Strangely biased view from social mobility leader
IN recent years, discrimination has been outlawed in many ways and yet we still do not see universal equality of opportunity. The list of protected characteristics has grown longer, and people’s acceptance of discrimination has been reduced, yet we know that short lists for interviews, certain job roles, or even whole job sectors, are just not accessible to everybody who is qualified for them.
In recent years the role of unconscious bias has been brought to prominence in recruitment. Unconscious bias is bias, or discrimination, that the person is not consciously aware of, maybe even vocally rejects, yet is shown in unconscious or hidden choices, preferences and justifications of decisions. This discrimination, that we are not even aware of, is a problem in society.
Employers have been inundated with information, courses and dire warnings of the risks of this bias in recruitment, promotion or disciplinary decisions for the last year or so. Discrimination on grounds of gender, race, sexuality, etc. is illegal and there is far more awareness of employment rights than there used to be.
In a world that is more open and aware of discriminating against others, the Government has created the post of social mobility commissioner in order to try to close the achievement gap between the more and less deprived in society. The current social mobility commissioner is Katharine Birbalsingh, headteacher of the much-feted Michaela community school in London and a vocal supporter of Michael Gove and his educational reforms.
The purpose of the social mobility commissioner, in the Government’s words, is ‘making sure that someone’s background does not determine their future chances in life.’ The commission is an advisory, publicly funded body, for the Department of Education. There is an acceptance that a person’s chances of being upwardly mobile is closely correlated to the quality of the education they receive. Strange then that the commissioner, Katharine Birbalsingh, should cause a huge amount
of damage to equal access to education by stating that girls are put off physics because there is too much hard maths involved. In an odd way, she is suggesting that gender equality is not worthwhile.
We know from looking at the number of girls taking physics at A-Level and degree that there are more males than females studying the subject. We also know that the girls get at least as good results as the boys do, often better. We can also see that 20-30% of successful applicants to physics courses at university are female (there is a slightly higher percentage of female applications to the courses, suggesting there may be a higher chance of males being offered a place than females). What is most worrying is that the majority of girls studying physics at university come from single-sex schools. For 80% of female, first-class physics graduates to have been educated in a girls-only school suggests that something is wrong in the system and the implicit bias in the way that society thinks of physicists is having a deleterious effect.
Contrary to Katharine Birbalsingh’s comments, the same male bias is not seen as much in advanced maths courses which have a much higher female take-up and success rate, clearly intimating it cannot be the maths putting off female pupils. I know that the further maths GCSE courses that my school is running for pupils from a number of schools have about 70% girls in the voluntary, after-school, classes.
Outrageous comments such as Katharine Birbalsingh’s merely propagate a sexist, outmoded and inaccurate view of physics and need to be called out and stopped. It’s not just about persuading girls that they are able to do the hard maths involved but the real concern is increasing the gap in achievement by actively putting girls off studying subjects that give them access to jobs that have seen the highest increase in pay rates of any sector over the last five years. If the idea of social mobility is to push women into lower paid and less prestigious careers there is something very wrong at the heart of Whitehall.
Neil Walker is headmaster Westfield School, Newcastle