The Moral Imperative: The Case of the English Education System

Abstract

In England, social choice in education faces trade-offs between equity and efficiency. The scope of these trade-offs ranges from the introduction of choice to correcting ‘market failures' to reduce inequalities and restrict social injustices. The article analyses the English school education system and its relationship with social preferences. The authors argue that the moral and legal need for non-discriminatory education supersedes perceptions of cost-effectiveness and utilitarianism. They consider that the current system has failed owing to inappropriate processes within social and public choice and that a reformed system based on a social democratic imperative will allow closer social integration on the basis of ability rather than privilege.

Full text

Policy Futures in Education
Volume 12 Number 5 2014
www.wwwords.co.uk/PFIE
730 http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2014.12.5.730
The Moral Imperative:
the case of the English education system
SABINE SPANGENBERG
Richmond University, The American
International University, London, United Kingdom
BRYAN McINTOSH
School of Health Studies,
University of Bradford, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT In England, social choice in education faces trade-offs between equity and efficiency. The
scope of these trade-offs ranges from the introduction of choice to correcting ‘market failures’ to
reduce inequalities and restrict social injustices. The article analyses the English school education
system and its relationship with social preferences. The authors argue that the moral and legal need for
non-discriminatory education supersedes perceptions of cost-effectiveness and utilitarianism. They
consider that the current system has failed owing to inappropriate processes within social and public
choice and that a reformed system based on a social democratic imperative will allow closer social
integration on the basis of ability rather than privilege.
Introduction
The English school education system offers education at primary and secondary school levels as a
public service. This service is financed through public funds and no direct payments by the users
are required to gain access to this service. A three-tier system exists: i) comprehensive and free
schools, ii) grammar schools and iii) voluntary-aided and independent schools. An independent
school system [1] exists in tandem; this arguably creates and maintains a pronounced social divide.
At a time of constrained resources and pronounced social tension, it is important to address central
questions: does the English three-tier system provide equal access to equal education? Are those
families disadvantaged who cannot afford independent education or fail to gain access to grammar
schools/free schools or voluntary-aided ones?
Therefore, to address these questions in the first instance, the rationale behind the English
system, a legal-historic basis of the development of the education system, must be considered. In
the second instance, we consider whether the performance of the system is congruent with
inclusive societal values. In the third instance, the nation’s educational ethos must be identified to
assess the institutional performance against its desired objectives. Fourthly, an analysis of societal
aims will be carried out to identify whether the system applied achieves the desired outcomes of
equal access to education. Fifthly, this article will engage with societal aims and the current
institutional framework within the framework of public economic analysis. Finally, we will reflect
upon this issue making several recommendations.
Analysis Methods
It must be noted that this is not sociological analysis or norm-based research. Instead, the article
locates its analysis in Cough’s (2009) social and public choice discourse. This primary aim is to

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establish whether the primary and secondary education system in the United Kingdom in its
current institutional form conforms to the revealed preferences of society. The secondary aim is to
analyse the foundations, benefits and costs of the given three-tier system.
The economic analysis follows the principle of neoclassical public economic and social choice
analysis as laid out by Besley (2003, 2006). This defines the scope of state intervention in the
strictest case of market failure. It asserts that only when the market fails should the state provide
the service. In the case of educational service, the service itself is excludable and thereby fulfils the
main characteristics of a private good. Within this analysis, education is defined as a public interest
and located in the spectrum of a ‘merit good’ that serves society through improvement of
knowledge creation, furthering economic production and facilitating economic growth.
As Cottrell (2005) notes, welfare-efficient provision of a service requires the equalisation of
social marginal benefits and social marginal costs. We must introduce a caveat to this approach by
noting that the value of the educational service, however, cannot easily be revealed owing to the
divergence of social and private benefits. The price mechanism fails to provide the necessary
information to achieve market coordination. The social value of education can merely be estimated
as an aggregation of individual marginal benefits plus the wider social impact. This is mediated by
an analysis of the qualitative consideration of the system revealed through civic opinions and
electoral results. The scope of equal educational opportunity is defined as access to education. This
is of importance owing to the largely diverse performance of children within public or independent
or voluntary-aided schools. The respective performance of individual schools or groups of schools
is represented through academic results in league tables, pupils securing places at leading
universities and through career achievements. The underlying economic rationale for the current
public/private education system is identified to assess the efficient provision of educational services
using the qualitative analysis approach of pragmatic philosophy.
