Irony of the Day

Although the Labour Party is, in theory at least, strongly opposed to grammar schools, the actual number of pupils being taught at such wicked and academically elitist institutions has risen by over 20% since 1997 (clearly, parents are voting with their feet in favour of grammar schools as the institutions likely to provide their children with the best education). All I can say is, that I never thought that I'd be in a position to say that anything significant had improved under Labour - but I guess I was wrong! Of course, it would be nice if the improvements had been brought about by the competent implementation of good policies, rather than the incompetent implementation of bad policies, but you can't have everything...

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater

A row is growing over plans to shut the most successful school in Stoke-on-Trent as part of a £200m area-wide reorganisation.

The local council is proposing to shut all its secondaries, many of which perform badly, and reopen 12 new ones.

One of those in the frame is a Catholic selective school, St Joseph's College. It could not reopen as a grammar and perhaps not even as a faith school.

Parents are up in arms and pupils are organising online petitions.

Stoke's restructuring is part of the government's Building Schools for the Future refurbishment programme.

Its informal consultation says: "Some areas of the city that once had lots of young people now have fewer and other areas of the city are due to have new homes built.

"To make sure that we have the right size schools in the right places, we have looked again at the number and location of all secondary schools. Some changes are needed."

It says it is trying to avoid, "a two-tier system, where some schools are perceived as being better than others by virtue of their name, facilities or governance."

Isn't that just so typically socialist? Not all schools can be equally good, therefore all must be made equally bad.

You are never going to have a system in which all schools everywhere are equally good, and it does seem that Stoke-on-Trent is cursed with a lot of failing schools. And of course it is quite reasonable that the council should want to take action - possibly quite drastic action - to try to resolve the problems faced by those schools. But what good can possibly come of closing down a school which, so far from being a failing school, is in fact very successful?
Given St Joseph's' apparently excellent record, the likelihood is that children who are at present being educated at St Joseph's will, if the council's plans go through, receive an education which is, to one degree or another, inferior to that which they are receiving at the moment. Certainly it is highly unlikely that they will receive a better education. As such, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that Stoke's Labour mayor and council leaders are just taking the opportunity to reduce the number of grammar schools in the UK, to push the British education system that little bit further towards a state entirely free of such elitist anachronisms as selection and excellence. And if they should happen to harm the education of hundreds of children in the process - well that's just too bad.

The war against grammar schools

Labour is set to reignite the political row over selective education by making it easier for disaffected parents to force the closure of their local grammar schools.

Jim Knight, the schools minister, has instructed officials to look at how to simplify the balloting process by which schools can be forced to drop selection under a 1998 law.

Knight’s move will be seen as an attempt partly to appease the Labour left and partly as a ploy to reopen a split in the Tory party over selection that emerged this summer. David Willetts, then shadow education secretary, said the 11-plus exam “entrenches advantage”.

The balloting system is a complex three-stage process that requires 10 parents to trigger a petition which must then be signed by 20% of all parents in the affected area before a full local vote takes place.

This has proved so complicated that only one full ballot – in Ripon, North Yorkshire, in 2000 – has gone ahead. It failed to end selection at the local grammar school.

“We are firmly committed to giving local parents the right to vote to abolish selection at existing grammar schools,” said Knight this weekend. “It is absolutely right we keep the parental ballot arrangements under review to ensure they work effectively and give value for money.”

If parents are to have the right to vote to abolish existing grammar schools, should they not also have the right to vote to create new ones? Well, no, of course not. Because this isn't really about parental choice at all: it's about getting rid of grammars. Hence the desire to make it easier to seek the abolition of individual grammar schools.

In addition to shortening the process required to trigger the full ballot or lowering the number of petitioners required to trigger it, another option now under consideration would be to allow antigrammar school campaigners early access to a full database of parents eligible to vote.

This could require MPs to change laws on the electoral register and on data protection, requiring a debate in parliament.

I'd imagine that it would also give the anti-grammar campaigners something of an edge when it came to campaigning. After all, they'd be able to start contacting prospective voters, before the defenders of grammar schools even knew that a vote was a possibility.

