(NAME-MCE) The most disadvantaged children go to the worst schools

[Paul C. Gorski]

To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site,  
go to  
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/03/welfare.socialexclusion

'The most disadvantaged children go to the worst schools'

Andrew Sparrow, senior political correspondent, talks to Martin Narey,  
who has been appointed chair of the Liberal Democrats' commission on  
social mobility

Monday March 3 2008

Labour is "a long way off" meeting its commitments on child poverty,  
according to Martin Narey, chair of the End Child Poverty coalition.

As chair of the coalition, and chief executive of Barnardo's, Narey  
has constantly been chiding the government over its failure to live up  
to its promises on child poverty.

Now he is in the position of having to come up with answers. One of  
Nick Clegg's first acts as Liberal Democrat leader was to appoint  
Narey to chair a commission on social mobility and task it with the  
job of coming up with ideas of make Britain a fairer society.

Narey has now appointed fellow commissioners, and the group is due to  
have its first meeting soon. It has already started commissioning  
research.

A former director-general of the prison service, Narey is not a member  
of the Liberal Democrats. He was appointed because he is seen as an  
independent, expert voice.

He does not know whether the Lib Dems will adopt his recommendations,  
whatever they turn out to be, and he is gloomy about the prospects of  
any party openly calling for the redistribution of wealth.

But, as he made clear when we spoke at the Barnardo's offices in  
Victoria, he is not short of ideas as to why there is a problem with  
social mobility. We started with his assessment of Labour's record on  
social mobility.

Narey: The core of the problem is that we have a desperate unequal  
society. We have 3.8 million children living in poverty. Some of that  
poverty is truly dire. Labour have taken about 600,000 children out of  
poverty since 1999. They deserve great credit for that. The tax credit  
system has had an impact.

But they are a long way off their commitment to halve child poverty by  
2010 and, as things stand, there will probably be 1 million more  
children in poverty by 2010 than Tony Blair promised 1999. They have  
made good progress. That progress has halted and some would say gone  
into reverse.

There are other things they've done which I think we need to wait for  
considerable period of time to see if they come to fruition. I know  
it's very fashionable to criticise sure start, but from what I've seen  
of sure start I think it's got huge potential.

I hope that a future government, Labour or otherwise, doesn't lose its  
nerve on sure start. The equivalent in the USA, Head Start in the 60s,  
championed by Lyndon Johnson, was abandoned prematurely. And it was  
only long after it was abandoned that it was seen to have contributed  
so much to reducing the costs to society, for example the costs of  
crime.

Guardian: One of the reasons for the establishment of the commission  
is to investigate why social mobility has stalled. Do you have a view  
on the reasons for that?

Narey: There's no shortage of views on this. One of the things I want  
to get the commission to establish is the extent to which it has  
stalled, if indeed it has. I accept most of the evidence that it has.  
It seems to be quite clear from the evidence that for those born in  
the 50s and 60s, our chances of moving up the social scale were much  
greater than for those born in the 80s and 90s.

Guardian: You must have some view as to what explanations are more  
likely than not.

Narey: I do have views and these are things I would want to explore. I  
would mention a couple of things. The growth of income inequalities in  
the UK. In particular, we have 3.8 million children living in poverty.  
Half of those children have got at least one parent working. We have  
very severe levels of poverty attaching to those in work.

The second thing is education. We know – Alan Johnson said this  
repeatedly when he was secretary of state for education - that child  
from a poor background falls behind a child from a more privileged  
background at 22 months. And everything that happens in the education  
system from that point on widens that gap.

Guardian: Why should that be worse now than in the 1970s?

Narey: I say this cautiously, because I need to test this, the ability  
to shop around schools has grown hugely. I'm not so terribly old when  
I went to secondary school in the 1970s I went to the local  
comprehensive. And it was genuinely a comprehensive.

By the 1990s, when my children were going to school, like a lot of  
middle class parents I was fully engaged in the education market,  
shopping around, trying to make sure my kids got into the best  
schools. I'm very worried about the education market. The fact is the  
most disadvantaged children in our society go to the worst schools. We  
should not be surprised when their life chances are depressed.

Guardian: There's a common view that the decline of grammar schools  
has had an effect on social mobility.

Narey: It's an interesting theory and I'll keep my mind open to it,  
but I would be astonished if that were the case.

Guardian: Why?

Narey: Because my own recollection of grammar schools ... I saw  
nothing to suggest that this was a very sensible way of bringing up  
kids. To condemn children to a second-class education at the age of 10  
or 11 has always seemed to me to be something that is quite repugnant.  
People always talk nostalgically about grammar schools. But they don't  
talk nostalgically about secondary moderns.

Guardian: When Iain Duncan Smith looked at this for the Conservatives,  
he identified family breakdown as a cause of inequality. Do you think  
he's got a point or do you think he's barking up the wrong tree?

Narey: I wouldn't say he's barking up the wrong tree. I met IDS for  
the fist time [recently] and I found him enormously impressive. But I  
would offer an alternative theory, which is that dire poverty leads to  
family breakdown.

Anyone who has brought up children or a family, if you think seriously  
about what it must be like under such immense financial pressure, I  
think it's very easy to understand why we have so many marriages that  
fail.

Guardian: This is not the first commission on this subject. The  
Fabians did something and the Tories have had a commission on social  
justice. What do you hope that your commission will achieve that  
others haven't?

Narey: I genuinely don't know and I'm not going to make any fatuous  
claims about its finding its way through a very difficult area. One of  
the things is the commission has got to investigate is whether those  
who argue that social mobility is uniquely resistant to government  
intervention … we have to examine whether that might be the case.

Guardian: Are you worried that it might be resistant to government  
intervention?

Narey: No, because I have just given two examples, in income and  
education, where I think you could make a difference. This government  
commendably have committed to making a difference to the lives of  
children in care. They are a very good example of children at the  
bottom of the heap who get locked into the bottom of the heap and who  
stay there. Children in care are children whose only crime is to be  
born to parents who either cannot or will not look after them properly.

I think they have one-13th the chance of other children of going to  
university. They grow up in poverty, they enter adulthood in poverty  
and many of them stay there.

Now, Labour have said that in future they will make sure that children  
in care do not grow up as they traditionally do, going to the worst  
schools, but they will go to the best schools in terms of value added  
... I think that could at a stroke, at virtually no cost, dramatically  
improve the life chances of perhaps the single most disadvantaged  
group of children in the UK.

Guardian: Can you do anything about income inequality without getting  
the middle classes to pay more?

Narey:  I think we can. I think the sum that we need for example to  
halve child poverty is a significant sum, £3.8bn a year, but actually  
that's about 0.5% of public expenditure. While I would not rule out  
the case for those of us who are very comfortable in the UK to pay a  
little more, as I think personally we should, I think the government  
commitment to halve child poverty could be delivered without needing  
to resort to that, what I accept is a politically rather unacceptable  
option.

Guardian: Do you think any of the political parties are up for  
redistribution as a practical policy that they can sell to the  
electorate?

Narey: I would be very surprised if you heard any of the political  
parties using the 'R'-word, redistribution, before the next election.

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008

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