During my recent visit to Tottenham I heard a story about some local school children who didn’t know the Thames when they saw it. A teacher had taken them to the Globe theatre. On arrival a member of her party pointed at the wide ribbon of water flowing by and asked: “What’s that?”
Such stories are not unusual. Many disadvantaged London children, taking after their parents, rarely travel beyond their own corner of the capital. The wider London of dazzling variety and rich possibility can remain foreign and even threatening to them.
One of the reasons housing benefit reform seems not to have resulted in London households moving homes in as large numbers or over as large distances as some had feared is that many low income families appear willing to make considerable sacrifices in other areas of their lives in order to bridge their rent gaps and stay put, rather than break important local family and friendship ties.
Might there also be a related attainment gap between the excellent exam results so many London school children obtain and the uses to which they put them once they’ve left school? Might attainment levels among London’s less affluent children - of whom there are far too many - themselves be depressed by a limited sense of the opportunities London offers them, arising from a limited sense of belonging to London as a whole?
Such questions have certainly been raised before and perhaps are in the mind of Joanne McCartney, the experienced Labour London Assembly member and recently-appointed statutory deputy mayor to whom Sadiq Khan has now also handed responsibility for education and childcare. Mayors currently have no formal, direct powers over London schooling, but the profile of City Hall means that they and their lieutenants can highlight issues, mobilise opinion and bring people together to launch and support new initiatives.
Boris Johnson sponsored academy schools, encouraged the learning of musical instruments, formed a gold club to recognise schools that had done well in adverse circumstances and commissioned a report which called for a pan-London education authority to be set up, taking control over admissions, building connections between schools - more and more of which are outside local authority control - and raising standards. Last November, he advocated the creation of a London schools commissioner to address the capital’s need for more school places and to recruit and retain teachers.
Johnson has strong views on education, not all of them daft. Though a fan of the absurd Tory movement to bring back grammar schools and predictably enthused by the idea of free schools being mini-Etons on the state, he’s also a champion of the arts and foreign languages - not only Latin - and a believer that education is about something more than being good at doing tests.
Just before leaving City Hall he announced a scheme called Stepping Stones, designed to help vulnerable children make the transition from primary to secondary school. It is based at a Tottenham primary. Joanne McCartney’s constituency, which she has represented since 2004, contains Tottenham, so she’ll be well aware of the situation there. But, of course, her new remit takes in the whole of the capital and also includes pre-school care. Her priorities are listed as improving pre-school childcare provision, helping boroughs to provide school places and bolstering a city-wide effort to recruit a new generation of headteachers.
“We’re lucky that our schools are amongst the best in the country and young Londoners are full of bright talent,” she says. “But we still have a job to do to make sure all London’s young people receive the schooling they deserve. I’m looking forward to working with London boroughs, teachers and most importantly, schoolchildren to ensure that together we can ensure that all children, regardless of their background, are able to flourish and excel from early-years through to their chosen career path.”
Wish her luck in her new role. Perhaps she could begin by organising a mass visit to the Thames.