The English Education System
The modern English education system dates back to the Education Act of 1870. The Act established
state elementary schools for children aged between 5 and 13. These schools were intended to
supplement the already existing schools that were operated by private individuals, the Church,
voluntary or philanthropic organisations. In 1891 these schools became fee-free and the Education
Act of 1902 brought schools under the organisational supervision of local education authorities
(LEAs). The Education Act of 1944 established the system of ‘tripartism’ (Coldon et al, 2010, p. 20),
fee-paying private schools, ability-testing grammar schools and secondary modern schools. In 2010,
the group of secondary modern schools and academies was extended when the coalition
government introduced free schools as all-ability and state-funded schools that operate outside the
LEA. The rationale of free schools is located within the 1996 Education Act. The emphasis is placed
on parental and voluntary input in Chapter 1, Section 9:
In exercising or performing all their respective powers and duties under the Education Acts, the
Secretary of State, local education authorities and the funding authorities shall have regard to the
general principle that pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents, so
far as that is compatible with the provision of efficient instruction and training and the avoidance
of unreasonable public expenditure. (Education Act 1996)
However, free schools run counter to Chapter 2, Section 41 (a), ‘that a school which they or
persons whom they represent propose to establish should be maintained by a local education
authority’. This change aims to improve educational standards and financial efficiency. These aims
and the current institutional framework need to be placed under further scrutiny in relation to
communal preferences and philosophical considerations in relation to societal values and norms.
Communal Preferences and Evidence of Social Divide
Revealed Communal Preferences
Communal preferences are societal attitudes towards various issues such as economic well-being,
distributional equity, security and environmental quality. One such societal value is educational

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attainment, the attitude to which can be revealed through a democratic system. Public choice
would, under perfect democratic assumptions, be synonymous with societal preferences allowing
for relative weightings to particular values, so that one society might place a larger value on
economic efficiency compared with equity than another. Institutional epistemology views
democracy as ‘an institution for pooling widely distributed information about problems and
policies of public interest’ (Anderson, 2006, p. 9). Anderson supports Hayek’s assumption that
relevant economic information is transmitted in prices through the market mechanism and that
knowledge and information is too vast to be collected and digested by a single institution. This
allows the democratic system to reveal preferences. Here, Anderson (2006, p. 14) applies Dewey’s
model of creative democracy that gives scope to represent dissent within the process of democratic
decision-making, and which will meet the ‘three constitutive features of democracy: diversity,
discussion, and dynamism’. The mechanism of feedback that Dewey suggests can also be
interpreted as a clear evolution of a civic society that allows continuous debate and institutional
evolution in a positive way of internalising any possible value changes (Dewey, 1981). The core
element lies in revealing preferences, values and norms. English democracy can be seen as one that
allows for such feedback, assuming that political choice reveals societal preferences.
Considerations of public economic analysis focus on communal preferences, the central one
being equal educational opportunity for all children. The brief overview of the various legal
enactments however represents the stronghold that the three-tier system has in English society.
However, the implication of the current system can be addressed in terms of the opportunity cost
of social mobility, here on a qualitative rather than quantitative basis. Assuming the societal
objective to be equal opportunity, we can consider the extent to which the current institutional
organisation aims to achieve this goal. It is not part of the analysis to question this aim or set this
aim normatively, however it is conceded that neither is collective utility identical to the sum of
individual utilities, nor are collective preferences identical to the sum of individual preferences.
Informed by Veblen’s pragmatic philosophy and critical theory of instrumental action, the
economic considerations assume revealed communal preference and analyse the suitability of the
educational institutional framework. It might be found that the ‘predatory culture’ (Veblen, [1899]
1994, p. 220) permeates individual educational choice in the sense of status as the main merit. This
can lead to a divergence between individual action and intrinsic communal preferences within a
given institutional framework.
