Principals of a group making up a large cross-section of Britain’s 93 sixth-form colleges have declared that cuts to their funding (of over 16% since 2010) has forced them to increase class sizes and even scrap some A-level courses altogether. Sixth-form colleges were excluded from the Conservatives’ protection of schools spending, with the consequence that some £100 million has been slashed from their budgets. Unfortunately, this coincides with £60 million of investment in establishing sixth form free schools. It isn’t surprising that school leaders are portraying the two as interlinked. However, whatever you think of the free schools policy, I’d argue that this is a red hering.
But I think that this is part of a much greater logical inconsistency in policymaking that has existed in Britain since about 1997. Rightly, politicians have sought to provide generously resourced services to young children. New Labour saw that poverty in a child’s formative years tended to trap that person in an inescapable cycle of poor opportunities, social marginalisation and wasted potential. So they showered young families with support such as SureStart childrens’ centres, Child Trust Funds and tax credits. All this support helps, but here lies the problem. That support drops away very swiftly.
A cynic might say that it’s because helping moody, spotty 13 year-olds is not as politically beneficial as rolling out free milk for angelic-look
ing children half that age. Whatever the cause may be, the egalitarian measures that make such a difference to the country’s youth do fall away. Why, for example, did the Coalition introduce universal Free School Meals for infants school pupils, but not their junior or secondary counterparts? Students need to eat lunch no matter how old they are.
Consequently, our children are having their support torn away from them, be it by the falling incomes of their parents or the tapering off of support and opportunities as they get closer to being hurled into the world of employment and independence.
Why take such trouble to build superficial equality in primary school pupils when, come their turning 11, their secondary school and thus exam grades will be heavily influenced by whether their parents can afford a house in the good schools’ catchment area? Why help people attain good GCSE grades when there’s no funding for decent sixth form places as a step to work and university? Why send people to university when there’s a shortage of graduate jobs and those that are available are snapped up by the children of some friends of friends of bosses?
I may be exaggerating slightly, but it’s true that we’ve only taken half-measures to foster social mobility. “Aspiration” can only work if society suppports its realisation from the cradle to the grave.