Often it is the boroughs with the wealthiest residents that have the poorest state schools, says Cassandra Jardine
TWO nervous but determined women will today be ushered into David Blunkett's office at the Department for Education. Marianne Kavanagh and Jan Barden have what appears to be a straightforward request. "We want a local, mixed comprehensive school; it doesn't seem a lot to ask," says Kavanagh, who has three children - Ben, Alice and Joseph - at primary school.
Until recently, their request would have been laughably off-beam. A school to cater for the middle classes? In an area where the well-off have traditionally paid for their children's education? Forget it!
Kavanagh and Barden come from the southern part of the London borough of Southwark. They hesitate to call it Dulwich because of its associations with wealth and private schools. Although they want state education for their children, they cannot imagine choosing any of the local schools.
"There are two comprehensives near us - Dulwich High School for Boys and Kingsdale," says Barden, who has two pre-school children, Arthur and Imogen, "but they aren't truly comprehensive - they don't cater for the children of higher ability. And the one that takes both sexes has three times as many boys as girls. I couldn't send my daughter there - she'd be terrified."
Both schools have been deemed to be failing by Ofsted and are being run on special measures. Their GCSE results are poor (less than 25 per cent A-C), they cannot fill all their places and they have no sixth form. Neither appeals to parents who want their children to go to university.
Kavanagh and Barden are shy of referring to the class issue directly and talk delicately of "imbalances". However, having found primary schools in the area that they deem suitable, they do not see why their children should be forced to go into the private sector or to travel miles to desirable schools in other boroughs.
Seventy per cent of the children from Dulwich Hamlet, the sought-after local primary school, leave the borough to scatter over 40 different secondary schools. The figures from other local primaries are similar.
Harriet Harman's solution for her own children is typical: all three of the Social Security Secretary's children are, controversially, being educated outside Southwark. This is parental choice in action. Kavanagh and Barden, however, do not feel they have any choice. They don't want their children to travel long distances or sit a host of competitive exams. They don't want the friendships and sense of belonging to a mixed community, built up at primary school, to be wrecked by divisions based on wealth and intellectual ability. And they can't bear the thought of their children being refused entry to any of the desirable schools.
"It makes the less gifted children feel as if only the clever ones matter," says Barden. In such a situation, many parents consider moving house. "Why should we have to?" ask Kavanagh and Barden.
In north Bristol, a similar campaign is under way. The area is a leafy part of the inner city where, traditionally, many parents have chosen private education.
Those who do not opt for private education (on moral, political or financial grounds) try for the grammar school in another part of the city or send their children out into Gloucestershire and Somerset. As in Dulwich, the local schools seem to take only the remainder, which is reflected in their poor examination results. The school near Jan Elliott, chairman of Bristol's Parents Action for Secondary Education (Pase), has achieved only four per cent A-C passes in GCSE. Consequently, Elliott's daughter travels 15 miles to school.
In the past, requests for new schools from parents thought to be opting out of private education have met with a dismissive response. "As recently as a year ago," Elliott says, "we were told there would never be a new school here as we were a low-priority part of Bristol and parents here could afford to pay for private education."
At last month's open meeting about the proposed new school for Dulwich, teachers and governors from Dulwich High and Kingsdale argued that the middle classes should send their children to a failing local school in order to pull up its standards.
"That has been suggested before," says Barden, "but it never works. Parents won't take the risk.
"My child has only one chance at education. Why should we struggle with an inherited problem of a failing or imbalanced school? We need a more radical solution to break the cycle."
It would, of course, cause a furore among the traditionalists if investment in new schools were to be concentrated in middle-class areas such as Dulwich and north Bristol. But the authorities will not be able to ignore these emotional campaigns.
More than 1,000 parents have registered their support in Dulwich; 462 of them went to the open meeting. They feel the council exists to cater to their needs and consider it unreasonable to be asked to accept the schools provided.
If the Government wants a less divisive system of education, the middle classes need to be brought into the fold. The advantages to councils at the bottom of the league table are obvious. Money would return if parents educated their children locally, and results would improve. And, having campaigned for a new school, parents would probably be more committed to supporting it.