Party-Political Concepts and Statements
Focus is placed on the policy proposals of four parties. Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal
Democrats are considered as is the Green Party, owing to its focus on the education system and its
reform agenda.[2]
The Conservatives have fulfilled their manifesto commitment of introducing self-governing
but state-funded free schools. The Conservative Party, with the agreement of its coalition partner,
the Liberal Democrats, has created a new generation of independently run state schools which
allow ‘for educational charities, groups of parents and teachers, cooperatives and others to start
new Academies (independent, non-selective state schools)’ (Conservative Party, 2010, p. 2). The
Liberal Democrats still maintain that:
Many affluent parents pay to send their children to private schools, which is not only expensive
but saps the state funded sector of many able pupils and aspirational parents, both of which could
act as peer role models for other students and parents. (Liberal Democrats, 2009)
The coalition’s educational reforms can be summarised as breaking open the state monopoly,
parent empowerment and educational entrepreneurship, i.e. the right of parents to set up a new
school, and diversity of choice. The educational principles of the coalition government follow
neoclassical economic ideas, whereby the state shall provide what the private sector cannot, in this
case education to those who cannot afford private education. The model aims to replicate the
‘achievements’ of the private independent sector rather than identifying merit within the state
sector. This is a clear market failure approach.

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In contrast, the Labour Party (2010a) states that ‘education is also crucial for breaking down
the barriers which prevent genuine social mobility’. The party claims that the Labour government
narrowed the achievement gap through educational reform:
In the period 1999-2008 schools with the highest proportion of pupils eligible for free school
meals (more than 50 per cent FSM eligible pupils) saw a 36 percentage point improvement in the
number of their pupils achieving 5 GCSEs [General Certificate of Secondary Education]at A*-C
whereas the schools with the least deprived children (less than 5 per cent FSM eligible pupils)
improved by 10 percentage points. (Labour Party, 2010a)
However, the party does not explicitly address equal educational opportunities for children
irrespective of their parental income. Instead, the Labour Party defines equality in the following
statement:
Labour believes everyone is of equal worth and entitled to respect. Our vision is of a fair,
inclusive society where there is opportunity for everyone regardless of gender, disability, sexual
orientation, age, race, religion or belief. (Labour Party, 2010b)
The party emphasises educational access in Rawls’ sense of the first principle of justice. However,
the current manifesto ignores the educational outcome and the result-oriented status that the
current system perpetuates. Instead, we can see traces of Nozick’s entitlement concept, which is in
stark contradiction to social-democratic notions of Rawls’ second principle of justice. Concepts of
educational redistribution are neglected.
The Green Party position on independent schools is that they ‘would remove the charitable
status of all such schools and offer state funding to them so they will be accessible to all children in
the local area’ (Green Party, 2010a). This reform proposal to the system of private tuition fees
within the independent school system does not constitute an abolishment of these schools per se.
Instead, the Greens argue that all schools are to be governed in the interest of the pupils and not by
private organisations, leading to the party’s objection to city academies or trust schools. The party’s
position currently stands that all schools should be under the authority of the LEAs, which also
means that the Greens object to the self-governing free schools system. The Green Party’s
Education Policy states the following, linking integration to educational access and opportunity:
Children with a high level of ability or who are from a background where education is highly
valued are likely to have a positive influence on the learning experience of their peers. Many of
these young people are learning in the independent sector. This creates additional challenges to
schools in the state sector and is to some extent causing social divisions in society. Overall
standards are shown to be higher in mixed ability environments therefore the Green Party wants
to create a system which facilitates and encourages greater integration. (Green Party, 2010b)
The Green Party’s educational concept goes beyond the two previously described educational
concepts. It rejects the focus on aggregated resuls and targets the distribution of educational
attainment. It addresses a notion of justice that goes beyond the veil of ignorance and aims to
correct the random access situations, targeting social mobility more directly.
On many levels, it appears that the neoclassical notion of the market system is the preference
of the English public given the electoral outcome in the 2010 general election. However, we would
argue that this is disingenuous, as it is more a comment upon the electoral system as opposed to
the beliefs and values of the English public.
