Friends of Grammar Schools

By Thomas Lowe

An organisation called Comprehensive Future has just launched a pamphlet called Ending Selection at 11+, with the word ‘selection’ provocatively crossed out and replaced with ‘rejection’. Behind the pamphlet are a number of members of the political left, not least Fiona Millar, the partner of spin doctor Alistair Campbell, who has penned the introduction to the pamphlet.

The introduction starts with the assertion that ‘labelling children as failures at eleven is wrong’. Nobody in Britain would want to disagree with those words. Labelling people as failures, regardless of age, sex, or career, is always wrong. The political left has, over many years, developed the blatant untruth that those who believe in academic selection either tacitly accept or actively promote a division of children into successes and failures, or as the introduction phrases it, “the ‘clever’ and the ‘not clever’”.  Nothing could be further from the truth. To believe in selection by ability is to believe that some children have more interest in pursuing non-academic subjects, while others have more aptitude for and interest in academic study.

The introduction goes on to contend that ‘prejudging children’s potential at eleven makes no sense’, and that ‘every child should have the chance to develop their potential to the full’. I know of very few supporters of grammar schools who believe anything else. The old-fashioned 11-plus examination is a blunt instrument. Children can no be more assessed in one exam than can a university entrant, or an applicant for a job. There are alternatives. The Northern Irish selection process, before its abolition by governmental fiat, had developed a two-exam system which averaged scores and allowed for an element of teacher assessment. This reduced the pressure on children and reduced the risk of those taking the exam suffering from having an ‘off day’.

But selection is about more than just sitting an exam. Migration between schools is vitally important. Movement between schools after eleven provides those who develop a later interest in studying the opportunity to pursue their passion for learning. Every child deserves to have the chance to succeed and to have an education tailored to their particular needs and interests. The comprehensive experiment has not succeeded in tailoring education to children’s needs, creating a ‘one size fits all’ system, the hallmark of initiatives emanating from central government.

The most frustratingly inaccurate accusation made by Comprehensive Future is that ‘selection at eleven makes social mobility less likely’. Current statistics might well show that the intake for grammar schools is ‘skewed towards the better-off’, but this is only because the remaining grammar schools that have held out against invidious Government legislation are generally located in more affluent areas. If grammar schools were reintroduced across the country any skewing to the ‘better off’ middle class would soon disappear.  The Comprehensive Future pamphlet is surprisingly silent on the fact that the best comprehensive schools are more socially skewed towards the affluent than any grammar school. Entrance to the top comprehensive schools is based on postcode, with the postcode determined by parental wealth rather than the ability of children. Grammar schools offer an academic route for children from poorer backgrounds regardless of their ability to pay, an opportunity that Comprehensive Future would seek to deny them on mistaken and fusty ideological grounds.

The political left sometimes appear unfortunately married to the notion that ‘selection divides children, parents and communities’. Creating genuinely local schools is an important aspiration but there is no universal definition of ‘local’. No town, city, or local authority is homogenous in character, ethnic mix, or wealth and prosperity, so it is foolish to suggest that schools made up by catchment area are naturally superior to those drawing children from a wider pool. An alternative way of looking at grammar schools is that they attract people from a variety of backgrounds. A system of grammar schools properly constituted should boost participation from all sectors of society, regardless of wealth, unless Comprehensive Future believes that one sector of society possesses a monopoly on talent and ability, something any rational person would reject as absurd.

One of the problems with the British education system is that a number of teachers and educationalists are naturally opposed to all forms of selection. The anecdote from the ‘head of a non selective secondary school in a selective area’ that tells the tale of the pupil with a glut of grade As at GCSE rejecting the opportunity to apply to Oxford or Cambridge because ‘he had not done the 11+’, says far more about the head-teacher and the school concerned than the system of academic selection. The head-teacher has conspicuously failed to persuade able pupils at the school that they can achieve as much as anyone else through their ability, hard work and determination. Pupils from non-selective schools are too often discouraged from applying to elite universities by state school teachers who instinctively distrust academic selection and associate it with their own constructed notion or experience of failure.

