Alongside the news that the UK could soon see the establishment of ‘new’ grammar schools in Kent, Devon and elsewhere, and that Labour will be urging the Liberal Democrats to support them in blocking these plans, the Lib Dems should examine the implications – and adopt a distinctive stance – on this disagreement.
The debate has gone over the usual arguments. On one hand, the pro-grammar Telegraph columnists imagine swathes of potential Nobel Laureates and curers of cancer who will irrevocably have their talents and spirits crushed if compelled to attend a comprehensive school.
On the other hand, the anti-side quite rightly highlights that most students attending grammar schools tend to hail from the higher end of the social spectrum, and that this supposed boost to social mobility from grammars is mostly illusory.
There’s nothing new in the outcome of this; grammar schools are beneficial if you happen to attend one, but not so if you don’t. Yet some, including the Telegraph’s Toby Young, are prepared to do a crude utilitarian analysis to decide whether or not to have grammar schools.
What, though, does this tell us about the real problems of the education system and our approach to it?
The objection that grammar schools are ‘bastions of middle-class privilege’ is now somewhat muted by the numerous ways in which parents can gerrymander the system, not least due to the Government’s school reforms in aid of ‘choice.’
Where grammar schools exist, paying for intensive tuition for the 11+ can often be a cheaper investment than moving house to the right catchment area or investing time in feigning religious affiliation.
Both sides of this argument focus on ‘social mobility’, or how well you do compared to the wealth of your parents. But, what we should be focussing on, and what is the more liberal approach, is ‘equality of opportunity’, or that one’s achievements should be irrespective of one’s background.
There is a very important distinction to be made here. Whilst the former approach concentrates on alleviating the symptoms of underlying, and undeserved, inequality, the latter looks at preventing it from occurring altogether. Thus, although both approaches must be developed, it is the latter that is far more worthwhile in the long term.
Higher social mobility is likely to be a consequence of equality of opportunity. In practical terms, and in principle, however, it is preferable for the state to ensure the latter, rather than try to enforce the former.
Just as it would be more cost effective to build sufficient affordable housing rather than paying for an ever-increasing housing benefit bill; it is more useful to tackle the underlying causes of family poverty leading to lower educational attainment, rather than positive discrimination seeking to redress this balance.
The anti-selection argument, as expounded by Fiona Millar focuses on the disproportionate representation of pupils from less-privileged backgrounds in grammar schools, but not on the reasons that create this disparity.
To me, it is reasonable to expect that children should be taught according to their strengths and their potential. A crude – and somewhat arbitrary- split in education at age eleven, seems to be one of the worst possible ways of achieving this. In order to legitimately argue against explicit academic selection, however, we need to illustrate that there is a viable alternative that gives every child the most appropriate education.
Far too often the comprehensive system not only restrains the brightest from excelling, but also fails to contribute in ending the stigma against ‘vocational’ education. A radical examination of how schools are structured is needed to solve this problem.
In short, whilst the opposition to the extension of grammar-school selection may benefit pupils, it is fundamental not to lose sight of the larger, underlying problems. Our focus needs to be extended not only to improving the equality of opportunity, but also to determining the root causes of inequality of opportunity.
At the moment, success or failure in education policy is often measured by what children from families of certain incomes attain. However, there is no a priori reason as to why income alone should determine attainment. A far more compelling argument explaining attainment is that it is determined by a complex pattern of social and parental factors.
Thus, whilst tackling relative material child poverty is very worthwhile, ultimately, it does very little to solve the causes of disparity in attainment and lack of opportunity amongst students.
These considerations put Lib Dem concerns over grammar schools into perspective. It is evident that the Coalition’s education reforms, including the encouragement of free schools and proliferation of academies, will likely have far more wide reaching consequences than the current academic selection regime.
Thus, in terms of policy, it would be far more effective for the Lib Dems to take the challenge presented by this issue to Labour and the Tories, forcing the debate on to the root causes of educational poverty.
Having this debate amongst ourselves would be the perfect start.
*Tom Smith is a senior parliamentary researcher working for Adrian Sanders MP
* Tom Smith is Director of Liberal Insight, the new liberal think tank.
