Grammar and logic

Over the past few days, a number of Tory MPs and commentators have demanded the return of grammar schools. All their speeches and articles have one thing in common. None of them even begin to address the practical problems. You cannot build a schools system on eloquence and indignation.

It would be much easier to make the case that an intensive academic education does not suit every child if the non-grammar schools were something like the German technical high schools. In those circumstances, the Tories could have defended the grammar schools. As it was, the sink secondary moderns sank most of the grammars.

The ones which survive are, no doubt, excellent. But they do not provide the answer to the most pressing educational problem of our time: how to ensure that no child is left behind. That is not only a moral imperative; it is an economic one. Our children will have to earn their living in competition with Indian and Chinese youngsters. Much more must be done to ensure that they are able to do so.

As last week showed, many Tories are still unwilling to face up to this. Some of them object to the notion that a system which favours the middle classes is ipso facto unfair. It is the middle classes who do the work and pay the taxes. Should they not be entitled to some return?

They should, and their able children would benefit from the streaming and setting which David Cameron wishes to see throughout every comprehensive. As he has said, "I am so much in favour of selection that I want it to happen in every school." But it would be bad morals and worse politics to turn Tory policy for secondary schools into an array of life rafts, trying to rescue a few survivors from the wreckage of the comprehensive system.