Despite the Government’s despicable ban preventing local authorities and parents from introducing more selective schools to supplement the existing 164 grammar schools, Comprehensive Future cannot hide the enduring popularity of such schools. The proportion of pupils educated in selective schools has increased from 4.2% in 1997 to 4.7% in 2007 and is expected to reach 4.9% in 2009. This of course says nothing about the huge increase in the number of pupils being educated privately, at schools which select by the academically irrelevant criterion of ability to pay. Even though 30,000 more pupils are being educated in selective schools than was the case a decade ago, and thousands of parents remain determined to send their children to such schools, Comprehensive Future can only lamely say that the argument against selection at 11 was ‘won many years ago’.

The debate about academic selection brings out the centralising tendencies of many on the political left. Comprehensive Future attempts to portray local schools as crucial to the development of strong local communities but the key proposal made in their pamphlet is to repeal the balloting legislation introduced in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. This is the same balloting legislation that is already heavily weighted in favour of those who oppose grammar schools, preventing as it does the creation of any new selective schools, while at the same time providing a clear mechanism for opponents of selection to abolish grammar schools in their area. The alternative mechanism proposed by Comprehensive Future is for the Secretary of State for Education, currently the tribal Ed Balls, to take action to stop selection, a solution which takes power away from local communities and places it in the hands of Whitehall and Westminster. If the anti-selection brigade has the courage of their convictions, why not make the ballot system symmetrical, allowing parents to vote to create grammar schools as well as abolish them?

In the pamphlet, Comprehensive Future looks at a number of case studies. Comprehensive Future identifies that most of the 30 grammar schools in Kent are of sufficient size to allow them to become comprehensives. Various solutions to end selection are put forward, though no reference is made to the fact that the grammar schools are all operating at levels close to or above their capacity, that pupils and parents are happy with the current arrangements, or that the future of education should be decided at the local level.  The whole exercise of ending selection over a number of years by no longer selecting is premised solely on primary legislation imposed from above.

The examples of Birmingham, with eight grammar schools, and North Yorkshire with three remaining grammar schools, does little to strengthen the Comprehensive Future argument. Seven out of eight schools in Birmingham are over-subscribed, with two schools operating with an excess of over one hundred pupils. The popularity of the schools in Birmingham remains robust and clear. The North Yorkshire example attempts to portray the results of the transfer test as based entirely on professional tutoring. Of course, tutoring is a problem but tests can be adapted to minimise any beneficial effects of tutoring, as occurred in Northern Ireland over a number of years. Comprehensive Future overemphasises the importance of tutoring, which makes little difference in most cases, as a great deal of tutoring is effectively wasted on the more academically-minded who were already likely to pass.

Comprehensive Future appears to be dishearteningly focussed on centralised decision-making to address localised matters. The Ending Selection at 11+ leaflet proposes nothing less than the Government acting without a democratic mandate to abolish selection against the wishes of the local populations where it continues to exist. In the conclusion, an example is made of Northern Ireland ending selection through a ‘Government decision not local campaigns’. This Government decision was made by a Minister for Education who represents a political party that defended IRA terrorism, was made despite widespread opposition in the Assembly at Stormont, was only possible because of the unusual governmental structures created by the Good Friday Agreement, and was carried out against the expressed wishes of parents.

The political, legal, and educational mess that has ensued in Northern Ireland has seen the replacing of publicly-provided testing with private testing administered by schools, and children and parents facing great uncertainty about the future of their schools. Protracted and complicated legal cases are pending. The warning to Comprehensive Future should be clear and unambiguous. Local populations should be trusted to decide on matters that directly affect them. Those in Westminster and Whitehall do not know best. A truly democratic system of local decision-making will always be preferable to an unpopular Government imposing their views on local people.

________

This article reflects an independent viewpoint and not necessarily the stance of Friends of Grammar Schools