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Mutuality, Chance or Choice? Why It Matters For Disadvantaged Learners

In this forthright, personal, and poignant account (the first article of two) Sonia Blandford forensically sets out how we are selling our children and young people short. She argues that our education system needs to give them real chances and choices bases upon mutuality - where everyone is valued regardless of their background, challenge or need.

‘In a more socially mobile society, everyone should have a choice, be aware of that choice and be able to exercise it. From birth people should have equal opportunities whether at home, school, further education (FE) college, university or in training…Everyone should be recruited on merit no matter which school or university they attended. The old boys’ network must no longer be a passport to success…those from disadvantaged backgrounds should not be held back because they don’t fit in’

UK Government’s Social Mobility Commission, 2019.1

If we were to shine a light on every pupil, how many would not be able to make progress? Blandford2011.2

‘The continuance of social evils is not due to the fact that we do not know what is right, but that we prefer to continue doing what is wrong. Those who have the power to remove them do not have the will, and those who have the will have not, as yet, the power.’

Tawney, 1912.3

The demise of meritocracy?

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