Brad Horrobin is going places

Previously a silent character, the voice of Brad Horrobin (Taylor Uttley) was revealed on BBC Radio 4’s The Archers earlier this summer.  He lives in the Radio 4 village of Ambridge, at no. 6 The Green with his mum Tracey and her partner Jazzer, older sister Chelsea, and Granddad Bert. We know Brad is good at maths as the summer’s storyline involved him taking on hay making to save enough money to pay for a maths summer school.  His efforts went unrealised when his labour was replaced with a robot baler.  This act of labour dispensing automation threatened to thwart Brad’s chance of a place. Thankfully, as is the case in radio soaps, Oliver stepped in to fund a place in the autumn thus redeeming himself from his pariah status amongst villagers following his role in making the staff of Grey Gables Hotel redundant.  Tracey Horrobin was one such member of staff.  To familiarise oneself further with the background to this storyline necessitates tuning in to The Archers, though it might take several decades to catch-up.  

Ironically, whilst the robot baler ended one summer job it was when the till broke at Lower Loxley that Brad was able to replace this tool of automation and demonstrate his skills in quickly adding up the price of items in the Orangey café. The ability of human labour to transcend the failures of technological innovation were momentarily celebrated as Brad’s calculation skills enabled Lower Loxley to continue trading. Brad is considered, at least by his sister Chelsea, to be a maths ‘genius’.  Yet, in an educational economy of high-stakes exam driven educational opportunity and progression Brad’s knowledge, ability and skills need to be formalised.  Last week, The Archers marked GCSE results with the Horrobin clan gathering at Borchester Green to hear Brad reveal his grades:

• Six 9s
• Three 8s
• One 7   

For those unfamiliar, the GCSE grading runs from 9 (the highest) to 1, the lowest with a ‘4’ a pass, and 5 a ‘good pass’.   These are very good grades.  Brad was not entirely satisfied.  For geography he achieved a 7, a grade that he considered OK, and he thought one of the 8s should have been a 9. This tells us is that Brad is not only a high achiever but that he also sets himself high expectations and is disappointed when he doesn’t achieve them.   

Whilst Tracey reassured Brad that she would still be proud of him if he had failed the lot she was also realistic in her conclusion about what this meant for Brad.

You have so many options now

His grades have opened up the opportunity of ‘A-Levels’, Brad’s intended post-16 educational pathway. Tracey supports her son’s ambitions and she clearly views education as the “key institutional pathway to upward social mobility”.^[1]  

Chelsea also recognises the opportunities her brother now has.  

He’s clever, he’s gonna go places

Chelsea’s predictions about her brother’s future reflects a belief in educational aspiration supporting spatial mobility.  This is the idea that an attachment to place limits aspirations with this used in policy discourses that position working class communities as anti-aspirational.  Anti-aspiration is not an accusation that can be reasonably levelled against the Horrobins.  Tracey has consistently expressed the desire that she wants better for Brad and Chelsea and that education is a means of achieving this. In terms of ‘going places’, Brad now has secured his passport to ‘A-Level’ study.  This might involve taking up opportunities that involve moving away from Ambridge. Presumably this would render him a silent character once more, which would be shame.  However, as Evan’s research in South Wales reveals this relationship between place attachment and aspirations are not mutually exclusive and young people do have high aspirations whilst also expressing an attachment to place ^[2].  Similarly, it would be naive to suggest that spatial mobility is straightforward as career opportunities are spatially structured meaning it is always possible to relocate to a different part of the country to realise such aspirations.^[3]

Brad’s educational success at GCSE warrants some further unpicking.  For example, how it contrasts with the post-16 educational pathway of his first cousin once removed. George Grundy. who suggests Brad should get ‘trade’ instead. There is also the issue of Brad’s socio-economic status.  Brad can certainly be described as coming from a working-class background and the recent employment experiences of his mother, Tracey, and the impact that this has for the opportunities for Brad and Chelsea (for example in not being able to afford the maths course) have been explored in storylines over recent months.  However, it is unclear what benefits, if any, Tracey’s employment situation entitled her to and consequently whether Brad was eligible for free school meals. The storyline could have covered this and the associated odds of achieving ‘good’ results along with the role of Borchester Green in supporting Brad to secure these results. But, of course The Archers is not a drama about the intricacies of achieving GCSEs. 

Ruairi is too bright for Loxley Barratt

Borsetshire must have more than its fair share of private schools and privately educated pupils if The Archers are anything to go by.  We know this because school choice, once again, features in the storyline.

Ruairi Donovan has been through a lot in his short life.  He is the son of Brian Aldridge from his extra-marital affair with the lately departed Siobhan Hathaway/Donovan.  She died from cancer, in 2007.  Upon her death, Brian’s long-suffering, but immensely strong wife, Jennifer agreed to take him on. Bewildered, little Ruairi  arrived at Home Farm. The decision about his schooling then, was that, if possible he should attend, the local primary,  Loxley Barratt.  It would be too traumatic to be packed off to boarding school so soon after loosing his mother and being transported to Ambridge.  They had missed the application for school places, and, as the fictional school at Loxley Barratt was fully subscribed, they had an anxious wait over that summer to see if a place became available.  They were in luck. Ruairi has settled.

Fast forward nearly four years, such fears have evaporated, and now boarding is being seriously considered for this eight year old.  So, in other words, Brian and Jennifer are perusing the education market place.

They appear to have an abstract notion that private is better than state.  They are not so much dissatisfied with Loxley Barratt as convinced that it is not good enough for Ruairi, referring to some unsubstantiated claim that his teacher wouldn’t expect him to complete all his homework.  Brian and Jennifer are articulate, why don’t they exercise their cultural capital by speaking to Ruairi’s teacher to find out what this story is really about?

