Marxist dogma that stops bright children going to top colleges
THE class war has never ended for the Labour Party.
Despite all the social upheavals of recent decades, Left-wing politicians still cling to the outdated Marxist rhetoric of envy.
Posing as the champions of the poor, they endlessly wail about bastions of supposed elitism or privilege.
A key weapon in this conflict is the education system. In the mindset of Labour activists, schools and universities are instruments of social engineering rather than places for enhancing knowledge. That is why we have seen the constant assault on grammar schools, examination standards,traditional teaching methods and streaming, all in the name of promoting social equality.
In the same way, Labour ministers have been fixated by the idea that our top universities are guilty of bias against state pupils in their determination to uphold the old boys’ network. Since 1997 the Government has lectured
institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge about their admissions policies, which allegedly discriminate against applicants from low-income backgrounds.
It was Gordon Brown who, in 2000, gave a graphic insight into Labour’s world of class-riddled resentment.
Describing as “a scandal” the failure of Oxford to grant a place to Laura Spence, a bright state pupil from the North-east, Brown launched into a tirade against the leading universities. “It is about time,” he said, “that we had an end to the old Britain, where all that matters is the privileges you are born with.”
Labour’s condemnation of the university elite went beyond mere words. In 2004 the Government set up a new bureaucracy to ensure that the higher education sector complies with “social inclusion”. Called the Office for
Fair Access, this arm of the state monitors admissions for any signs of inequality.
But not all university leaders have surrendered to Government diktat. This week the vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, Professor Alison Richard, expressed her frustration with Labour’s continual bullying over admissions. “We are not engines for promoting social justice,” she declared.
“Our core mission is to provide an outstanding education within a research setting.”
Prof Richard’s courageous words should be applauded. It is about time someone had the guts to challenge Labour’s absurd caricature of Oxbridge and the other top universities as the narrow preserve of the upper classes.
These institutions might form an academic elite but that does not mean that they are socially elitist. All they want to do is to attract the brightest students.
Yet the sad reality is that, in this context of academic rigour, too many state pupils have been placed at a disadvantage because of the dismal culture of under-achievement in the comprehensive sector. It is true, as the Government frequently reminds us, that students at Oxbridge come disproportionately from independent schools.
Though 93 per cent of all pupils are educated in the state system, only 59 per cent of Cambridge students went to state schools, while the figure for Oxford is even lower at 54 per cent.
Those statistics are an indictment not of Oxbridge snobbery but of the failure of too much secondary schooling across the country. Instead of condemning universities, the Government should focus on the problem of
low-performing state schools.
Ministers should be seeking to raise the standards of comprehensives rather than lower the admissions criteria of Oxbridge through some calibrated measure of social victimhood.
Politically correct thinking has become all too pervasive in state education. So in contrast to the private sector, where a place at a top university is seen as a success story for the school, many state teachers discourage pupils from applying to Oxbridge, having swallowed the class-war mythology which holds that these institutions are still modelled on Brideshead Revisited.
Last year the Sutton Trust, a charity that campaigns for wider access to universities, said that state teachers often had “alarming pre-conceptions” about the exclusivity of Oxbridge and that a lot of work was needed “to dispel the myths” and ensure that young people’s decisions were based “on fact, not fiction”.
Equally reprehensible is the failure of state schools to engage with the most gifted pupils. The official creed of equality prevails, reflected in so-called “child-centred learning” and mixed-ability classes which only drag down the brightest rather than encourage the slowest.
In no other walk of life would talent be treated with such suspicion but in Marxist-led British state education, dumbing down is preferable to raising up standards.
Nor has the remorseless destruction of examination standards helped. In a climate where more than 27 per cent of A-levels are given grade A, it is impossible for the outstanding to shine. Indeed, the elite universities are now introducing their own admission tests.
From this month many of the top schools are embarking on a new Pre-U course, which is more demanding than A-levels.
Meanwhile, Imperial College London has even introduced its own admission exam because, as its vice-chancellor Sir Richard Sykes argues: “We cannot rely on A-levels.”
Predictably, Left-wingers have portrayed these new tests as another example of trying to reward privilege. But they should put their own house in order. The top universities cannot undo the failures of the state system.
The neurosis about elitism has been a disaster. Labour should hang its head in shame at freezing social mobility and promoting class divisions.