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18 Comments
Worth time re examining this one, but I hope that this is where it will end. The pupil premium, together with continued pressure on Universities to select not only on the basis of attainment but also on that of potential is likely to do far more to ensure that we nuture the talent in young people. There is no really fair system for ensuring that each pupil achieves their maximum potential. It is well established that boys do better studying alongside girls, but that girls do better without the boys, and this of course can’t be put right by politicians.
The fight for places in Grammar schools is also matched in other areas by the fight to get into the catchment area of the current favourite comprehensive. What is really needed is not free schools which just move the problem around, and perhaps lack a long term vision, but also real emphasis on sorting out failing schools. What is also needed is access to good 6th forms in schools, separate colleges or in FE if we are really going to see our talent develop to it’s full potential.
“grammar schools are beneficial if you happen to attend one, but not so if you don’t” – does that mean that they’re actually harmful to those who don’t? That seems to be the key question. I’ve seen evidence from elsewhere that tracking is good for everyone.
But it is clear that developmental inequality is well-established before high school. I agree that this should be the priority. The pupil premium is a good step but we need even more emphasis on early years, parenting and free childcare.
As another step in decoupling grammar school entry from parents’ income, perhaps we should go back to having all pupils take the 11+ (within range of grammar schools) or give primary schools budgets to spend on training their brightest pupils for it.
I know a little about the situation in Kent/Sevenoaks and the debate there is really not about the rights and wrongs and grammar schools, but the distortion that has occurred because of the policy of not allowing new grammar schools to be built in a county which has made the decision to retain selective schools and which is then subject to pretty substantial demographic changes. At present, many children in Sevenoaks are passing their 11+ , but because there is no grammar school in the town are required to travel to Tonbridge/Tonbridge Wells, and in some cases because those schools are oversubcribed and have become super selective, having to travel even further distances. It cannot make sense in either educational or enviromental grounds to transport such large numbers of children to their schools.
Kent County Council, will compound the problem even further as a result of their recent decision to require all those travelling to grammar schools, where that school is not their nearest school, to pay the travel costs unless they are on income support ( which in the case of those travelling to grammar schools outside Sevenoaks will be c£500 per child per year) . The decision incidentally being taken by KCC without considering whether in impacted on particular areas – even though it clear does and hence may well be illegal.
BTW I very much doubt that any LibDems in Sevenoaks would oppose the moves – that is unless they wish to place their political principles above the likelihood of electoral suicide.
Nearly 20 years ago I did the rounds of the local secondary school Open Days to see what was on offer. I was already a teacher in one of them so knew the system and what to look for in deciding what was best for my children. One of the six schools had an outstanding record and had finished 19th in the whole of England in the league tables for the previous year. This was a church based school but was still open to anywhere in the huge catchment area.
When doing the rounds you didn’t have to go inside to spot the good, the bad and the ugly. You just looked in the car park, where the top school Open Evening was filled with Mercedes, BMW, Volvo and 4x4s. The other five school Open Evenings could be graded by the same method.
There was no obvious selection system based on merit so how did they do it.
Well my colleague who worked in the ‘academy of excellence’ explained. We have two hoops, and both paper ones. The first was to select ‘us’ as number one on your application form, that was the same as sent with all the others to the county education office. Secondly you must have a signed letter from your local parish vicar that endorses your application. There was no need to attend church or be a christian, you just needed the form.
That simple process of selecting the parents produced an elite school without resorting to any other system, and is probably how many other schools have played the system.
I’m a Lib Dem but I believe in grammar schools. I was a product of one and it was very good. The challenge was always to make all schools to the level of the grammar schools not drag the best down to the level of the mediocre, which is what happened and is why, 30 years later, we have a parliament full of rich toffs and not a cross section of the population.
Surely that is not Liberalisim.
The reason we have a parliament full of toffs has nothing to do with the ending of the grammar schools system and everything to with 30 years of failed neo-liberalist policies that have made the wealthy wealthier and have prohibited opportunity for those who aren’t.
I can’t see any reason why anyone would want to bring back the secondary modern system; a system in which 80% of pupils were left to rot on the basis of an exam they took at the age of 11. A return to educational apartheid is not liberal.
Grammar Schools may well benefit those that go to them but they certainly don’t benefit the majority of pupils that don’t.