Educational expertise is not wholly trusted by Brian and Jennifer.  Instead they are engaging in a class based process of school choice.   Brian did remark that it is an increasingly competitive world out there; he wants Ruairi to have the edge.  In other words, he wants to ensure, understandably, the reproduction of his social class advantage.

It could be argued that they are engaged in a process of matching Ruairi to the most appropriate school (Ball, 2011). Firstly, this can be seen in their  decision to go private on the basis that Ruairi is bright, and therefore, presumably too clever for the state sector.  Secondly, we heard their rejection of private day schools on the grounds of the amount of traveling involved, which, Jennifer in particular felt would be too much for young Ruairi.  Lastly, boarding school was felt to be appropriate for Ruairi because of the activities on offer, he would surely enjoy these, and to deny him these opportunities as a day pupil wouldn’t be fair.  So, it is in Ruairi’s best interests to board, he has been matched to this type of school.

Jennifer has also been consulting the grapevine (Ball and Vincent, 1998), to help with the decision making. Thus far, this has involved phoning Elizabeth Pargetter as to her opinions about local boarding schools.   Ball and Vincent describe the kind of information that Elizabeth might be able to offer as hot knowledge.  Elizabeth might be able to describe her feel for a school, with this helpful to the Brian and Jennifer, supplementing the cold of official knowledge they have already obtained from the schools’ websites and Ofsted reports.

The rationales presented by Brian and Jennifer suggest that there is no alternative for Ruairi.  He must be educated privately, and, no doubt he will be. Of course, there is an alternative, but this is ignored in Jennifer and Brian’s thought processes. Their decision making is presented as normal, natural, what all parents go through, not the class based process that it is.

When the time  comes for secondary school choice to be made, they could utilise the grapevine to seek out the hot knowledge of Jill Archer.  She would advise them, as she did her own daughter, that: There’s nothing wrong with Borchester Green.

What now for the Pargetter twins?

Yesterday, listeners to The Archers will have tuned in to hear Nigel Pargetter’s funeral.  In a previous post I described how Nigel fell off his roof.

At the end of the episode the issue of Freddie and Lily Pargetter’s impending entrance exam cropped up.  Remember, it is hoped that they will be accepted to The Cathedral School, in nearby Felpersham.   Elizabeth Pargetter rounds off the conversation with:

“I have to do something about it”

What, we don’t know, yet.

Shocked “to the core”

Listeners to the BBC Radio serial The Archers were expecting an eventful anniversary episode tonight.  The storyline would “shock Ambridge to the core”.  In the final few minutes of the said episode, Nigel Pargetter fell from the roof of Lower Loxley Hall.

According to the editor, Vanessa Whitburn this event  is so dramatic “it will still be affecting Ambridge in 10 years’ time.”

In a previous post I described the dilemma over school choice that the Pargetters were experiencing.  So, we can now assume the decision over the future education of Lily and Freddie Pargetter is made.  They will be far too traumatised to face the imminent entrance exam for the Cathedral School. Will Borchester Green have the honour of educating the Pargetter twins after all?

“There’s nothing wrong with Borchester Green”

So says Jill Archer in BBC Radio 4’s The Archers. It comes in response to the extra tuition her grandchildren, twins Freddie and Lily Pargetter are receiving in an attempt to ensure they pass the entrance exam to the Cathedral School in Felpersham.  They currently attend the local state primary school in Loxley Barrett.

Nigel Pargetter, the twins’ father, being almost aristocratic and owning a country estate, always intended for his children to go to his old boarding school Clavisborne. Not quite as posh, more middle class, their mother, Elizabeth Pargetter (née Archer), was, at first, keen to allow them to follow in the Pargetter tradition.  In the summer she began expressing her doubts about boarding school, and so the Pargetters began exploring the possibility of the Cathedral School.  The twins’ cousin, Daniel Hebden Lloyd already attends this school.  His father, Alistair Lloyd wasn’t too happy about this, but conceded, partly because Daniel’s grandparents (the parents of his late biological father) stumped up the fees.

The Pargetters are self-excluding (Whitty, 2001)[1] themselves from state education, following an age-old tradition of the upper classes.  They still intend to self-exclude even though they have taken the decision to have the children attend a school close by.  Borchester Green has never been on their radar.

What is wrong with Borchester Green?

The short answer is, nothing.

Interestingly,  Borchester Green is likely to be seen as a ‘safe choice’ for many middle-class parents who cannot afford the fees for private education.  Granted, Borcetshire, Borchester Green, Ambridge, and The Archers are fictional, but it is reasonable to assume that this rural community has a large middle class population who have colonised the state education provision (ibid).  If they were to attend Borchester Green Freddie and Lily are at an advantage, they come from a wealthy, upper middle class family.  Social class remains the greatest predictor of education success.

Surely though, they would  do better at private school?

Not necessarily, private schools are not homogenous, they don’t all offer the same standard of education (whatever that might be).  In any case, why assume the quality of teaching is any better at a private school?  Importantly, private schools don’t equate to the long-established public schools such as Eton and Harrow for the boys, and Roedean for girls.  Here, social networks are likely to be as significant as academic credentials for a successful future life.  I’m not sure that the Cathedral School in Felpersham is quite in the same league.  Additionally, despite their obvious poshness, I’m not sure that the Pargetters are in the same elite social networks as those families who have sent their offspring to Eton and Harrow for generations.

The Pargetters could do no worse than save their money.  Jill Archer is right, the Pargetters have little to fear from Borchester Green.  It is almost as if she had read the recent report from the Sutton Trust which found that students from comprehensive schools outperformed at degree level, those students who went to either Independent or Grammar School.

However, someone should inform the Pargetters that they may have missed the deadline date for applying for a place at secondary school.