Grammar schools aren’t an answer to the social mobility problem

BigAl

You can play around with your statistics all you want and smear your socialist interpretation all over it. Just answer the question: Why do parents in Kent want their children to go to grammar schools? Selection is based on passing a test, not on location or anything else. Why not produce more grammar schools when this is what parents and pupils want.

Rhoda Klapp

I will try again. It does not matter how better education is delivered, if it is delivered. What we do now doesn't work very well for most. Never mind the ideology, I don't care if there is a Grammar school or home schooling or vouchers or anything else, if it delivers.

BUT, it should deliver because it is the responsibility of the goverment to provide good education for all. And that means education appropriate to ability and potential. All this social mobility nonsense is not the responsibility of the government, it is the responsibility of the individual, helped one would hope by their family. None of the government's damn business to tell us what class we should be or what income we should get or whether we are doing better or worse than our parents. Although it might be nice if the scumbag bastards stopped putting barriers in the way.

Charlie the Chump

Yes, we must raise standards across the board but this can only be done by allowing schools to dispense with poor teachers and recruit and retain good ones. This has to be where Gove's focus remains.
Resurrecting Grammar schools, while tempting, is now looking too far backwards, time has moved on.

Nick

It doesn't take account of particular jobs moving up and down the class hierarchy.

In the past, for example, MPS would have been considered upper middle class.

Now, they have slipped to the criminal classes.

Hexhamgeezer

I wonder if those educated chaps used any data on my old school (in Gateshead) which used to be a Grammar but converted to Comprehensiveness. By the time I completed A levels there were more ex pupils who were dead from glue overdoses or in jail than went to university. That was not the case while a grammar.

Jon Rosenberg

As I've yet to read a sociological report which didn't 'prove' the result the investigator set out to find, I'll take the basic thrust of the argument in this article with a pinch of salt.

HJ

I find it really surprising that so many Spectator readers promote grammar schools (as under the earlier post on this subject).

The problem with a grammar/secondary modern school system is exactly the same as that of a comprehensive school system - they are both systems imposed from the top down by government (or local government). So people argue for their preferred system and are quite prepared to see it forced on people who don't agree with them - as it must be an either/or choice. We thus guarantee that a good proportion of the population will be unhappy.

But why do we need government to impose a 'system' at all? What is wrong with just funding pupils and letting any type of provider try to attract pupils? I know of excellent selective and non-selective independent schools and those that have the money to send their children to them seem quite satisfied. There is no central body imposing a system nor deciding what type and capacity of schools are provided. The problem is simply that the rest of the population doesn't have the same choice.

So government should get out of the business of school provision. It should not decide what type or quantity of schools there should be. Its only involvement should be to help provide funding.

John Richardson

An honest question:-

Did you attend a Public School or a Grammar School Mr Jones?

I'd love an answer........

Chris lancashire

OK, if there is no causal link between scrapping grammar schools and the decline in social mobility, what did cause it?

Fergus Pickering

Right Mr Jones. Simple question. Why are comprehensive schools so crappy? Answer on a postcard please. Or haven't you got the data? And if not, why not?

Lisa

I'm from a poor, working class family and I went to a Grammar school. I'm now the CEO of my own consultancy business and I count the ambition and confidence Grammar school provided me with as a major factor in this. My parents, were all for getting a steady job and keeping my head down until I retire. Grammar school taught me to dare to dream about what I could achieve and to go out and do it. I will be eternally grateful for this. I can honestly say this is a similar story for many of my ‘poor’ friends who I attended Grammar school with too.

I do have an issue with selection for Grammar schools today. That is the fact that some parents who can afford to, invest in tutoring to try and get their children through the tests. I think this is extremely wrong because the whole point of Grammar schools, in my humble opinion, is to give the best chance to naturally able children, whose parents can't afford private or enhanced education, to make the best of themselves in the world. There were a few girls at my school who quite plainly shouldn't have been there - they couldn't keep up with the most basic lessons - but who had been tutored through the 11+. I’m not sure of the answer but there needs to be a way to select pupils purely on the basis of ability rather than who has practised enough mock tests.

