Carol Hayden at the University of Portsmouth gave her inaugural lecture as Professor in Applied Social Research, which asked “Crime, Anti-Social Behaviour and Schools in Britain – are all schools ‘at risk’?”
Professor Hayden based her talk on work for her forthcoming book, Crime, Anti-Social Behaviour and Schools (co-edited with the University of Brighton’s Denise Martin), to raise questions about the way access to schooling is organised in Britain; arguing that the system is profoundly and damagingly unequal in a way that actively helps to create the social conditions many fear most.
She writes –
Inequality and its interaction with the school system is something about which there is agreement across the main political parties; it is the solutions to the situation that differ. Numerous studies have demonstrated that the more unequal a society is, the more conflict, crime and other social problems there are.
At the time of writing ‘fairness’ is a focus of a great deal of popular debate. This concept is of central importance in relation to understanding the pattern of access to schools in Britain and the processes set in motion by this. The paper argues that differential (and often unfair) access to schools in Britain is central to the way inequality is reproduced and entrenched; contributes to fear and misunderstanding and the process of ‘othering’ which in turn helps to create insecurity and make society less safe.
The creation of this fear and insecurity feeds into wider concerns about risk, that have been referred to as ‘the risk society’; in which all kinds of ‘risks’ have to be identified and ‘managed’. The potentially anti-social or criminal behaviour of young people in and around schools is one such ‘risk.’
Yet the research evidence shows that most of the time most schools are orderly environments and are generally safer than the community and some homes. In that sense schools are less ‘risky’ than other settings and the great majority of schools cannot be considered to be ‘at risk.’
However, parental anxiety about their children’s education, coupled with politicians (over the last 20 years) emphasising parental ‘choice’ in relation to schools has created an increasingly divisive situation. The socio-economic background, achievements and ethnic profile of schools across most cities is already polarized and is highly likely to get worse, if more ‘choice’ is promoted as a solution to the situation. This situation adds to wider concerns about crime, anti-social behaviour and risk, feeding into a more generalised fear of ‘the other’. These fears play into parental concerns about protecting their own children, trying to give them ‘the best’ opportunities and so on. This individualisation of concern about access to schools is part of similar processes in the wider ‘risk society’. Getting a child into a particular school can be seen as a process of risk avoidance – the risk of educational ‘failure’, the risk of exposure to adverse ‘influences’ and so on.
Yet, how we configure access to schools matters to everybody. Processes that disadvantage, limit and exclude children from developing and using their abilities are a problem for society as a whole. The behaviour that results from the frustrations of young people who are marginalised by schooling, as in other aspects of their lives, affects us all.
More ‘policing’ of schools in the most adverse circumstances can address some of the most immediate and pressing problems in and around the school site, but cannot be a solution to the systematic and ongoing (re)creation of these problems.
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