a measurement to ensure that we can establish this equity: How do we work out what schools get which support? When should this support be limited to help another school?
- Ask: How do we ensure that those schools that don’t receive as much extra support are still sufficiently supported and do not go under the radar?
- Question: How do we develop a system which monitors schools in a way that highlights the need for extra support but doesn’t become overbearing or overly bureaucratical?
- Consider that addressing educational equity will have more of a positive effect but is a long term goal; how can we support those poorer students in the interim until the education system catches up?
Don’t just fight the good fight, fight the right fight!
I do not have the answers to these complex questions but, if our aim is to ensure that no child’s background or household income limits their attainment or destination in life, then we must focus on curing the disease and not just treating the symptom. Indeed, once we remove this barrier then we can focus on promoting equality. However, we are unfortunately so far from this and therefore must move away from the rhetoric of fighting social mobility and instead focus on promoting educational equity. That way, we will get to the crux of the issue.
Matthew Connor Martin 