Class Consciousness

‘THE middle class scramble to get Jack and Isabel into that top-ranking school is changing direction.

The day books first arrived at Bogside Comprehensive

Mum and Dad are now repointing the family’s executive people carrier towards Bogside Comprehensive, where even modest exam results should secure those desired places at a top university.

That’s the likely fallout from the Times’ news that a student’s background and school could be taken into consideration when university places are handed out.

The report by an education taskforce suggests the following: ‘Class rank means that if two students had the same grades, the grades of the student who ranked first in his or her school would be ‘worth more’ than those of the student who ranked last in his or her cohort.’ Discuss.

In other words, coming top of a class in a failing school would trump the efforts of the student who scored the same grades but came lower down the order at his or her establishment.

And already you can see the benefits. Since the country’s worst schools – soon to be the best schools – are more often than not in less salubrious regions, Veronica and Pete will soon be looking for new property in areas of acute depravation that fall within the school’s catchment area.

So much the better if there is high quota of non-speaking refugees, a facet that should enable little Joshua to come top of the pile in his English A-level.

And mean that mum and dad will have a ready excuse for not talking to the other parents.

So look out for property booms in Byker, Kirby and Sandwell, or North Hampstead, Richmond-on-Mersey and New Cheltenham as they are now referred to round the dinner table…’

Posted: 23rd, September 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink