In the US, political
strategists uncovered the significance of the soccer moms – a category of the
electorate who chat about current affairs while ferrying around their kids to
football and cheer them on from the sidelines. As someone with a recently
turned four year-old I’m on the threshold of becoming the UK equivalent,
a school-gate mum. The little lad hasn’t started his full-time compulsory
education yet but already I am being sucked into the exciting world of bonding
with fellow parents in my locality with a common cause in public service
delivery.
That bastion of right-wing narrow-mindedness the Daily Mail had a story here of
a 42 year old Brighton dad who threw himself under a train, not in a
Fathers 4 Justice-style protest at being estranged from his offspring,
but after failing to get his first-placed school choice for his daughter
following a stressful appeal campaign. Weirdly enough it’s a case that for the
first year I can identify with, if not the grisly conclusion. Recently the Times put the figure of those who did not get their
first-choice primary school at one in four. There are variations
within this: Kingston-upon-Thames,
where I work, rates badly. Where I live in west London things are not
much better. The Ealing
Times reports the actions of outraged unsuccessful applicants
to my local primary. New arrivals and a rising birthrate are
making all public services more competitive. Those without ideological
objections who can afford to are exiting local authority
schooling altogether and joining the private sector which is booming, even while fees escalate.
The
late sociologist Pierre Bourdieu came up with the concept of cultural capital. It
shouldn’t be the case but access to state education can amount to
financial capital. School selection on distance criteria means catchments shrink to
smaller and smaller physical areas the popular schools. If you can afford
inflated property prices on the oversubscribed school’s doorstep you’re on,
to use a US
cliché, easy street.
It’s
all very well being prinicipled and maintaining that a bright kid can do well
in any school but when it comes to your little Johnnie being assigned the Bash
Street sink school it’s all very different. Attainment is transparently
measurable by league tables and SATs results these days which didn’t exist
when I was at school and were once opposed by Labour.
Consequently parental choice becomes illusory when you’ve been
denied what you wanted: you either accept something you didn’t want or
home-educate.
The people of the South Ealing have bagged
the address [email protected]. It would be interesting to track this ‘David and Goliath’ battle
between the local authority and parents. I am reminded of controversy in the
late 80s when there were instances in Dewsbury, west Yorkshire
of white children being withdrawn from the local school which was 80 per cent
Asian, bringing race into the mix. At the time the Thatcherite mantra of ‘choice’
held sway – even if it were not really practiced. Parents clubbed together to
home-educate above a boozer. If it were really followed through then good schools would be allowed to
expand however pupil numbers are limited by statute.
As post
election post-mortems continue to flood the blogosphere, school places is
a pressing realpolitik issue for millions, even if
it’s deeply unsexy. It’s parish-pump, real-life stuff. School-gate
mums are vitally important to the outcome of elections. They cut across class
and other cleavages. They are users of public services and their concerns are a
microcosm of the concerns of the country. Politicians ignore this segment of
the voting public at their peril.