Another Frozen Conflict - The People Want Grammar Schools. The Elite Don't

The unresolved war over education is one of the biggest political quarrels in this country.  But it is very difficult to debate, because the major political parties, and the elite as a whole, have made their peace with our disgraceful existing system. So it is a Frozen Conflict, where those who want beneficial change have all the arguments, but no power. And those who have no arguments have all the power. 

 

The rich and influential can, one way or another, buy or wangle their way into reasonable schooling for their young. Most of the rest have no idea how badly they are being cheated, and no means of putting things right even if they did.

 

A few crude lies will usually close the debate. A little knowledge can counter them all. Here are some of those lies, and the counters to them:

 

Lie No. 1. If you have selective schools, you will have secondary moderns’ The unstated claim of this argument (without which it would be a nonsense)  is that the comprehensive system has abolished the secondary moderns. In fact (by the standards existing before 1965) the comprehnsive revolution has created ‘Secondary Moderns For All', with a minority of superior secondary moderns catering for various bits of the elite. No secondary modern pupil benefited in the slightest, then or later, by the closing of grammar schools in his or her area.

 

The comprehensive system as a whole rapidl;y proved how much lower its standards were than those of the grammar schools had been. The comprehensives (or perhaps we should call them 'Secondary Ultra-Moderns') could not cope with the ‘O’ and ‘A’ level exams which grammar school pupils were able to pass, at good grades. That is the main reason why the ‘A’ levels were diluted, and the ‘O’ levels replaced by the hugely inferior and less testing GCSE. These changes prevent a direct comparison between today’s ‘good’ or 'outstanding' schools ( as OFSTED contentiously calls them) and the old grammar schools.

 

The comprehensive revolution has also been an enormous boost to many mediocre private schools, which by selection and the superior discipline which follows automatically, can easily rack up good scores.  The abolition of the grammar schools saved most of Britain’s private schools from an impending disaster. Had the grammar schools been expanded instead , into areas where there were too few, and also by opening more girls’ grammars, all but the most exceptional private schools would have been utterly eclipsed, in the universities and the professions, by now.

 

Lie No. 2. Because the tiny number of surviving grammars are heavily oversubscribed,  and so dominated by those who can afford tuition for their children, this would be so in a national, fully-selective system. Why should this be so? It was not so when there were nationally available grammar schools, nor is it so in northern Ireland, the last remaining fully selective system in the UK, or in Germany, which is largely selective.

 

The reason for the pressure on the tiny number of comparatively good state schools is precisely that – that there are too few of them. The non-grammar ones are of course just as besieged as the non-grammar ones, but the siege takes place in the estate agents’ offices and in the church pews, which seems to be OK among modern left-wing types.

 

The absurdly overpraised Michael Gove blocked very small plans to expand, ever so slightly, grammar provision in Kent.  The opening of new free-standing grammar schools is actually against the law. This is a monstrosity for which New Labour was responsible, but which has  not been put right in almost five years of (allegedly) non-Labour government.  So new grammar places can only be opened as satellites of existing schools, a process easily halted by legal challenged from opponents of selection.  At least selection by ability does give *some* children from poor homes the chance of getting in.  We’re now reduced to the idea of so-called ‘ballots’ – by which they mean a lottery. A lottery?  To decide who gets a good academic education? Welcome to the William Hill academy, the final triumph of irrational egalitarian dogma.

 

Lie No. 3. If only we had a fully comprehensive system, its problems would be solved. No they wouldn’t. Scotland is fully comprehensive. Its private school sector is booming, and Scotland's state schools get proportionately fewer working class pupils into University than wholly-selective Northern Ireland (where private education is rare).  

 

If by ‘fully-comprehensive’ they mean ‘Communist totalitarian, with no private schools allowed’ (fior only a tyranny could banm private education) , it’s also not true. All the Communist countries maintained (or maintain) secret privilege in education, with certain schools open only to the children of the elite. The Lenin High School in Havana, and the Mangyongdae High School in Pyongyang, are surviving examples of this system . School Number One in Moscow was the best-known example in the USSR.

 

Lie No. 4. Grammar schools failed because they didn’t take enough working class pupils and because the middle class benefited from them.  

 

No, they didn’t fail because of this.  The failing, such as it was, was not a consequence of a selective system. It was a consequence of an imprfect selective system which could easily ahve been reformed without being destroyed. The authorities failed to reform them to take account of these problems.

 

I should also say that it is no surprise that the middle class get their children into grammar schools, is it? Why shouldn’t the middle class benefit from them, as long as they don’t do so at the expense of equally talented children from other classes? The middle class is not necessarily rich, and Oligarch-style incomes shouldn’t be necessary for a good education, as they increasingly are.  And it is perfectly true that the grammar schools, as they were in 1965, didn’t take enough working class pupils. They didn’t take enough girls either. They were completely absent in many parts of the country, and sparse in others.  How does closing them all down solve any of these problems? Outreach to primary schools in poor areas, a general improvement in primary education for the poor, a more flexible entry system, more grammar schools in general and more in working class areas and more for girls, would seem to me to be the rational response to these failings.

 

Last week I attended the annual Orwell Lecture, given by the much-caressed historian David Kynaston. The chairman, D.J. Taylor, referred to the event in this article in yesterday’s Independent on Sunday http://ind.pn/1uktmYS , which manages (in its online version)  to suggest wrongly that my intervention was in favour of private schools, rather than in favour of grammars, as it in fact was.

 

In my view quite absurdly, Professor Kynaston turned his lecture into an attack on the private schools, which are a consequence, not a cause,  of the unfairness of our education system, and which could easily be made to serve the general populace by the reintroduction of the excellent Direct Grant System (rightly praised by D.J.Taylor in his article, see link above) . Taylor argues in favour of  ‘ taking, say, 20,000 of the country's brightest 11-year-olds from poor homes and compelling the private sector to educate them on pain of loss of charitable status.’

 

First of all, who will pay? Most private schools are not especially rich, and many already spend a large sum annually on bursaries. Most private school parents are already stretched to the limit. Why should they be required to pay extra for the dogmatic failure of the state to provide good academic schools? The direct grant system (in my view inseparable from the grammar schools, and using the same form of selection) was financed from taxes.

 

Secondly, who will decide who the 20,000 brightest are, and how will they judge? Surely there will have to be some sort of selection by ability. Funny, that this is so frowned on for schools at age 11, and yet universally accepted at universities, and in the picking of sports and athletics teams. Strange, too, that D.J.Taylor actually suggests selection by ability here, without seeming to realize what he is doing.

 

Oh, and it turned out that Professor Kynaston’s children went to…a grammar school, as he himself revealed.