Education and Social Mobility: empirical evidence
Research by Blanden et al (2007, p. 58) found that parents with higher income generate sons with
higher earnings. The intergenerational coefficient was found to have risen by more than 80%
between 1958 and 1970, identifying a strong relationship between family income and educational
attainment and ultimately showing a decline in intergenerational mobility in the UK. Coldron et al
(2010) identified that social segregation and polarisation in secondary schools act as a contributor to
inequality of opportunities. The proportion of children on free school meals is commonly used as
an indicator for the proportion of children from poorer families. The disparity can be exemplified
by data in 2006, where the national average proportion of children on free school meals in

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voluntary-aided schools was 5.6% (Sutton Trust, 2006). In 2004, 12% of children in comprehensive
schools were on free school meals compared with 2% of grammar school children (Atkinson &
Gregg, 2004). However, social mobility is not simply a dependent of income inequality as nations
with similar Gini coefficients to the UK achieve different degrees of social mobility. Furthermore,
Atkinson and Gregg (2004) argue that grammar school selection is not purely based on ability; they
found that able pupils from poorer families were disadvantaged on the basis of information
deficiency. It could be conceded that this is due to parental responsibility to register children for
grammar school entrance tests (11+). Some able children are not given the opportunity to access
these better performing schools because they depend on parental incentives and actions.
In searching for further reasons for the lack of social mobility, segregation and polarisation,
Coldron et al (2010) state that the education system operates like a market. This marketisation is
conceived as the consumer selecting British private schools, ironically called public schools, on the
grounds of its respective performance and past pupil intake, focusing on social factors and
published GCSE and A level results. The price is here replaced by non-price factors that are school
performance related. This marketisation of education inherently leads to the group of less highly
educated, less well off or less educationally engaged parents being disadvantaged. This group often
lacks the ability to gather the relevant information or indeed the desire to search for this
information (Education and Skills Select Committee, 2004). Coldron et al (2010, p. 24) state that
this group could still be perceived as ‘not deficient choosers’ as this group selects on the grounds of
‘social solidarity’ and reject the market paradigm as the fundamental problem of unequal access. It
has also been suggested that different social groups place different values on schools and education
(Ball et al, 2007; Noreisch, 2007). The selection process and the selection criteria of parents appear
to establish unequal school access amongst children from different social groups. This gives way to
the notion of whether an educational authority (such as a primary school) should complement the
parents’ responsibility in this process (possibly through recommendations that are highly weighted
by secondary schools).
The Education and Skills Select Committee (2004, Summary) was concerned:
That the Government seems complacent about the implementation of its objectives for the
admissions system, the evidence we took during our inquiry indicates a troubling slide away
from parents choosing schools for their children and towards schools choosing the pupils they
wish to admit.
Thus, the school allocation system can be described as one where selecting a school is left to
parents and there is room for schools to select suitable pupils. The current school selection ethos is
one where parents are given the choice of school within the admission criteria applicable to each
individual school. It can be argued that this choice is more easily taken advantage of by more well-
off and highly educated parents whose children might also be more likely to fulfil the admission
criteria set by the schools that are more difficult to gain access to, for example voluntary-aided
church schools. It is often the parents’ foresight that allows children access to, for example,
Catholic schools that operate on a point system allocating points for active worship, a child’s
baptism within the first six months of its birth and so on. All of these criteria are highly dependent
on the arbitrary birth of a child into a particular family and as such often leave educational paths to
the arbitrary mercy of birth.
The main areas of concern are the widening educational gap and the reduction of social
mobility associated with the current education system. The evidence is provided by the Sutton
Trust:
The widening achievement gap is almost entirely accounted for by the fact that children from
degree educated parents are far more likely to attend higher performing secondary schools and
so benefit from a positive school effect. In other words, if every child went to a school with
similar average test results there would be no further widening of the achievement gap that
exists at age 11. (Sutton Trust, 2010, p. 3)
Focusing on the revealed opinions of the civic society through an Ipsos Mori poll, a clear majority
of citizens (70%, 30% of which strongly agree and 40% tend to agree) believe that parental income
plays too big a part in children’s chances of doing well and getting on in life (Sutton Trust, 2009,
Table 12).

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Institutional Rigidity and Social Grouping
Better-off groups of society appear to be in an advantaged position when selecting secondary
schools for their children. This is mainly owing to marketisation of education and informational
asymmetry. As Coldron et al (2010, p. 26) put it, ‘the problem ... [is] ... the collective strategic
practice of the middle class together with their historical achievements in influencing policy, and
establishing congenial structures and procedures’. This allows a process of educational stratification
and social positioning. The selection process is undertaken by each individual family unit. Although
it does not classify as a collective action by a social class, it can be argued that the self-preservation
of the group in educational terms and the pursuit of status create a process that takes a collective
form. This bears the question of institutional rigidity that shall be understood as the degree to
which the institution or the education system can respond to norm or value changes. Certain social
group interests could prevent institutional changes amending the school or pupil selection process.
