The Limits of Equality
Why fairness in education means supporting opportunity, not enforcing outcomes.
Girls and Boys
Success when I was at school was in large part a memory test. In history you had to remember dates and why they mattered. In physics you remembered formulas and when to apply them. This put a premium on being able to revise.
Boys did better than girls in exams. They were a clear majority at university and it was a big deal. I remember the efforts to level the playing field and thinking it would take a generation to even itself out. You can’t wave a wand and change outcomes overnight.
Nowadays there is a lot more course work at school. Success in subjects requires a dissertation. This puts a premium on a place to work.
The changes to the curriculum evened out performance. Girls do better at continuous assessment and have stronger verbal skills. They are now the majority at university.
This advantage plays out over the early part of a career. In paid employment girls earn more than boys until child-bearing takes its toll. That’s another issue and one you cannot change through the curriculum, whatever some may think.
Whether you are revising or doing course work you must focus. This means peace and quiet and not being hungry. If we want a more equal society, this is where we should be concentrating.
Starmer’s Pledges
Keir Starmer came to power amid a flurry of pledges. These cover a wide range of issues from immigration, to housebuilding, to taxation. He also committed to the fastest growth rate in the G7. There was the sense that these aims added up to a greater level of equality.
The cost of living and affordability are the battlegrounds on which most elections are fought. Political parties produce manifestos covering a range of issues, but they are judged on economic outcomes first and foremost. The electorate is not voting for the side issues tacked on to appease radical wings of a party.
The reason for this is that most people want to be free to live their lives. We accept and welcome a role for the state in educating children. There are benefits on both sides from this. When we reach adulthood however, we expect to be free to pursue our own interests. This means being free of family and state interference.
Education is to provide the best start in life, with the emphasis on start. At some point we accept people as they are and stop trying to engineer their future. We understand that there will be relative winners and losers.
Those who do better pay taxes with which the government compensates those who do worse. At some point there is a limit to this. The Office of National Statistics says that over half of the population gets more from the state than they contribute. Yet for some that is not enough.
The Meaning of Equality
There is a classic distinction between equality of opportunity and of outcome. In reality they merge. All goals need a measure so we know if they are met. That’s why Starmer’s pledges specify 1.5 million homes and 8% of people waiting 18 weeks for elective surgery. There is an outcome to judge.
What does equality mean to you? For the majority it means economic outcomes. Talk of equality suggests higher taxes to some people and higher handouts to others.
Minorities may have a different view. Trans people want the right to be treated as the gender of their choice. Islam demands recognition of its special status. Sharia courts place half as much weight on a woman’s testimony and we are not allowed to call this sexism. Equality in this case means anything but.
Best practice for setting goals is to have one overarching aim and a series of steps to measure progress. These steps are all important because they define the aim.
When it comes to education, equality of opportunity might mean making sure every child has breakfast each morning. It may mean having a place to do homework. It could mean access to the internet and artificial intelligence. In a short time we go beyond the remit of the Secretary of State for Education.
As a result, the education establishment focuses on test scores. Yet this does nothing to address the inequality of opportunity that students face. Hence the pressure to doctor the outcomes.
Changing the way subjects were taught and assessed benefited girls. As there is an equal distribution of boys and girls throughout society, there are no economic factors to get in the way. They still exist, however. More affluent boys and girls both do better than those less well off.
There was a clear case that girls were being left behind under the old system. The economy was changing with increasing focus on white-collar desk jobs. More office labour was required and women are as able to supply this as men. I’d argue these economic pressures came first and equality between the sexes was the outcome.
I don’t see the evidence that being bisexual has an impact on your education. I cannot imagine how the way we teach could be better or worse for bisexuals. Yet for some reason, applications for university and work take a record of this. I know plenty of students who tick the bisexual box because they think it gives them a better chance of being accepted.
This is the challenge for equal outcomes. When you stop measuring the means of achieving equality, such as providing children with breakfast, and start monitoring the outcome, you create incentives. People look at others getting ahead because of personal characteristics and copy them. More kids will say they have gender concerns and that they struggle to concentrate. Why not, if it affords them privileges.
The greater issue is when we extend this into adulthood. What business is it of the state the proportion of bisexual people at a company? How does that have any effect on the hard work or profitability of the people at the firm?
There are plenty of studies showing a diverse workforce is more successful. All this proves is that when you recruit from the widest number of people you give yourself the best chance of finding the rights ones. It is completely different when you are forced to hire people because they are different.
When you owe your position to being in a minority then it becomes important to champion your status. You don’t want your opportunities removed. When you see that companies accommodate you, often at the expense of profits, then you believe your status is more important than profitability. Once this mentality becomes endemic, an economy grinds to a halt.
As a society we welcome the role of the state in educating our children. We support the steps made to even out opportunities. We understand that it is our money that is buying breakfasts for the kids, or paying overtime to teachers to oversee study sessions. This appeals to our sense of fairness.
As children approach adulthood we expect this support to stop. We do not accept our children forever being denied opportunities because the state has failed to help the underprivileged catch up. On a personal level, I have no problem with a few marginal cases from well-to-do families being denied entry to Oxford in favour of inner city kids with slightly lower grades. Once they’ve finished studying however, the favouritism must stop.
The alternative is a lifetime of correcting for perceived inequality. In most cases there is no connection between the cause of the inequality and economic outcomes. We already redistribute taxes to address economic disparity. The economy cannot be twisted to deliver an outcome because a minority considers it fair.
The Handholding Must Stop
The world is competitive. The UK is a rich country through the hard work and profitability of its people. If this stops then other countries will take our place. Humans are competitive at the individual, tribal and national level. It is not possible to opt out.
Education is part of the competition. Individuals compete and through that process the country prepares a workforce. A better workforce means a stronger economy and greater prosperity for the people.
We weaken society when sections of it are denied educational opportunities. We must do our best to prepare children to get the most from school. Ensuring they are fed and providing safe spaces to study are proven methods.
The handholding must stop at some point. People do their best work as agents of their own success. The longer we control outcomes, the less successful we will be. Children grow up and leave their parents. If the state continues to step in, they will never reach their potential.
In recent weeks I’ve argued that the opportunity for political parties lies in addressing affordability. A stronger economy, in which the most number of people participate, is the best way of reducing social ills. Most elections are fought over who is the most competent and likely to help people prosper.
Party politics dictates that the economic focus comes with a side-serving of social engineering. This is not why the majority votes. If we continue to get outcomes that no one voted for, next time we will vote for the party that is against those outcomes.