A Lottery Where Everyone Wins

The recent furore over random allocation of places at oversubscribed secondary schools in the UK illustrates the corner that New Labour has backed itself into. No longer overtly trumpeting the busted flush of The Third Way, yet still terrified of the latent conservatism of middle England, this exhausted regime still prioritises private sector values over public goods.

Devoid of real, transformative vision, New Labour initially exercised caution; keeping to Tory plans in order to avoid scaring the shires that the days of tax and spend were back. Even having established a reputation for 'prudence', NL tied spending on public services to the biggest managerialist programme ever launched. This was 'Public Choice Theory' gone mad, with professionals transformed into automaton executors and public servants marginalised, both groups sacrificed on the altar of the citizen-consumer against the backdrop of a pervasive target culture.

However, in trying to address a very pressing problem for many families, NL actually seemed to have made some progress when they allowed oversubscribed schools to allocate some places via a lottery system. In a famous case, this system allowed a wildly popular London school - Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College Academy in Lewisham - to fairly allocate places to 208 of the 2500 11 year olds whose parents were desperately chasing these slots.

Needless to say, this stirred up something of a hornets nest among those on the margin of NL's wealth demographic and threatened the party's image as the defenders of the middle class and its aspirants. It seemed to contradict NL's commitment to choice for 'consumers' of public services. However, despite this, the government remained broadly supportive until recently when Chairman Balls, announced an inquiry - this government's favoured route for whitewashing and further managerialising - witness Hutton, Butler and now Laming x 2.

That there has been fury when this system has been used to decide only very few place allocations is indicative of its potential transformative power, which is probably what has Balls running scared.
Rather than restricting the lottery allocation, imagine that it could be extended to all school places.
A limit would be set, for example a radius of 10km from each home, within which any school would be an option for the children in that family. Alternately, existing administrative boundaries (counties, boroughs, even constituencies or wards, could be used to define areas with a certain amount of schools and children. Places at these schools could then be allocated at random.

However, aside from the technicalities of this approach, why would it be beneficial?
At a stroke, this would require parents from all walks of life and all social strata to be concerned about the quality of education and pastoral care at all the schools in the area, rather than focusing on the hallowed towers of their first choice for Ollie and Sophie. It would prevent the current abuse of the system by the wealthy to perpetuate their privilege and advantage by moving into areas with better schools, driving out lower income families. It would also massively raise 'encounters' between children from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, which is currently a driving force behind Frank Field's idea for compulsory civic service for teenagers. Each of these benefits would improve our chances of creating a cohesive society which is actually concerned with equity and social justice and recognises the interlinked nature of our happiness and wellbeing, rather than just paying lip service to these things while carrying on with business as usual.

Clearly, this will lead to allegations that i am asking middle class families to sacrifice their children('s education) for some retro idea of egalitarian social democracy that might benefit the many, rather than the few. Well, apart from the sacrifice part, yes, thats exactly what I would intend.
The reason that this need not be a sacrifice is that if the involvement of the very parents who would be likely to object to this, in the schools that they object to, would be likely to massively change the operation of these institutions and pretty quickly. An influx of professional expertise and a greater engagement by the school with the concerns of all its parents could be a huge force for change for the better.

Increased engagement with secondary schools may also shed further light on the problems that have been caused by the slow decline from education to training, as notably signified by the prevalence of exams and testing - again in line with target culture. The sooner that we stop instrumentalising education to a very narrow idea of economic productivity, the sooner we will be able to transform the conformity factories that even many of the best state schools have become.

During transition periods, where schools are incorporating the new ideas and methods that could stem from the diversification of the parent-base, as well as drawing on enhanced lobbying power with different layers of government, families genuinely concerned about the quality of teaching could always pay for additional, out-of-school tuition - another currently common practice.

It may well be that in order to maximise the benefits of this system, from increased parental input and engagement, to social justice, the position of private and 'public' schools may also have to be considered. These remain bastions of privilege that can provide an unfair head start for the children of the wealthy and are incongruous with the imperatives of social justice and an education system for the country, not for the elite.

Other objections, may centre around the shock of intergating large numbers of children from different backgrounds, but this is something of a despairing attitude - it implies that ultimately we are too different to recognise our common humanity and the need to genuinely interact, rather than just co-exist, within the common spaces of our experience and possibility. Practical steps such as introducing affordable and compulsory uniforms could also help here.

Further complaints may concern the difficulties of transporting children to places slightly further away, or of children from the same family going to different schools. Ignoring for a second that these practices already go on across the country - not least to get children to 'better' private schools - the real solution here is to revivify our public transport network. Not only would this be great for the environment, but would allow us to claim back some of our lost zones of interaction. The presence of diverse groups of young people on an extended and improved public transport network can act as an antidote to fear and atomisation in the short term as well as facilitating an initiative that can address social injustice and entrenched exclusion in the long term.