Sir Chris Woodhead Blog: Cameron’s U-turn on selective education
Soon after David Cameron came to lead the Conservative party, he announced that grammar schools were nasty, elitist institutions that had no place in his vision of a compassionate Conservative politics. He did not use these provocative adjectives, of course, but this is what he meant. Grammar schools, traditionally supported by Conservatives, did not have the egalitarian ring of the modern comprehensive school, and his re-branding exercise demanded the promise that a Conservative Government would not countenance the creation of new grammar schools.
Last week he changed his tune. He stated that it might be a very good idea if existing grammar schools were to establish satellite schools to meet parental demand. The logic of this u-turn? Good schools, he said, should always have the opportunity to expand. Grammar schools are good schools. Grammar schools, therefore, should have the freedom to offer the excellence of their provision to students in towns down the road.
It is a pretty tatty fig leaf, but I suppose it is a good thing that he is doing the right thing, albeit for wrong, and very political, reasons.
The evidence is very clear that when we had more grammar schools, more students from disadvantaged backgrounds won places in top universities and went on to occupy positions of power and influence in the armed forces, the civil service and industry. Indeed, in the early 1970s, independent schools were seriously threatened by the success of grammar schools. But they didn’t have to worry. As Professor Frank Musgrove wrote in his fascinating collection of essays, School and the Social Order, left wing politicians were happy to allow the rich to keep their public schools whilst mounting a devastating attack on what was the working class equivalent.
I went to a grammar school. Nobody from my family had gone to university before and my mother and father could certainly not have afforded the fees charged by an independent school. At primary school, I had been top of the class. At the grammar school, I soon realised that I was going to have to work hard if I was going to succeed. There were boys there who were a lot cleverer than I was.
This is the first reason why grammar schools were and are successful. They bring clever children together, raise expectations, and encourage an entirely healthy competition.
The second reason is that their teachers are men and women who have a real academic interest in their subject. I am not saying that there are not such teachers in comprehensive schools, but many, particularly inner city comprehensives, find it very difficult to recruit well qualified staff, particularly in subjects such as physics and mathematics. Believe, as I do, that the quality of the teaching a child receives is by far the most important influence on that child’s success and the advantage of the grammar school is obvious.
So why, when the argument is so compelling, is the hatred of selective education so relentless? It is, fundamentally, the old socialist adage that if everybody can’t have it, nobody should. There is a good dose of sentimentality poured into the mix, with grown men and women wailing about the way in which their self esteem was destroyed by their failure to pass the 11 plus. There is the utopian delusion, too, that all men are equal and all children, therefore, should be able to benefit from the same education.
There are, as Mr Cameron’s u-turn demonstrates, always, in addition, the considerations of party political politics. We ought, of course, to be thinking about the children who are not suited to a grammar school education and it would be wonderful in the run up to the election if a political party were to spell out what it would do to improve practical education for such students.
Thus far, there is no sign that David Cameron or any of the other party leaders have even begun to pose the questions that need to be answered if state education is to be transformed in the way it needs to be transformed.
Professor Sir Chris Woodhead was formerly Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools from 1994 until 2000. He is author of Class Wars and A Desolation of Learning. His areas of expertise are education and leadership, accountability and the drive to raise standards; his research interest currently is the involvement of the private sector in raising educational standards. He retired at the end of 2013 from the chairmanship of Cognita, the international schools company he established in 2004.