Grammar schools, again

Michael Gove gave a “masterclass” in ministerial interviews, according to my excellent if unexpected colleague Steve Richards, on BBC Radio 4 World At One today.

In particular, he dealt with the currently fashionable enthusiasm for a return to a grammar school system with remarkable tact and skill. This is one of those passing fads that surfaces in the comment pages, even of newspapers that ought to know better, and a rather more persistent ideological marker of the right wing of the Conservative Party.

I understand why Martha Kearney, the presenter, tried to put the arguments in favour of returning to the 11 Plus, because those were the hard questions for Gove, but she strayed into contentious ground. She said that opinion polls showed that 75% of people support grammar schools, but this depends entirely on the wording of the question. If you ask about grammar schools, people say they approve of them. If you ask about the 11 Plus, or selection, or secondary moderns, people say they disapprove of them.

More importantly, she said that, “as grammar schools ended, social mobility did as well”. There is no evidence of any connection between the two, or indeed between most grammar schools staying abolished and the slight increase in social mobility under the Labour governments.

Gove was too polite in reply, because he has to watch his right-wing flank. The idea that labelling 80% of school children (including almost all working-class children) as failures at the age of 11 would make Britain more equal is implausible.

Instead, Gove gently said that it is “not the case that you need selection” to achieve excellence in schools systems, if you look at the most successful countries. He pointed out that excellent teachers, school autonomy and rigorous standards were more reliable common factors.

If you want a fuller argument for why more selection at 11 would not promote fairness and equality, and why a Conservative politician cannot say so, I refer you to David Willett’s speech in 2007, after which he lost his job.

Recent Posts on Eagle Eye

• The Dawn of Time
• The Fiction of Gatsby
• Why "build more houses" is not The Answer
• Cameron on Gay Marriage Should Make Us Proud
• What Focus Groups Say About Ed Miliband

• rcshore

  Speaking of Grammar…

  http://thedeathofirony.com/2012/05/24/comma-comma-chameleon/

• julianzzz

  Grammar schools are incompatible with academy status, what’s to stop an ambitious head from calling his school a grammar school and trying to dump failing pupils? It’s bad enough every insitution calling itself a “college”, given the chance they’d all call themselves junior universities if it meant attracting more easy to teach, middle class pupils!

• Kugelschreiber

  I think Grammar schools are very damaging for the population.

  It is so wrong to label a child as “thick” when they are only 11, people blossom at many different ages, anything from age 11 to age 80.

  For example, me, I was useless at & bored by Physics at school, but at the age of 34, I became fascinated by Electronics, & passed an exam in it with a distinction, I built my own radio, so enamoured of the subject did I become.

  And no one should ever be made to feel embarassed about admitting which school they went to.

  At the age of 11, success can so often depend on whether one has had an advantaged background or not.

• Kugelschreiber

  I don’t like Gove at all – he’s just another one of those nasty, sly Tory politicians who are hellbent on dividing the nation & dismantling all our fine British institutions such as our Local Education Authorities.