The headmaster of Stowe School knows how to create a controversy. When he argued in The Times on Saturday that the widening participation measures to raise the proportion of state school students were "social engineering", he stoked the flames of debate around elites and elitism in education.
‘Social engineering’ and the symbiosis of elite institutions
As many pointed out, the relationship between private schools and Oxbridge is social engineering. The connection between the two, and between them and other institutions of power, has always been symbiotic, as sociologists and historians have been documenting for decades. David Cameron once described the Houses of Parliament as looking “half like a school”. And indeed, the architects who designed elite public schools were the same as those who built Oxbridge Colleges and major buildings of state in the late 19th century. Thomas Graham Jackson designed parts of Eton and Uppingham schools, as well as parts of Brasenose, Trinity, Hertford and Somerville Colleges in Oxford. Reginald Blomfield built schools like Haileybury, Sherborne and St. Edmunds, parts of several Oxbridge Colleges, buildings on Regent Street and several gentlemen’s clubs in London. But the links between these elite sites of power are not just architectural or historical. They also share the same administrators. At 20 of the 75 Oxbridge Colleges and Halls, one or more members of the trustee board are also trustees of a private school.
The relationships here are systematic but the political response to them does not seek to challenge or dismantle this system. At best there have been half-baked attempts to widen access to these schools, without challenging the notion of elites and the elitist educational culture that they protect. Labour must not repeat the old mistakes of shying away from radical reform.