I agreed with Keith’s wish to bring all schools up to the best standards but having a selective system, explicit or implicit, will not do this. It will simply condemn those children unfortunate to be born in to households which cannot or will not support their education as would be needed to pass the selection criteria to a second class education and probably to a second class life. To decide on the best education for a child when they are 11 will mean any late developers will get lost in the system
As a former Grammar School pupil myself, I am sure that this is not the way to go if we really want to make sure all children are given the opportunities they need to shine and to develop to their potentials
Is the primary task of schools to increase social mobility or to educate children? I think schools should stick to their last – a difficult enough task even without distractions. I suspect that the problems of social mobility arise primarily from the inept management of the economy over many decades (lack of quality jobs and unaffordable housing for instance) and that there is nothing much schools as such can do about it.
There seems to be a wide measure of agreement that somehow the wider ‘education industry’ is failing our children. Even now, in dire economic times, there are frequent reports that firms simply cannot find qualified UK staff for the jobs they have. We can’t go on like this.
The beginning of wisdom is to understand that the education industry is characterised by a particularly virulent case of ‘producer-push’ – the production side (led by govt) pushing harder and harder to get an outcome it deems desirable. Unfortunately, the sausages aren’t co-operating properly unless they come from very good homes. I can say from personal experience that ‘producer-push’ ALWAYS fails to deliver so this is no surprise.
So, switch to ‘consumer-pull’ and start from the top. What do firms want? Well, top class engineers, scientists etc. That implies world class universities and that in turn implies that at least one strand of school education should be really challenging. It’s too late to start learning the hard stuff only when you get to university.
But world class engineers etc aren’t the only thing firms need. Mostly, they need really good technicians and tradesmen who have the professional skill and integrity to do a good job. And here we have …. err, well … actually a black hole. (My theory is that because most ministers, senior civil servants and think tank folk went to university and expect their children to do the same they are just not sensitised to this need). At any rate there is a long and ignominious list of royal commission reports and the like dating back to around 1850 or so that says this is where we have a huge disadvantage with Germany and others.
So, what we need is a high visibility (to schools, parents and employers), high quality alternative to university. It should be tough to get into and easy to fail so aspirational and worthwhile. We could call it an apprenticeship perhaps and base it around day release work but with the proviso that it is not just training for one particular firms special needs; skills must be transferable.
So at both GCSE and A level we should abandon the pretense that everyone is doing the same exams and have two distinct sorts of exam – one academic (maths would involve calculus for instance) and one more practical (maths doesn’t need to involve calculus).
With susch a system in place we can revisit less-academic (non-grammar) schooling which would have an endpoint meaningful to kids from poor neighbourhhods in a way that the govt’s fantasy of them going to Oxford to read PPE never will be.
And the selection? Forget the 11+ and variants. Lets the parents actually decide whether they think their kids are suited for and will be happy in an academic stream or in a more technical one. (There have to be provisions to transfer for those that change their mind or can’t make the grade.
The weakness of the pro-grammar school case can be detected by asking one simple question: have you ever heard anyone call for the return of secondary modern schools? Because you cannot have grammar schools without secondary moderns (or an equivalent, whatever you choose to call it). And you cannot select pupils for grammar school without the 11-plus exam.
The proportion of children that pass the 11-plus is governed by the number of grammar school places available, not any objective educational standard. In the 11-plus era (between the 1944 Education Act and the spread of comprehensive schools in the 1970s), the proportion of children that passed the 11-plus and went to grammar school varied from local education authority area to area, depending on the number of grammar school places available. It was typically about 25%, never higher than 40% and could be as low as 12%. The remaining 60-88% were sent to secondary moderns and were effectively written off.
Nowadays, we expect to send some 40-50% of children to university, a much higher proportion than passed the 11-plus in its heyday. But then the 11-plus was designed for another age, when only a small minority went on to higher education. For example, I began at grammar school in 1968; only about a third of my year stayed on for the sixth-form and did A-levels, and only about a third of those won a university place.
So anyone who wants to re-establish grammar schools should tell us (a) how pupils will be selected, and (b) what will happen to the children who ‘fail’. And if the answer is that no-one will ‘fail’ and that the non-grammar schools will be of equivalent esteem to grammar schools, then that renders the term ‘grammar school’ meaningless.
