Until this week’s Prime Minister’s Question Time the debate about grammar schools over the last few days has seemed like an internal Conservative Party matter. The media has spotted that Theresa May is shifting policy away from that favoured by David Cameron. We learn that the former Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, is against any more grammar schools. But another former Education Secretary, Michael Gove, is apparently going along with it.
Grammar schools don't aid social mobility. Kids from disadvantaged backgrounds are still less likely to go even if they get the grades #pmqs
— Labour Press Team (@labourpress) September 14, 2016
What about the Labour Party? It is a sensitive issue for Jeremy Corbyn – and for some of his closest allies – which might explain his delay in taking up the issue. Corbyn was a pupil at Adams’ Grammar School. When Corbyn was elected Labour Leader, the Headmaster, Mr Gary Hickey, said: “I would like to congratulate Jeremy Corbyn on his recent election success; we’re always delighted when any former pupil succeeds in their chosen career. Mr Corbyn’s opinions on selective schools are well known but I warmly invite him to come and visit his former school to see the great many changes that have taken place, and talk to our pupils about their experience”.
Corbyn’s son, Benjamin, went to a grammar school – although this was against the wishes of Corbyn senior. It was as a result of this that Jeremy Corbyn split up with his then wife Claudia Bracchita. Neither of these incidents represents hypocrisy – but the Labour leader is still vulnerable on the subject.
Among some of the leading Corbynistas the charge of double standards is harder to deflect. Diane Abbott sent her son to the City of London School. The fees are £14,886 a year and it is a selective school. Then there is Seumas Milne, Corbyn’s spin doctor. Seumas sent his son Patrick to the Tiffin School in Kingston upon Thames and his daughter Anna to the Tiffin Girls’ School. Both are grammar schools that perform very well in the league tables.
The former Education Secretary, Ed Balls, has criticised any increase in grammar school places. He was a pupil at Nottingham High School – a selective, fee paying school. That was not his decision, of course. But in his memoirs he says: “I would never dream of saying I regretted my education. My parents went for the option they thought was right for me and my brother and sister, because wanting the best for your children is what every parent wants.” Indeed.
PM @Theresa_May & @jeremycorbyn clash at #PMQs over government plans for grammar schools https://t.co/cTsRn1bOj1 https://t.co/ElOeGWegO9
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) September 14, 2016
Then there are the media critics. Polly Toynbee in The Guardian laments that more grammar schools are proposed “without rhyme or reason”. Polly sent her children to Bedales – current basic fees are £34,533 a year – for which they had to pass an entrance exam.
Margaret Thatcher presided over the closure of many grammar schools when she was Education Secretary. But she didn’t really believe in her own policy. She said a few years later, as Tory leader in 1977: “People from my sort of background needed grammar schools to compete with children from privileged homes like Shirley Williams and Anthony Wedgwood Benn.”
The Conservatives are not immune from hypocrisy. Boris Johnson told the Centre for Policy Studies: “I remember once sitting in a meeting of the Tory shadow education team and listening with mounting disbelief to a conversation in which we all agreed solemnly that it would be political madness to try to bring back the Grammar schools – while I happened to know that most of the people in that room were about to make use, as parents, of some of the most viciously selective schools in the country.”
PM tells Labour leader: He went to a grammar school, I went to a grammar school, it's what got us where we are today https://t.co/x0o47PODAx
— DailySunday Politics (@daily_politics) September 14, 2016
For so many politicians to be wracked with guilt about their own educational choices makes the grammar schools debate charged with emotion. In fact the changes proposed will be modest but welcome. The notion of “bringing back” the old system is not possible. Some will lament this while others will cheer. It seems to me that the “sheep and goats” division at eleven must have been demoralising for the majority who were sent to the Secondary Moderns where standards were pretty low.
Yet the idea that there is a “system” in place for education is outdated. The welcome news is that the “system” has been smashed to bits and replaced by an increasingly diverse array of schools. Most secondary schools now operate independently of local authority control. There is no possibility of them being reorganised as a binary selective system on previous lines. So talk of a return to the old system is misleading.
But let’s suppose that under the proposed system, a new free school opens in Liverpool for secondary school pupils. Perhaps it might take advantage of the new flexibility to have some element of selection – whether academic or for an arts or sports specialism.
It could give first preference among those who passed the entrance exam to those on free school meals. Would allowing such a school to open really do any harm to children in the existing 40 comprehensive schools in the city? Would it really harm social mobility?
There will be Labour MPs in Liverpool and other cities who fight such schools being given a chance. I wonder how many of them will then try and get places for their own children at them.
