The Undercover Economist - FT Magazine, 8 April
Anguish in Hackney. Our neighbours’ daughter - let’s call her Georgina - just missed out on a place at the local comprehensive school, a brand-new “academy”, well-funded, staffed by uber-teachers, designed by Sir Richard Rogers, with meals by the River Cafe and an organic kitchen garden laid out by Jamie Oliver.
The school is a five-minute walk away and Georgina is the brightest girl in her class, but she was unlucky. With eight applicants for every place, her name simply didn’t emerge from a carefully stratified lottery designed to draw children from every ability range and from near and far.
Now what? If her parents do nothing, Georgina will have to commute across London to a school with places going begging. No prizes for guessing whether it will be a good school. But her parents won’t leave it like that. They may head for commuterland, but more likely will remortgage the house to put her through private school. Neither option is appealing to both parents who work for modest wages at an inner-city charity, but the alternative is worse.
It’s a familiar tale of middle-class woe, but we should look again at what it tells us about the state’s attempt to force mixed-ability schooling. The careful lottery seems to have made the swanky academy inclusive, but failed to prevent segregation in other schools. The lesson: provide a good enough school for free and you can select whatever mix of children you like, but provide a bad school and you will not prevent parents from finding an escape route…
Continued at ft.com
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