The Founder
VOL. XII, ISSUE VI | FEBRUARY 2021 |
@RHULFOUNDER
It Took the Country Shutting Down to Make Us Realise Our Educational Inequalities that it creates a country more convincingly capitalist, allowing people to succeed on a more meritocratic basis rather than simply relying on a series of doors opened by their parents’ money.
AUGUSTUS BAMBRIDGE-SUTTON
A
friend of mine was once told, upon getting a job as a teacher, that statefunded education is ‘for communists’. This is not, thankfully, the view of most people, who at least believe that education is a basic right. And yet the country seems to react to the idea of any sort of educational levelling in the same way that conservative Americans react to the idea of getting healthcare for free. When Labour dared to suggest integrating private schools into the state during the 2019 general election, it was such an unpopular policy that the otherwise Corbynite Rebecca Long-Bailey was forced to distance herself from it during her (failed) leadership campaign.
Index
Source: Relocate Magazine Despite its socialist trappings, I don’t think there’s anything inherently radical or ultra-left about this proposal. Private schools produce a far greater number of successful students, proportionally, than state schools. According to the BBC, 7% of children are privately educated, yet in
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many of the country’s top universities, the proportion of those who attended private school exceeds 25%. Don’t be fooled: this isn’t some ploy by a cabal of elites who only give places to their useless nephews: it is, quite simply, the result of a private school system that has better resources at its
disposal, one of the many boons of privatisation. Attempting to prevent children becoming more successful as adults simply because they had parents who could afford better education would be far from socialist: indeed, by levelling the playing field in this way, one could argue
COVID-19 p.3
Carbon Neutral by 2050 p.10
And yet it is perhaps naive to think that the problem stops at the divide between state and private schools. The less economically advantaged, wherever they’re educated, often have less space, fewer resources, and a more unstable environment to work in. Of course, this problem is inherent and can’t be completely done away with, but our education system’s emphasis on homeworking, especially in the later years, can be a deeply detrimental thing to those who don’t have the space or environment to meet their potential properly.
Continued on p. 11 Being a morning person p.13