Grammars: the only hope for our brightest pupils
I swear no other country is as screwed up about education as ours
It is no coincidence that the only female prime ministers this country has produced went to grammar school. From modest homes, Margaret Roberts and Theresa Brasier passed the Eleven Plus which admitted them to a place where no one was bullied for being a “swot”. They were taught by clever people who had attended good universities and would guide their pupils to the same destination. They mastered a body of knowledge, what the great educationalist Matthew Arnold defined as “the best that has been thought and said”. They were surrounded by young people keen to make something of themselves. Most important of all, Margaret and Theresa imbibed the grammar-school ethos which says that excellence matters and, if you work hard enough, no one can hold you back.
Both won a place at Oxford where they mixed with people so lucky they didn’t know what privilege was. We call this social mobility. Throughout their careers, Margaret and Theresa were patronised by public schoolboys. So what? They were grammar girls; they just worked harder than anyone else, kicked up their heels and left those stuck-up sods for dust. Without grammar schools, the greatest engine of class transformation this country has ever seen, politics, science, law, theatre, medicine and all the best jobs would have gone on being dominated by the privately educated few. And we would still be waiting for a woman prime minister.
So, who better than Theresa May to drive through the creation of hundreds of selective free schools? Yesterday, she basically promised to lift Labour’s pernicious ban on opening grammars so that “the most academically gifted children can get specialist support to fulfil their potential, regardless of family background”.
Mrs May has figured out that a supposedly meritocratic “comprehensive” system is nothing of the sort. The secondary schools with the best results are in areas with the most expensive housing. Bright children from poorer homes are stuck in “comps” where teachers are too busy doing social work and crowd control to identify the intellectually able, even if their politics allowed them to do something so repellently “elitist”. Funny how those sensitive souls who shudder at the thought of selection by academic ability happily turn a blind eye to selection by house price, isn’t it?
Make no mistake, following the courageous path hacked through the Blackboard Jungle by Michael Gove, this is a serious attempt to arrest a decline which has left millions of Britons embarrassingly uneducated compared with many of their foreign counterparts. Only a grammar-school PM would care enough to make it happen.
Having attended the best school that money can buy, David Cameron could not be seen to champion the best schools that money can’t buy. Not even when his core vote was clamouring to send their offspring to grammars. Samantha and David will have breathed a sigh of relief that their son, Elwen, will not now have to attend one of west London’s boys’ comprehensives. Many are frightening places. The Camerons are less cynical than those Labour grandees, who somehow always end up sending their kids to fancy, high-achieving schools they have outlawed for other people’s offspring.
What infuriates me as a parent and someone who trained as a teacher is the hypocrisy, chippiness, ignorance and downright dishonesty which poison any debate on this subject. On Radio 4, Angela Rayner, Labour’s education spokesman, said Mrs May’s plans were “disgusting”. Mellifluous as a moose in the mating season, Angela bellowed: “Grammar schools is a vanity project.” And Ms Rayner is a one-woman argument for expanding selective education, if only to teach English grammar to someone who – God help us – hopes to become secretary of state for education.
Angela does have a point. There is much that is “disgusting” in our system. It’s disgusting that there is a crisis in teacher recruitment, not unconnected to the fact that four in 10 teachers have experienced violence from pupils. It’s disgusting that children who might excel at maths or science don’t have a teacher with a degree in those subjects. It’s disgusting that social engineering has seen academically able kids used as cannon fodder to try to boost the performance of disruptive elements, who ruin lessons. It’s disgusting (and so terribly terrible sad) that, back in the early Seventies, state-school products swelled the ranks at Oxford and Cambridge, because they had been brilliantly educated at the many grammar schools and could compete on a level playing field. In 2017, some of our best universities operate unofficial “quotas” to admit comprehensive kids.
I swear no other country is as screwed up about education as ours is. The rich don’t give a hoot about state schools because money and connections will always smooth the path. The Left don’t want any lifeboats for poor, clever children because, if you provide lifeboats, it’s an admission that the ship is sinking. Better to let them all drown and call it fairness.
That leaves Theresa May to take up the fight on behalf of kids who have no option but to get what they’re given. Over the next few days, the PM will be attacked by the usual suspects shouting that the Eleven Plus is unfair because it sorts children into “sheep and goats” and everyone uses tutors blah blah. She should hold her nerve. The public is with you, Prime Minister. Talented children, in whatever field, are a nation’s precious resource; ours are being sold short. They deserve a great education. Margaret Roberts and Theresa Brasier entered grammar school as sheep, and emerged as swans.
We need that transformation now more than ever.