It can be argued that the rigidity enforces class security and class identification. Both Gillies (2005)
and Crozier et al (2008) support this relationship and identify social division on the basis of
collective action. Any group’s collective action creates institutional rigidity and enforces self-
protection and perpetuation of social divides. To which extent the individual action of the middle
class and the working class respectively is indeed rational and objective-related must be scrutinised
under psychological considerations. These considerations range from voluntary cooperation in a
social dilemma to the effects of social norms, the influence of emotions on action and the extent to
which institutions influence collective action or cooperative behaviour.
It could be argued that the current system guides parents into conformity and pursuing
segregation-creating educational paths for their children. The institutional divide into public and
private as well as comprehensive versus grammar/faith schools allows parents to identity certain
strategies as being superior. This behaviour would seem to be individual family objective-driven
and not necessarily symmetrical with social preferences. This asymmetry necessitates the question
of whether the institutional framework is congruent with social objectives. Social choice is usually
analysed in welfare terms, which cannot be easily quantified and expressed in monetary terms.
Consequently, a cost–benefit analysis is not conducive and instead the further analysis is built on
ideas of thoughts on justice, principles and objectives.
Political-Philosophical Considerations
Some Fundamental Concepts
Political-philosophical concepts identify to which extent the welfare state is deemed responsible for
the creation of educational equality. The concepts range from a strict limitation of the state
towards a more comprehensive assignment of functions to the public sector. Nozick’s (1974)
entitlement theory radically criticises the concept of the contemporary welfare state. The main
argument lies in his rejection of the state’s imposition of taxes, which is viewed as a violation of the
person’s liberty. In that sense, the ideals of Aristotlean, utilitarian, egalitarian, Rawlsian and
contractarian theories are rejected owing to their infringements on what persons can do to one
another (Christiano, 2005). What remains debatable however within this notion is to which extent
things (here, tax money or income) indeed form part of a person so that the assumed argument
follows. If additional value can be created through redistribution, then Nozick’s argument could
suffice, as it does not violate the person’s liberty in that the person is well informed and no random
acquirements can be made by the state. Another principle in support of the rejection of this notion
is that each individual holds social responsibility within a civil society. According to the principles
by Dewey, a democratic society requires information to be exchanged and debate to take place. In
that form, we could assume consent to be revealed through the electoral process which allows
liberty of the person and the majority identifies what qualifies as justice or indeed a fair distribution
of income and wealth or access to educational opportunities, i.e. social choice.
However, most liberal philosophers tend to ignore the notion of compassion. In particular,
Locke explicitly views the institutional framework created by society as serving the needs of the
individual. In his argumentation the civil society is to serve the natural law that identifies each
person with their own rights and duties.

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Thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government,
puts himself under an obligation, to everyone of that society, to submit to the determination of
the majority, and to be concluded by it. (Locke, [1698] 1993, p. 164)
This allows for the individual liberty to persist and, as a result of debate and consent, for communal
preferences to be formed. As long as this formation follows the rules of a civil society, no public
policy can epistemologically be seen as one interfering with the conceptual liberty of the
individual.[3] Following on, the philosophical considerations of John Rawls (1971) will be
employed.