Of course, other systems are not necessarily better. If you have any other discriminatory system of admission, the sharp-elbowed middle classes will try to game that system. Even so, I have yet to hear a champion of grammar schools extol the virtues of the secondary modern. Until they can make a convincing case for secondary moderns, their pleas should be regarded as dishonest.
@Liberal Eye – Your proposal is remarkably similar to the original thinking behind the 1944 Education Act. There were supposed to be three types of schools (grammar, technical and secondary modern) and children would be allocated according to their aptitude.
Unfortunately, the technical schools never got off the ground. Meanwhile, the English class system kicked in, and defined the grammar schools as ‘superior’.
So if we were to follow your proposal, a similar thing would happen. If one were to “let the parents actually decide whether they think their kids are suited for and will be happy in an academic stream or in a more technical one”, middle class parents would invariably opt for the academic system rather than the more technical one, irrespective of their children’s aptitudes, because the academic system would have more prestige.
@Simon. Your argument that ‘the English class system kicked in, and defined the grammar schools as superior’ sums up the emotional case against Grammar schools. On the other hand similar system work without great controversy in parts of Northern Europe. There is no case for a return to the old Grammar school system, but there is some benefit in considering a very limited number of Grammar schools, particularly in those parts of the country where there is a culture of low academic achievement, particularly among boys. I was from the first year of comprehensive school pupils, and appreicate the role that Grammar schools played in encouraging social mobility for those before me.
Two points:
1) Even if grammar schools worked to some degree for social mobility forty years ago, that won’t necessarily mean they’ll work today.
2) The vast majority of secondary schools are carefully streamed for most subjects. I can’t help but think, therefor, that calls for the return of the grammars are about social rather than educational segregation.
The genealogy on my mother’s side looks something like this
1748-1825 village tailor
1792-1878 village shoemaker
1830-1885 village tailor
1864-1950 town postman and part-time chimney sweep
1894-1977 baker and confectioner
and then it gets more interesting because the next generation, my mother’s generation produced her three brothers
1. Major in the army who then went on to be a top design engineerand lecturer
2. One of Britains first experts in Nuclear power for electricity
3.A CEO of one of Britains major naval shipyards
Their father, the baker, wasn’t too keen on education but they got some anyway.
Where did they go?
Numbers one and two went to a pre-1950 grammar school and number three to one of the new Technical Schools.
I dont think they would have achieved what they did under our current system which is more worried about political correctness, racism etc etc, than education.
Oh, if you might be thinking the genes came from their mother ‘s side, she was from a family of farmers and very much part of a non academic tradition.
“The vast majority of secondary schools are carefully streamed for most subjects. I can’t help but think, therefor, that calls for the return of the grammars are about social rather than educational segregation.”
Indeed. Could someone in favour of a return to grammar schools sum up in a nutshell why they favour once-and-for-all selection at 11 rather than streaming within secondary schools?
The point about university numbers is also a telling one. Are people really advocating a system where a substantial proportion will fail to get into a grammar school at 11, but eventually go on to university at 18? What sense does that make?
Definitely a subject worth looking at again (says the modern grammar school boy who definitely didn’t get in because of parental circumstances!)
Simon Titley’s point about secondary moderns is true up to a point, but equally, if the problem is that the grammar schools did what they were mean to and the secondary moderns and technicals (the forgotten element of the EA 1944 system) didn’t, why did we conclude that it was the grammar schools that were the sinners that needed eliminating?
Two other questions for the debate;
1. Wealthier parents are always going to seek an advantage for their children; it’s natural and it’s unavoidable. So would we rather they invested the money in their children’s performance or in their house price? (Strikes me that one of those is rather better for both the economy and intergenerational transfer!)
2. Is it possible to quantify the late-developer question? Anecdotally, my grammar school A-Level cohort of 94 contained exactly one person who went from the local comp at 11 to the grammar at 16 to Oxbridge. The idea that selection at 11 is fundamentally wrong because some children develop later is emotionally very strong in this debate, but I would be interested to see what evidence there actually is for it.
@ Simon Titley – I absolutely agree about secondary moderns. I was lucky to scrape into grammar school (also in the 1960s) and that only because the area had an above average percentage intake. The local paper used to publish all schools’ results and boys at the secondary modern I would otherwise have gone to used to get typically one O level, usually in art or woodwork.
