Time to be radical: bring back grammars

For those who truly care about social mobility and educational merit, this is the moment to end the ban

When Rab Butler introduced the 1944 Education Act, bringing free grammar school education to the whole country, it unleashed a wave of social mobility that went on for the next 25 years. Britain became a more open, meritocratic society with more state school pupils making their way to the top of the professions: judges, permanent secretaries, Cabinet ministers and captains of industry. Then, as grammar schools were closed and replaced by comprehensives, this progress stalled.

Thankfully, some schools and some education authorities stood firm and we are now able to compare outcomes in the remaining selective and partially selective areas with the rest. The picture is of selective and nonselective schools working together and serving their communities well.

Unsurprisingly, where grammar schools remain, most people want to keep them – but where they don’t already exist you aren’t allowed to have one due to a legislative prohibition introduced by the Labour government in 1998. That ban on any new academically selective schools has had a particularly perverse effect in areas where the education system remains wholly selective. For instance, in Kent, Buckinghamshire or Lincolnshire, rising population or the building of new housing developments can mean that the remaining grammar schools are not always in the same places as the children.

This led a few years ago to the Weald of Kent girls’ grammar school jumping through endless hoops to establish an “annexe” in Sevenoaks to save local girls a long bus journey to school. The boys remain less fortunate. Where annexes aren’t possible, children can simply find themselves excluded from the opportunities that exist elsewhere in the county. This is the outcome of arbitrary prohibitions: not a drop-off in demand but good schools forced to become more and more exclusive.

We have come to expect areas with grammar schools to dominate the league tables for GCSE and A-level performance, but they are better than comprehensive areas on some more surprising metrics too, including diversity. Sutton Trust research has found that the hundred most socially exclusive state schools in England were all comprehensives. That results in selection by house price, rather than by a transparent and meritocratic admission process.

The same research also found Trafford, where grammar schools remain, to be the only local authority area in the North or Midlands to make the top 20 for entry to Russell Group universities. How’s that for levelling up the North?

Meanwhile, the Education Policy Institute a few years ago published its figures for the “attainment gap” by constituency. Chesham and Amersham performed best and my Altrincham and Sale West constituency was second. Far from failing children from less affluent backgrounds, here we see modern selective areas delivering the best outcomes for everyone. Similarly, Northern Ireland’s selective system scores highly on public examinations and has very low numbers coming out of school with no qualifications at all.

In highlighting these points, I am not advocating a wholesale reorganisation of schools across the country – that would be costly and disruptive. But we know that selective state schools can offer an opportunity to children from all backgrounds that might otherwise only be available to those whose parents can afford to go private.

So the new Government should do three things: lift the blanket ban on new grammar schools, end the prohibition on academic selection for new free schools and academies, and allow independent schools coming into the state sector as academies to retain their selective admission arrangements. These changes would not be a revolution but a route to a more diverse choice of state schools, better able to cater to the full spectrum of aptitudes and abilities found among our children.

With our new Prime Minister determined to drive higher economic growth, we need to make sure that people have the best opportunities to achieve their full potential. The time to act – and to be radical – is now.