Sadly most of the critics of Grammar schools are those who were too privileged to need them or who didn't get the privilege at all. I do believe in giving a fair chance to all children but why not put particularly able children in a school together where they can learn at an advanced pace rather than just lumping everyone together for the purpose of equality? Equality isn't about being the same after all.

alastair harris

the social mobility problem?! what you mean is the difficulties of earning a large crust if you come from a poor background. Can't be doing with PC eggshells. The problem with selection in education is that the problem it is solving is providing an education based on ability. Social mobility does not actually mean anything, which makes is somewhat difficult to solve!

Victor Southern

Chris Lancashire @4.59.

An easy answer - fools like you and I are looking at the data the wrong way round.

That particular bundle of academics garnered statistics to prove their opinions; thereby the opinions become tested fact.

Rhoda Klapp

I'll have a stab at Chris Lancashire's question. What did cause it? Comfort. It is no longer worth making the effort to get out of the class for which all is provided (albeit at very low levels of adequacy) into the class which has to pay for it. Of course one would not aspire to the class which has everything but feels so guilty it has to take money from the middle to give it to the bottom, and to interfere with everyone's life to boot.

TrevorsDen

So Davis was as self serving in his use of statistics as he was in making the speech in the first place.

Coffee Housers who worked themselves up in a frenzy of support now have egg over their faces. Shame.

The time to bring back grammars has long gone past. Its time to concentrate on quality of teaching and maybe streaming in comprehensives and producing good schools a la Gove proposals.

No government will get elected on a proposal to bring back grammars.

strapworld

We have teachers who just cannot teach.

How do we improve education when this disgrace is allowed to continue?

Far too many excuses from the Liberal Left, who control this country, and who appear to want to continue the decline of our country in the education field.

Poor children excelled in Grammar Schools. They did not need especial treatment to reach universities. And, never forget, in those golden days university education was 'on the house'.

If we stopped giving billions to the corrupt EU and millions to foreign countries, perhaps we could educate our children to a proper standard again. We could also ensure that we had teachers who can teach!

TomTom

What about quoting Adam Swift's other work: "The End of the Tory War on Single Parents" ? He seems to approach his research in a non-normative manner as this title suggests

Simon Stephenson.

Big Al : 4.27pm

"Just answer the question: Why do parents in Kent want their children to go to grammar schools?"

Because they think, probably quite rightly, that this will give their children an advantage over those who are consigned to the alternative. But the point is that no one would really be happy about their children going to an old-style secondary modern, so the enthusiasm for the reintroduction of grammar schools is to no small extent built around the assumption that "our" child will end up at a grammar and not a secondary modern.

I fear it's not ideal specifically for the education of the brighter children, but I really think the best answer must be to improve the whole spectrum of the comprehensive process, so that whatever ones level of capability, one ends up better educated than is the case under the present arrangements.

It's not just the production of people more capable of work, the whole range of political possibilities becomes so much wider with a population that is more confident of its ability to think. This is why it's at least as important that the education of the less capable is improved as it is to ensure that the more capable get what they need.

Cogito Ergosum

This article is nothing but lefty special pleading to keep the Speccie in cahoots with Cameron.

Get some fire in your bellies, Spec-men, and argue a rational case based on IQ.

Salcombe

So, the academic justification for saying that the abolition of grammar schools does not explain the decline in social mobility is that the measurement was not of their preferred narrow sociological definition but of income. What a piece of nonsense.
Income at least can be quantatively and accurately assessed and if it has relatively gone down (and I see no one disputes this), then I think many would agree that depriving bright, working-class children of academic opportunity and the financial success achieved by grammar schools for the failed concept of a comprehensive education, as enacted in the UK, is a flawed and epic failing of public policy.

Parents instinctively know this and hence the massive over-subscription for the remaining grammars, which mostly select, incidentally, on ability not achievement (CAT testing is now universal).

Michael

If I do a search for 'Jonathan Jones', all that comes up is some Guardian arts reporter. SO, sensibly ignorable, like Trevorsden's views on this subject.

oldtimer

Speaking for myself the chance to go to a direct grant grammar school, rather than to a secondary modern school (as they were then described), made all the difference to the life I have been able to lead. It made it possible for me to go to Oxford and to have the opportunity of a career that would not have been possible via the alternative secondary school route.

