After 14 years of Conservative government, Phillipson said educational inequalities were “baked in”, citing regional disparities in results and attainment gaps between children at state and private schools…reports Asian Lite News
The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has warned of “massive” inequality in England’s education system, as students brace themselves for this week’s A-level results.
After 14 years of Conservative government, Phillipson said educational inequalities were “baked in”, citing regional disparities in results and attainment gaps between children at state and private schools.
On Thursday, hundreds of thousands of 18-year-olds in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will collect grades that, for many, will decide whether they get into their university of choice, The Guardian reported.
Experts say England’s north-south attainment gap is likely to persist, while privately educated students are expected to continue to outperform their state-educated peers.
Amid fears that some poorer students are being deterred from progressing into higher education because of financial concerns, Phillipson did not rule out bringing back the maintenance grant for poorer students that was cut by the Conservatives in 2016.
She said the task of reversing the last government’s legacy of educational inequality was “enormous”, but promised reform of the system, with fewer children living in poverty and better support for schools.
Phillipson told the PA news agency: “I want to make sure that all young people, whatever their background, have the chance to get on in life and that’s the mission of the Labour government. But my concern, as we approach the first of the results days, is that after 14 years the Conservatives have baked in massive inequality into the education system, including regional disparities and differences between outcomes for children at state and private schools, and I’m determined to turn that around.”
Last year there was an 8 percentage point gap between the proportion of students getting A*-A grades in south-east England and that in the north-east – wider than the five-point gap in 2019 – while pupils in private schools were more than twice as likely to achieve top grades as those in the state sector.
Phillipson highlighted the need for high-quality teaching. “But it’s also what goes on beyond the school gates and that’s where we’ve also seen big failures over the last 14 years,” she said. “And it will take us time to get that right, but I am determined that we bring down the numbers of children living in poverty.
“It’s a moral cause, but it’s also a big driver of some of these disparities that we see and it’s why we need to take action to support schools. This is an enormous task and I don’t shy away from that for one second.”
With thousands of undergraduate places still unfilled a week before results day, Phillipson said university was “a fantastic option” but lots of people still did not think it was for them. “I want to work with universities to ensure that we are widening access, but also we’re making sure that young people have the support that they need to complete their courses,” she said.