EDUCATION FOR THE GOOD SOCIETY - Support

6. Remember that many of the outcomes thatcurrently disappoint within the education andtraining system are often, at least in part, theresult of structures and incentives that residewithin the labour market, and the patterns ofdemand and reward for skills that it creates.At present, almost a quarter of all jobs in ourlabour market are low paid (less than twothirdsmedian wage) and this rises to aboutone-third for female employees. Upskillingthe workforce will not, of itself, magic thiswork away. Unless and until reform starts toimpact on these jobs and the employers whocreate them, and to increase underlying levelsof demand for skill, incentives to learn willoften be weak, patchy and limited.7. Remember also that within a labour marketwhere good job opportunities are finite anda society where strong class structure stillpertains, education is constantly trying tomeet the diametrically opposing needs of twodifferent constituencies. On the one hand, itis supposed to be increasing opportunitiesfor social mobility for those at the bottomof the class structure, while at the sametime certain institutions (particularly privateschools, but also many state secondary institutionswith a largely upper middle classintake) exist to ensure that their studentsgain a disproportionate access to the elitehigher education institutions that in turntend to be the route into many of the ‘bestjobs’. These objectives are mutually exclusive.In other words, education exists within onerhetorical tradition to contest current classstructures, while also being part of anothertradition (possibly the stronger at present)that measures its success through its abilityto reproduce existing patterns of advantage.Progress is only liable to be achieved if thereis reform within education and also withinthe labour market. This means the number ofgood jobs needs to grow more rapidly (whichit is not at present), and the gap between goodand bad jobs needs to be reduced so that theconsequences of not achieving elite employmentare smaller. 6 At the same time, governmentand wider society need to acknowledgeand accept responsibility for the problemof competition for a finite supply of goodjobs rather than leaving the responsibilityfor resolving this up to individual educationand training institutions, some of whichcurrently have no moral or material incentiveto support egalitarian objectives – e.g. publicschools.Final thoughtsThe official discourse around English educationand training policy has not moved a very greatdistance in the last 30 years. Unfortunately,nearly all of the problems that could be solvedby a simple, publicly funded, supply-led strategyhave now been solved, and what remain are aset of complex problems whose roots largelylie outside the education and training systemand are imbedded in the ways UK businesseschoose to compete, deploy and reward theirworkers, and how the labour market structuresand apportions opportunities. Unless and untilpolicy analysis and resultant policy action movesforward to embrace these broader issues, theroom for progress will be very limited indeed.A Good Society requires not merely a particularkind of education and education system, but alsoa particular kind of labour market and economy.6 John Goldthorpe and MichelleJackson, ‘Intergenerational classmobility in contemporary Britain:political concerns and empiricalfindings’, British Journal of Sociology,58, pp.526–46, 2007.52 | www.compassonline.org.uk