The Philosophical Paradox
The philosophical dilemma is one whereby the current education system primarily allows access to
independent schools on the basis of parental income. This is indeed in contrast to the egalitarian
principle of justice, as the child has privileges determined by birth, parental heritage or parental
proficiency. To deny any child access to allegedly superior education denies individuals who are
merely subject to random birth the equal opportunity that should be maintained prior to any proof
of acceleration or proficiency. Individual liberty requests for appropriate redistribution to allow the
human right to development and education to be maintained. The English case is one whereby, in
a paradoxical way, the good of society is put before individual rights on the wrongly applied notion
of welfare considerations. The current system can be defended on the grounds of saving public
funds and it is in this sense creating a Pareto-superior situation – one in which the outcome is
improved without causing a reducing the well-being of other stakeholders. In particular, the
current policy of creating more voluntary free schools accentuates replacing public funds for
educational purposes with private funds but this is allowed to take place at the fundamental
expense of the individual’s right to liberty, even in Locke’s sense as he assumed egalitarian rights at
birth:
there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank,
promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties,
should also be equal one amongst the other without subordination or subjection. (Locke, [1698]
1993, p. 116)
This can be linked to Kant’s support of a system of government that prohibits proprietary and
hereditary rules. Kantian ethics are based on will rather than inclination and thereby fundamentally
criticise utilitarian notions. The motive of any act will determine the degree of its morality. The
Kantian doctrine of the categorical imperative underlines the democratic principle that all people
are created as equals; in a democratic view, this is interpreted that all citizens should be regarded
equally before the law. The moral society should follow the categorical imperative in establishing a
system where ‘so act to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in
every case as an end withal, never as a means only’ (Kant, [1781] 2013, p. 12).
Habermas’ (1981) considerations of deliberative politics for the expansion of power of public
communication alongside the subordination of markets and government offer a clear portrait of
the needed public discourse. He establishes a two-fold relationship between basic values of
individual liberalism and the civic republican society. Firstly, only the democratic public life can
secure individual rights. Secondly, substantive equality (in the sense of content) is defined by
society’s understanding of equality (McCarthy, 2005).
On the republican view [fundamentally based on Aristotle], politics is not exhausted by this
[liberal] mediating function but is constitutive for the socialisation process as a whole. Politics is
conceived as a reflexive form of substantial ethical life ... the republican concept ... points in the
direction of a concept of law that accords equal weight to both the integrity of the individual and
the integrity of the community in which persons as both individuals and members can first
accord one another reciprocal recognition. (Habermas, 1998, p. 123)[4]
Discourse theory and deliberative politics make the political success depend on the
institutionalisation of political procedures. This is inherently synonymous with the aspects on
velocity and rigidity of institutions. Habermas exemplifies the need for public debate to precede

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any acts of identifying particular rights, and demands that those aspects that are considered relevant
to equal or unequal treatment must be articulated by the affected persons. This, however, cannot
always be the case, in particular when we consider the rights of children to have equal access to
education. Here, the debate must come from those who consider their needs.
Constitutional Considerations
If one accepts constitutional considerations as valid, then the liberal request for morally neutral
politics which also involves neutral economic policy must be rejected. The constraint of liberal
public reason is here rejected in acceptance with Sandel. As he noted in his description of good
political philosophy:
the attempt to detach arguments about justice and rights from arguments about the good life is
mistaken for two reasons: First, it is not always possible to decide questions of justice and rights
without solving substantive moral questions; and second, even where it’s possible, it may not be
desirable. (Sandel, 2010, p. 251)
Sandel’s considerations include the notions that a just society requires a sense of mutual
responsibility and that not all values have market values attached to them, in particular those he
calls ‘key social practices’ (Sandel, 2010, p. 265).
Ethical Synthesis
The debate of educational needs can follow realistic or idealistic notions. The realistic notion
would seek to define truth via an understanding of reality. In contrast, the idealistic notion
identifies truth as one that is coherent with the totality of beliefs (Scheffler, 2009). The totality of
beliefs is fundamentally different from the utilitarian notion of accumulated values. Moral is
substantially different from the perceived neoclassical value notions, as these ignore the superior
consideration of moral values that influence the creation of those but do not facilitate the
quantitative calculation of values. Any moral-constitutional need of a non-discriminatory
educational policy must supersede the pragmatic notion of cost-effectiveness and utilitarian
notions. Even if empirical evidence supports the financially superior system of a two-/three-tier
system, the latter would have to be rejected upon idealistic grounds. Even though the empirical
evidence provides knowledge, not all policies can be based on the pragmatic use of the provided
knowledge. Knowledge serves in a pragmatic way, but must accompany the pursuit of identified
moral objectives. This process of exchange between knowledge and belief must be continuous as it
allows the evolutionary development of values, hence also allowing for institutional changes to
take place. We would like to term this view as optimistic in its combination of scientific knowledge
and identification of idealistic values and beliefs.