Of course, perhaps the main reason for the lack of votes on grammar schools is that there simply isn't any public support for closing them. 66% of voters (and 70% of Labour voters) say that they would like to see a state grammar school in every town. This reflects almost exactly the results in the vote on the future of Ripon Grammar School, where the proposal to end selection was defeated by a majority of two-to-one. The public know, even if the government and the opposition do not, that grammar schools produce the best outcomes for the most able pupils, and fiddling around with voting systems is not going to change this.

Think-tank calls for more grammar schools

More grammar schools and low-cost private schools are needed to raise the "dire" standards of the education system, a report by one of the most respected economic think-tanks says today.

Millions of people cannot read, write or count and millions more can barely do so because of the "socialist" state-directed system and comprehensive education, the Economic Research Council says.

Better off parents have escaped the worst aspects of comprehensive education by paying private fees, buying tuition or moving home to be close to the best schools, says the report. It is families on the lowest incomes that have suffered from the progressive theories and dumbing down of standards.

[...]

Prof Dennis O'Keeffe, the report's author, says leading Tories who claim grammar schools no longer offer a ladder of opportunity for poor, bright children fail to understand the importance of selection.

"Unlike David Cameron's parents who sent him to Eton, certain members of the modern Conservative Party appear not to understand the dramatically effective way competitive education encourages, identifies and rewards talent and consequently increases social mobility," he says.

"Comprehensive schools with soft and easy access for all have not served the community well. They have served only to eradicate upward mobility, and done so, perversely, in the name of eradicating privilege," adds Prof O'Keeffe, the professor of social science at Buckingham University.

Of course, all this flies in the face of the policies of the Tory Party, which has become virulently anti-grammar school under David Cameron. Cameron's policy of playing exclusively to the liberal-left gallery, while ignoring the views of the majority of the public, seems to be beginning to fail, however, with the Tories 3% behind Labour in the latest opinion poll. Of course, this is only one opinion poll, but for the Tories to be behind at this point, ten years into a Labour government, does suggest that Cameron's policy isn't really working. Perhaps if he were to come out and advocate policies which actually resonate with the public, then he might do rather better. Given that grammar schools are not only an area of particular importance to traditional Tory voters, but are actually supported by an overwhelming majority of people across the country, he might like to consider whether he would be doing better had he pledged to build more, rather than attacking the few we still have.

To be fair, Labour are no better on education (or, indeed, on anything else). Today, in a spectacular display of joined-up thinking, one Schools Minister, Lord Adonis, pledged that by 2020 80% of schoolchildren would get five good GCSE qualifications, while another Schools Minister, Jim Knight, announced that schools would have to make efficiency savings in line with planned cuts (in real terms) in funding levels. Now, it is of course the case that the solution to the problems of the education system is not to simply throw money at it, but it is still rather inconsistent to, on the one hand, call for an increase in standards, and, on the other, reduce the funds going to the schools which are supposed to be the motor driving that increase.

Cameron: The public are delusional

A few days ago, David Cameron described those who believed that the government should build more grammar schools as "delusional". Today, it was revealed that 66% of all voters would like to see a state-run grammar school in every town. Support for this is particularly high among the poorest, DE, social groups, of whom 80% would like every town to have a grammar school. Obviously these oafish proles do not understand that, as Cameron's minion David Willetts says, grammar schools "entrench social advantage".

Anyway, presumably 66% of the public are now to be considered "delusional" by the leader of the Tory Party. Unlike, say, William Hague who, from being quite sane a few years back, albeit cursed with the charisma of a dried-up dishcloth, has transformed into a raving Cameronite. Writing at Conservative Home yesterday, Hague asserted - to the derision of many commenters - that Cameron had "won the argument" and "faced down his critics".

Looks like someone's back on the 14 pints a day.

I agree with David Cameron

No, I haven't gone crazy, and I'm not planning to send off for my environmentally friendly Tory membership card just yet. However:

Conservative leader David Cameron has warned that the row over grammar schools was a "key test" of whether the party was fit for government.

