In a study financed by the Education Endowment Foundation, the University of Bristol assessed the performance of 10,600 students approaching GCSEs in disadvantaged areas to see what effect financial incentives (worth up to £80 per half-term) or non-financial enticements (such as vouchers for gig tickets) would have on behaviour, schoolwork, homework and attendance.
While incentives had little effect on strong pupils, underperformers improved exam grades and pass marks by up to 10%. The intervention had particularly substantial effects on science and maths GCSE results for up to half of those involved, closing 50% of the attainment gap between pupils eligible for free school meals and other students.
Cash proved most effective, while non-financial incentives weren’t far behind. Professor Simon Burgess, heading the study, said that this was the first comparison of financial/non-financial rewards over an entire academic year in the run-up to GSCEs and could help low-income pupils in a relatively cost-effective way.
All of which sounds very interesting. At the same time, all this talk of “incentivising” sounds eerily familiar – haven’t certain households always brazenly “incentivised” their children, especially in the run-up to exams?
It bears emphasising that the University of Bristol study did not offer rewards for exam results. Could you imagine the uproar if it did? (“Children offered hard cash to pass exams!”), a reaction that in certain quarters would be hilariously hypocritical. In truth, particularly in comfortable households, a barefaced culture of “cash for results” has been operating, unofficially and domestically, for some time.
Nor does it stop with GCSEs – it goes on to A-levels, university places, degrees. Indeed, there’s nothing new or shocking about a certain breed of better-off student being offered incentives – in the form of cash (usually per result), gigs/ festivals, even, it’s rumoured, cars or holidays, to pass important exams or, more commonly, get better grades.
Nor does there seem to be much anguished soul-searching about it. Maybe the more ethical parents refuse to do it, or at least feel guilty about doing it, but it’s mainly a bizarre mix of practicality and gamesmanship. A case of: does bribing children work? (Hope so). And is such bribery pathetic, conniving, verging on immoral? (Who cares?)
Of course, there are higher moral planes here, not least that education should be viewed as a reward unto itself. Against that, there are the realities of safely steering a child through certain key education stages, which, from the parental point of view, could be likened to a huge ongoing egg-and-spoon race, where the egg’s already fallen off and splattered, the spoon’s been stolen and someone’s set fire to your hair.
With this in mind, a little sweetening of the deal starts looking not so much unethical as unavoidable. I’m not judging anyone; I’ve dabbled myself in the dark arts of “incentivising”, though only half-heartedly compared to some, and I’d do it again. I’m well aware that this is a staunch middle-class educational mindset: the refusal to allow your child to fail, coupled with enough resources to throw into areas such as incentivising. This could be beyond the reach of disadvantaged families, who care about their kids just as much.
While strong candidates do well regardless, there’s something to be said for addressing this unofficial socioeconomic disadvantage facing underperforming low-income children with official intervention to incentivise them. In effect, the state would merely be replicating what routinely happens in many middle-class households across the land. This is basically, if all else fails, bribe your kids and bribe ’em good. The main difference is that – let’s face it – the average middle-class kid probably wouldn’t be motivated by a mere £80 a half-term.
Lineker scored for the refugees without a voice
Bravo, Gary Lineker. He’s been in the public eye for decades, so he must have known that his tweets lamenting hostility towards the Calais child refugees would bring him grief and yet still he spoke out.
Since then, Lineker has received immense public support, but also, as he referred to it, a “spanking”, including calls for him to be fired from his BBC presenting job and even more predictable jibes about “champagne socialism”.
“Champagne socialism” is just a term contrived to deter powerful people – see also, recently, Lily Allen – from speaking up for powerless people. It’s an attempt to cow and embarrass the successful and influential into backing off and keeping quiet, thereby leaving the powerless with no high-profile advocates and defenders.
Another term for the increasingly meaningless term of “champagne socialist” could be “people who have a bit of dosh, but who haven’t forgotten their basic humanity”. In essence, Lineker took the heat he knew was coming and spoke up for a bunch of frightened people landing on British shores for the first time. Back of the net.
Face it Phil, you were never a Beatle
Forgive me for relishing the details of Phil Collins’s 14-year feud with Paul McCartney, made even more entertaining because it’s only been a feud on Phil’s side, which relates to an incident that’s highly unlikely to have troubled Macca over the years.
It seems that Collins asked McCartney to sign a Beatles book and the latter responded by saying (to his then wife, Heather Mills): “Oh Heather, our little Phil’s a bit of a Beatles fan.” Collins recalls: “And I thought, ‘You fuck, you fuck.’ Never forgot it.”
Fair enough, it’s Collins’s prerogative to stew in a secret rage for 14 years – perhaps waiting for a full moon to stick pins in a mop-topped voodoo doll. Admittedly, the comment was rude and patronising, born of one or all of the following – a reference to Collins’s height (McCartney is a few inches taller), Collins’s youthful stage role as the Artful Dodger, and, above all, the bloodcurdling complexities of fame hierarchies.
I once interviewed Gary Kemp about his (rather good) memoir, I Know This Much: From Soho to Spandau, in which he self-deprecatingly describes an incident at Live Aid where he met his musical hero, David Bowie, who doesn’t seem to know who he is. Kemp’s point was that there are the famous, and then there are (would it be insensitive to insert a drum roll here?) “The Famous”.
Is this what happened, Phil? In that terrible and pivotal moment when the book was proffered and the former Beatle made his remark, did you feel all your self-worth (the success, the accolades) if not eclipsed, then downsized? A kind of fame Top Trumps deal? If so, perhaps it’s time for Collins to emulate the Disney heroine and “let it go!” After all, it’s been 14 years and who isn’t less famous than the Beatles?