Reform Suggestions
It is noted that the public choice process has failed and that preferences are not symmetrical with
party policies. This given evidence can be used to call for a restriction of parental school selection.
Children should be placed directly into schools (either comprehensive or selective) irrespective of
their parents’ wishes, income, faith or social class membership. Only this approach would allow fair
equality of opportunity, the principle of which should be given preference over the concept of
natural liberty in conjunction with Rawlsian and Sandelian ideas. An inclusive education policy is
here suggested. This would provide the best possible education for each child irrespective of its
social background and coincidental family status. The public policy that could achieve this aim is
one that places children into state primary schools on the basis of their respective areas of
residence. Faith schools should be converted into multi-faith schools and allow for religious
education and practice to take place within the curriculum. Children who are considered able by
the teachers should be tested for their ability to enter a grammar school at the end of their
elementary school years. No schools should be allowed to charge fees. Given the evidence that
parental educational ambition is highly relevant and determines besides other factors the child’s

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738
educational opportunity, it could be suggested that all children are registered on the basis of their
school reports in Year 5 for 11+ exams by their primary schools to disallow the unequal
distribution of opportunity. It can easily be argued that this is in the interests of the public as
society wishes to educate able pupils. This can be further supported by the evidence that able
children progress better in selective schools than in comprehensive schools. This selection process
allows a closer social integration of society on the basis on ability rather than social class.
This proposed system does not solve the social advantages that children of better-off families
or more highly educated parents enjoy, but it allows for increased social mobility and eventually is
fundamentally congruous with the human rights of each child. This is further supported on
philosophical grounds: it is the state’s role to ensure that the rights of each child are maintained and
that equity in education is achieved.
Conclusion
If the education of the public is of national interest, the performance of the current institutional
system needs to be reviewed with a clear and transparent emphasis on equal opportunities and
social justice. The current system does not achieve the objectives of social integration and universal
education. This may be a result of income constraints of families, where parents or carers cannot
afford their children’s education or they suffer from disadvantageous information distribution to
access well-performing voluntary or grammar schools. It could be that the education system has
obtained epistemic powers itself. However, the moral imperative is to give access to all, not elites
or those with the greatest advantage. This is still a radical concept but, then again, good education
for all is still a radical concept for some to accept.
Notes
[1] An independent school is here considered in line with the official definition of ‘any school at which
full-time education is provided for five or more pupils of compulsory school age and which is not –
(a) a school maintained by a local education authority, (b) a special school not so maintained, or (c) a
grant-maintained school’ (Education Act, 1996, Part IV, Chapter 1, Section 463).
[2] UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) is not taken into account here owing to its negligible
results in the 2010 general election. However, the recent increase in votes in local elections requires
us to point briefly to their education proposal: a voucher system that transfers the average cost of
state schooling to the child’s family which can be used for state, private or faith schools. As this policy
proposal is vague in its current form we decided to neglect it in our analysis.
[3] This will inevitably leave a remaining homogeneous or heterogeneous minority.
[4] It should be noted that the republican concept was used in the form of a republican constitution by
Kant (Jaspers, 1992, p. 546).
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Sabine Spangenberg & Bryan McIntosh
740
SABINE SPANGENBERG, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Economics at Richmond University,
The American International University, London, United Kingdom. Dr Spangenberg studied
Business Studies and Economics at the University of Duisburg, where she specialised in
International Economics. After graduating as a Diplom-Oekonom she became a DAAD-Fellow
(German Academic Exchange Service-Fellow) at the Department of Economics at Lancaster
University, from where she received her PhD in Economics later. Dr Spangenberg retains a
research interest in the History of Economic Thought and Institutional Economics. Correspondence:
spanges@richmond.ac.uk
BRYAN McINTOSH, PhD, is a senior lecturer in Health Management and Organisational
Behaviour in the School of Health Studies at the University of Bradford, United Kingdom. Dr
McIntosh has worked in central government, the National Health Service, local government and at
various academic institutions within the United Kingdom. He is the Consultant Editor of the British
Journal of Healthcare Management dealing directly with commissioning and content. He has an
extensive publication record in peer-reviewed journals and has worked extensively within the field
of health management consultancy. Correspondence: b.mcintosh1@bradford.ac.uk