(This article first appeared in the Sunday Express 20 May 2007)
Conservative education spokesman David Willetts certainly stirred up a hornets’ nest with his attack on grammar schools this week. His argument was that because very few poor pupils attend these schools they do not meet the challenge of giving every child the opportunity to make the best of his abilities.
In particular, Mr Willetts does not believe that grammar schools have anything to offer pupils living in run-down inner city areas where standards of education are frequently appalling.
I disagree with him fundamentally. His argument is not supported by the facts. In truth, the grammar school system benefits affluent and poor pupils alike and produces overall far better results than the failed comprehensive system we have today.
Grammar schools are also popular, both with parents and pupils lucky enough to have them and with the public at large. Around three in four people support a selective system of education, according to the most recent poll carried out for the Centre for Policy Studies.
But for all that, I am not advocating a return to the 11-plus and the system of grammars, technical schools and secondary moderns that we had in the 1950s and 1960s.
I believe we must learn from the failure of the comprehensive system and hand power to schools and parents and let them decide what kind of school is best for their child. Schools should be set free to decide their own admission policies. Families in poor areas should be helped to send their children to high-quality, selective schools if that is best for them.
So why is Mr Willetts wrong to claim that grammars do nothing for poor families?
He bases his argument on the fact that only 2 per cent of grammar school pupils are on free school meals - in other words that they come from low-income homes.
But he overlooks the fact that Britain now has only 164 grammar schools, compared with more than 1000 in the 1960s. The surviving grammars are naturally to be found in the shires, mostly leafy middle-class areas where Tory councillors have fought tooth and nail for nearly 40 years to resist Whitehall pressure for a comprehensive-only system. Conservative-run Kent, for instance, has 45 grammars. It is no surprise that today’s rump of grammar schools mostly serve the middle classes. They are only found in middle class areas.
Mr Willetts should have looked at Northern Ireland, which has maintained a fully selective system at the same time as the rest of the UK has largely switched to all-in schooling. The differences are striking.
In Northern Ireland, 10 per cent more pupils achieve five A*-C grades at GCSE than in England, and 30 per cent of A-level papers get an A grade compared to 22 per cent in
England.
As well as outperforming the rest of the UK in tests, Northern Ireland also provides the model for what a selective system can achieve for social mobility. There, 42 per cent of university entrants come from less privileged backgrounds, compared to only 28 per cent in England.
Overall, the number of state school pupils going to Oxford and Cambridge has actually fallen since the 1960s despite all the promises that comprehensives would ensure opportunity for all.
Research carried out by Bristol University has found that poor pupils do better at grammars than they do in comprehensives, gaining significantly higher exam passes.
But I don’t want to put the clock back. I want to put it forward. Unlike Mr Willetts, I do not believe the answer lies in embracing Tony Blair’s City Academies, which are not allowed to select on academic grounds and which are just another classic New Labour rebranding exercise, and an expensive one at that.
I would give all schools the power to select pupils. Some would follow the academic path, choosing their pupils on the grounds of ability. But many others would follow a different path, devising more practical and vocational courses designed to help children of average academic ability get a good job. Others would specialise in sport, the arts, languages or technology.
We could create a genuine marketplace in education, with parents free to shop around to find the school that is best for their child.
And we could start this much needed experiment by giving special help to poor families in inner cities where the only choice at the moment is a bog-standard comprehensive. They would be given a voucher equivalent to the cost of state education (about £5000 at today’s prices) to spend at the school of their choice.
Schools would have to compete for pupils, which would drive up standards across the board. Bad schools would close because parents and pupils would vote with their feet. We have seen choice and competition work in every other walk of life. Why not in education?
The re-emergence of high-quality state-funded academic schools in our inner cities would also raise the status of state education. Like the old grammars, once again we would have beacons of excellence in our cities giving real hope and opportunity to pupils willing and able to climb the ladder to success. We would have a spread of other schools tailored to the abilities and interests of less academic pupils, many of whom are turned off by the comprehensive curriculum.
We need an education system for the 21st Century. Mr Willetts should think again before he apes New Labour’s failed prescription for our nation’s youth.
