As the despicable A Levels scandal fallout continued – and GCSE Results emerged – the conversation has turned to the future of the school system, particularly whether private schools should be abolished.
That is a great debate and one that this country needs to have – for reasons from the ridiculously skewed algorithm to the prominence of the privately educated in positions of power and prominence.
But because Twitter is an app based on personalising the political, instead – amongst all the shouting and screaming which has swallowed the ability to debate – the conversation has turned into everyone marking their ground by, basically, telling their very own origins story.
There were the private school apologists (‘I DID go to private school, but my parents saved and sacrificed EVERYTHING’), private school prouds (‘I went to private school and I won’t be ashamed, it's sad loads of kids didn’t get into their chosen Oxbridge college like I did, did I mention I went to Oxbridge?’), the private school privilege acceptors/humble braggers (‘I went to private school and I’m only where I am today and I know that means I’m very privileged’). There were state school defenders (‘There’s nothing wrong with a state education!’), state school defiers (‘I went to state school and look at me now!’) and earlier this week, #IWentToStateSchool was trending on Twitter.
What happened to thousands of A Level students this month was not only heartbreaking, but unjust – and something that could affect them for many years to come. And it’s also true to say that there is a problem in this country with private schools, the advantages those pupils receive and way it plays out for the rest of all of our lives.
But does a load of people (mostly Millennials) telling and overexplaining and mitigating and narrating their own education like an origin story film do much?
Yes, some stories could help make younger pupils feel better (though I’d guess most of them are over on TikTok and Instagram tbh) and even inspire. But it felt like on Twitter, all everyone piling in did was muddy the waters. It made everything personal. Everything anyone said was an attack or a defence on someone else. It turned into a load of media types in their 30s arguing with each other and so far removed from talking about the future of the country or these 18 year olds.
To be honest, it felt like the worst bits of being on a dating app – the bit where (in person, or in app), you discuss everything about where you went to school, your upbringing and the whole mythology around it. Fun once, while drunk and in lust, maybe. But when you're doing a lot of dating, it can get dull.
As much as those who went to private school tried to negate or explain away their privilege, some who went to state school started wearing it as a ‘I am lower class, honest’ badge of honour, when, for many of them, if they were honest it probably wasn’t the case. As much as I don’t buy that anyone can ‘save really hard’ to get two kids through achingly expensive private school, I don’t buy that you get to pass the privileged test just because you went to state school. There are other ways (middle class parents, educated families, childcare, wealth, health, race, sexuality) in which you can still have some privilege. You don’t get to say, ‘But I went to state school’ and you’re all good - the world just doesn't work that way.
What we became trapped in is the middle of the argument. Meanwhile those truly advantaged continue to rule the world unchallenged and those truly disadvantaged aren’t heard or helped.
It's a weirdly Millennial and media preoccupation. So many of the books and TV shows I've consumed recently seem to be obsessed with a secret that happened at school that has consumed the protagonist's life. It's a facetious way to put it, but I wouldn't want to send my child to a private school given all the terrible secrets and murders and abuse that I'm lead to believe take place there, based on half of the paperback thrillers currently on my bookshelf.
Out in the 'real world' people I've spoken to about this told me they rarely think about school now, that they've had so many formative experiences since. Even those who have bad experiences at school (even rising to the criminal), rarely dwell on it. Yes, they can be formative years, but isn't it also a deflating message to have all roads in your life lead back to the year you did your GCSEs?
Of course, if you went to a so-called ‘struggling state school’ (as everyone seemed to say) and the person applying for a job alongside you was tutored within an inch of their life from age four, went to Oxbridge and knows the son of the CEO of the company, that’s really shit. And yes, that all starts from age four. Earlier. And it’s terrifying.
But that's exactly why we need to stop mythologising our own pasts, and think about what we should do now. How we stop that pattern. If anything, 2020 is supposed to have taught us lessons about kindness and being allies without having skin in the game.
I’m not sure everyone working hard to try and cloak any privilege they had at one end, or ramp up any supposed ‘handicap’ they had at the other does much to further the debate. All we're doing is allowing the type of education we had define us into our thirties and beyond - the opposite of what we should be trying to achieve.
And that’s not even to mention that the career paths these 18 year olds will take is nothing like our own. Will they ever work in offices? Have their future jobs been invented? Are they already making more money than us from their bedrooms? Who’s to know. But arguing amongst ourselves – as with everything else we’re dealing with right now – isn’t helping anyone. If anything it’s stifling conversations we need to have.
READ MORE: A-level and GCSE Students Will Now Be Awarded Grades Based On Teacher Assessments