A revolution led by Conservatives? Well, what if…

The British may accidentally have found themselves a new government promising radical change, but the people behind the promises have disconcertingly conventional English backgrounds. It’s as if the country’s social and political aspirations had suddenly gone into reverse.

During what is likely to be a short honeymoon, there is plenty of backslapping going on in Whitehall. The new government is a coalition, the first since wartime, and it is trying to give the impression that with wartime esprit will come enlightenment: an elected second chamber, fixed term parliaments, proportional representation and greater civil liberty.

At first hearing, US readers may be wondering what all the fuss is about: over there, fixed-term governments have been regarded as a basic human right for over two centuries. But let’s not quibble. There are plenty of things the US counts as ordinary which the UK finds innovative – good service in restaurants, for example.

The disappointing aspect of whatever lies ahead is that the political debate surrounding it is going to be pursued primarily by two tribes of privately-educated, white men, most of whom graduated from university straight into the political system.

There may be a record number of women in the new House of Commons, but they represent barely a fifth of all members. There are more ethnic minorities, too, including three Muslim women, but at this rate it will be another century before a UK Obama becomes Prime Minister.

Recognition of these imbalances has been enhanced by the work of the Sutton Trust, a charity whose goal is to reduce inequalities in UK society by highlighting their detrimental impact on the well being of rich and poor alike. [See: Getting the egalitarian spirit back on the level].

In Unleashing Aspiration, a response to the Final Report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, the outgoing Labour government found that over half of solicitors, 70 per cent of finance directors and three-quarters of judges had been educated in the private schools that serve just seven per cent of UK pupils.

As politics becomes a profession, so it mimics the trend: a third of Commons members have been privately educated, as have two-thirds of the unelected second chamber. Just half of the elected members went to an “ordinary comprehensive school” – the destination for most children in the UK. One in ten MPs has been to one or other of just 13 schools.

Nicholas Spice caught the backwardness of this dynamic perfectly in a recent review of Unleashing Aspiration. “The cost of sending a boy to Eton (the school that educated the Prime Minister and several members of his cabinet) is currently £50,000 of pre-tax income (about $70,000). Average annual pre-tax income in the UK stands at just over £25,000” (about $35,000)."

In this regard, at least, the situation in the US is no better. According to research from Brandeis University reported in The New York Times, last week, a typical white family in the US is five times better off than a typical African-American family. A quarter of black families have zero assets.

Prevention Action’s core business is to encourage governments in all countries to invest in prevention and early intervention, in order to escape the social and economic penalties of perpetually having to treat problems when they occur. Most of the evidence suggests that it is a better strategy, not only for children’s health and development but also for the health of the national economy.

Structural change will be needed if social inequalities are to be reduced. Here the evidence suggests that the benefits would be felt across society, allowing the middle and rich classes to enjoy healthier, longer lives, as well as opening up opportunity for the poor.

More experiment is needed, too. Given that the private, expensive, elitist schools in the UK are not likely to go away anytime soon and will continue to benefit from not-for-profit status, how might they contribute to a reduction in inequality?

As long ago as 1944, the Fleming Report examined how the private and publicly-funded schools could be integrated. It recommended that a quarter of all places at private schools should go to children from the state system. Some schools dabbled with the idea.

If the enlightened leaders of the UK are serious about radical reform, maybe the time has come to experiment with Fleming’s idea. Let the state buy a quarter of the places in a dozen leading private schools. Open up those places to less well-off pupils.

If demand exceeds supply, as it almost certainly will, allocate the places randomly and then compare the progress of those who receive a Prime Minister’s education with those who make do with the alternative.

Michael Little

See: Shapiro, T M The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality. Oxford University Press, 2005.
The Final Report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, Unleashing Aspiration, Cabinet Office, July 2009
Spice N, “Don’t look down”, London Review of Books, 32, 7, 11-14, 2010