I quite agree. If they pursue Cameron's policy, they will demonstrate once again that they're not fit for government.

Tory sellout number 94: grammar schools

Today, the party that, for some inexplicable reason, continues to be known as the "Conservative" Party, officially renounced its support for the sin of selective education. Apparently, selective education, and, particularly, grammar schools, "entrench social advantage".

Tory shadow education secretary David Willetts (King Edward's School, Birmingham; Christ Church, Oxford), an inveterate enemy of all forms of social advantage, says:

"We must break free from the belief that academic selection is any longer the way to transform the life chances of bright, poor kids."

"This is a widespread belief but we just have to recognise that there is overwhelming evidence that such academic selection entrenches advantage, it does not spread it."

[...]

Mr Willetts made it clear in his speech to the CBI that the party is committed to comprehensive education, though it will follow Labour's lead and allow the remaining 165 grammars to stay open.

How benevolent.

He told the leaders of industry that times have changed since he attended a grammar school in Birmingham. In those days, children had fairly similar personal and family experiences. Now, 40 years on, children had such different experiences that it was a fantasy to think that an exam could fairly distinguish between them.

"Middle-class parents invest far more effort in raising their kids than they did a generation ago. My parents didn't spend time driving me around to tennis coaching or music lessons. Nowadays, middle-class kids get all that and more and probably extra tuition to help them to do well in the exams at 11."

Grammar schools might once have worked to transform the opportunities of many children from poor backgrounds but no longer.

So I guess the results of research at Bristol University were wrong then:

Children who go to grammar schools in England achieve better grades than those of similar ability who are not in selective areas, researchers claim.

A Bristol University study suggested pupils from poorer backgrounds do particularly well.

Of course the researchers were wrong. They contradicted the views of all goodthinkful liberals.

Also, does David Willetts actually have any evidence that tennis lessons and private tutors (something which, from my experience, happens far less frequently than is made out) actually make much difference? I suppose they might give one child on the borderline of passing the 11+ a slight advantage over another in the same situation, but they cannot put a child who is manifestly not up to going to grammar school into such a school, and neither can they deprive a truly intelligent child from a poor background of a grammar school place.

What would disadvantage such a child is sending them to a poor quality comprehensive, stuffed to the brim with unmotivated teachers, criminal pupils, and immigrants who can barely speak English. This is what Willetts, and his master David Cameron (Eton; Brasenose, Oxford) would condemn that child to.

And the middle class children, with their tennis lessons and private tutors? Oh, they'll be alright. They'll just go private.

Surprise, surprise, grammar schools work

Children who go to grammar schools in England achieve better grades than those of similar ability who are not in selective areas, researchers claim.

A Bristol University study suggested pupils from poorer backgrounds do particularly well.

But relatively few children from the poorest families go to grammar schools.

Probably because bright children from poor families have already suffered from particularly poor state education by the time they reach their 11+. On a larger scale, the left has always been against grammars, so traditionally Labour areas are more likely to have abolished them altogether. And these areas are, on average, poorer than Tory-controlled areas, which are more likely to have kept selection, to one degree or another. So, across the country as a whole, children from poor families are simply less likely to have access to a grammar school.

Overall there is little or no impact on attainment, but the quarter of children educated in grammar schools do substantially better than their peers in similar non-selective areas.

By substantially, they mean 3.5 grade points - the equivalent of raising 3.5 GCSEs from grade C to B.

The other 75%, who did not go to grammar schools, were disadvantaged by 0.5 grade point.

[...]

The Labour government promised not to extend selection but did not abolish the existing grammars, where pupil numbers have in fact increased.

Instead it set up a system of parental ballots. Only one was held, in Ripon, where parents decided to keep the selective system.

Pro-comprehensive campaigners say the ballot process is biased against those who want to get rid of grammars.

Why only have ballots about abolishing grammar schools, in those areas that are still lucky enough to have them? Why not let people who don't have the opportunity to send their children to grammar schools vote on whether they would like that opportunity?

And they're not pro-comprehensive campaigners. They're anti-grammar campaigners.