However, I think blaming the class system is only half the answer. The other half is ‘academic drift’. In my day certainly teachers, many of whom had themselves been to good universities, regarded getting one of their students to Oxbridge as a success and so on all the way down the line and this inevitably coloured attitudes. (You could I suppose count this as a particular manifestation of the class system but I think it’s helpful to be more specific).
Yes, what I suggest above is indeed akin to the 1944 Education Act in basic architecture but with crucial differences. The academic option is anchored at the top by A levels. these are well understood by students, parents and employers. Inter alia they provide a very clear goal for a school student – get great A levels and go to the university of your choice, get middling A levels and go to another university. This is what I mean by ‘consumer-pull’.
We need to invent a new 16+ exam – let’s call it ‘Matriculation’ for the purpose of discussion. Then to get onto any apprenticeship a student would need to pass his/her ‘matriculation’. To get into a popular course – say for the sake of argument, plumbing – he/she would need top grades. To get into a less popular one mediocre grades would suffice. But no grades = no govt funding or help so there is a BIG incentive. (Why shoud the taxpayer shell out for those who have not demonstrated an ability or willingness to do the necessary work?) The system is simple (intentionally so) and willl be understood by parents and students – and which incidentally puts the whole thing on a fair equivalent footing with the academic stream and the pull of the desire to get good grades would cascade down through the school.
As to choice, this would for the first time give parents and students a meaningful choice rather that a faux choice between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ schools. (That’s a choice???) I suspect that Tory plans are generally a thinly veiled way to reintroduce grammar schools without paying any serious attention to those for whom this is just not a sensible option. (At a guess the vast majority of free schools will be promising parents something like “a rigorous academic education”. That might be a fertile avenue for a bit of research perhaps).
I don’t share your pessimism that parents would invariably opt for the academic choice. Some will, of course, so there must be sanctions – for instance anyone not keeping up (as evidenced by class and exam marks) should be asked to leave and may not then have first choice of technical school as the best will be already full.
Ultimately, it is up the the govt to create a high prestige alternative or we leave >50% behind. If we really are a radical party we ought to be on the case of those who don’t have anyone else to speak up for them.
@Steve,
“The reason we have a parliament full of toffs…” is because people become toffs upon entry into Parliament!
‘Education’ is a divisive subject because different people mean different things by it.
It can mean teaching and it can mean learning. It can mean aquiring social skills, and it can mean building a social network of alumni and friends. It can mean gaining knowledge, it can mean appreciating and understanding that knowledge and it can mean applying knowledge in appropriate, innovative and illuminating ways.
Education is life.
It really shouldn’t matter what a school is called provided it does the best by the people under it’s roof. But so long as what that means is defined according to the needs of the bureaucrats running society, not the individuals living day-to-day lives, it will fail to meet requirements.
Social mobility and wealth shouldn’t be ordained by bureaucratic qualifications because each certificate only measures particularised narrow definitions of ‘education’, and an ability to learn which is officially determined by enrolment and attendance within the system prescribed by those same bureaucrats.
Successive governments have effectively put in place and endorsed implicit age apartheid as the foundation of all other forms of unfair and damaging discrimination.
While imposing discrimination at age 11 is outrageous, it is no less outrageous doing the same thing at 16, 18 or any other age.
I’ve always found it a bit strange that the phrase ‘raising standards’ is accompanied by a proliferation of different standards. Nobody is against it, as nobody can be – because it is the wrong conclusion arrived at by the wrong means from the wrong starting point.
Parents are primarily concerned with raising their children. Society is primarily concerned with raising people. Government should by primarily concerned with raising citizens.
And that’s raising, not razing.
Puzzle: “equlity of opportunity” yes: but equality in relation to what? What single scale can all men be measured by? and if they could would it be a significant one? Why do we all need the same chance of sweeping the super-store car-park? Whatever the teaching profession claims we aren’t all going to get the same mastery of Ancient Greek grammar, beat us or charge us as you will. There is such a thing as fantasy aspiration which I, and I suspect most of us, have a fair share of; success in which were it to be attained would not (looking at Parliament or Banking) necessarily be socially beneficial.