My parents were certainly poor in the 1930s (the depression years), got by in the WW2 years, enjoyed a brief ration free three year period abroad and better standard of living in the late 40s, and returned to a very modest standard of living thereafter. My school years, encouraged and supported by my parents, made all the difference.

At Oxford I was not alone. Most of my contemporaries at my college also came from grammar/direct grant schools. Like me they were all turned out to be "socially mobile". I reject the notion behind this post that grammar schools made no difference. They made all the difference for people like myself and my contemporaries.

I see what Gove is trying to do and I support it as a practical policy for the vast majority of young people in secondary education. Just as I support those local authorities with a surviving grammar schools base, such as Buckinghamshire, in their efforts to continue to build on it.

Nicholas

The point about grammar schools is not wanting them back but the fact that politicians who decided that they knew best didn't. The whole problem with the modern idea that change is needed and all change is good is demonstrated by the disagreement about both the stats and what they reveal. Politicians are still doing it, saying "it is the right thing to do" when they have absolutely no idea about the long term consequences.

The grammar school tragedy is not about trying to turn the clock back but about the lack of circumspection and caution in politicians who insist on taking huge risks for presumed and unproven benefits. Our history is littered with it.

Dilettante

You seem to have made rather a leap, from 'Davis does not have sufficient evidence' to 'thus, comprehensive schools are right'. I come from a grammar school area, and children get put on trains from far off to attend them.

Old Fox

This is sad rubbish. Secondary moderns are perfectly good schools. Before he was kicked out of office, the repellent Balls tried to launch a campaign against the secondary moderns of Kent, until it was pointed out that Ofsted had recognised them as excellent schools. With children of no particular academic aptitude they nevertheless attained respectable results at public examination - degraded though such examinations now are. As Graham Brady forced the former government to admit, the achievement of all children ACROSS THE ACADEMIC BOARD was superior in the few remaining selective LEAs to all the others. Mr Guardian Arts Commentator: go and boil your head - it isn't fit for anything else.

daniel maris

What was wrong with the old system was not the grammar schools, but the eleven plus.

Parents should be able to select the school they wish their child to go to. But there should be teachers' recommendations to guide them. If schools are oversubscribed they can be expanded.

There should be technical schools - perhaps renamed business and vocational schools - on the original model of the 1944 Education Act (for some reason technical schools were never developed).

TrevorsDen

Hello Strapworld. Fair points, spoiled by your last paragraph.

Does Germany have a good education system?
how much does it contribute to the EU?

Is the school system really so short of money? So short that education is suffering?

The dichotomy highlighted by Lisa over 11+/selection shows just how impossible it would be to bring back grammars which require selection. How?

I am not anti grammars. I went to one - you won't be surprised to learn I was average. But what we need is simple - good schools and good teachers.

TrevorsDen

yes fair enough mr maris, but you are naive on the selection principle.

You are right that the technical schools did not flourish. But today where are the industries and jobs which the technical schools could supply?

Comprehensive education is not evil or terrible its not been managed very well. Labour threw out the notion of 'education' in place of doctrinaire social engineering and trendy ideas. This has all been belatedly admitted. But reinventing the past which itself was designed for a different age is not the answer.

And Davis' efforts just show him up as an opportunists.

Baron

a typical pseudo-liberal rant, this blog that is, by someone who couldn’t admit to the bleeding obvious if it kicked him in the balls, shouted, am the bleeding obvious.

nothing ever is straightforward in social sciences, an examination of every phenomenon is bound to be tainted by a large variety of conflicting influences, but to anyone not blinded by political dogma, the key factor effecting outcomes in social mobility measured by any yardstick was unquestionably the abolishing of grammar, the move towards the comprehensive model.

ability is what drives one’s life, to pretend otherwise is bonkers, to nurture the exceptional talent of the top 15% or so of the young from every generation from whatever background, to give it shape, focus, purpose in an environment where even a few are vacuous of it, or have it, cannot be bothered to have it nurtured is far more likely to fail rather than succeed.

the generation of those whose ability was left dormant, wasted, unutilised because of political orthodoxy should sue the bastards responsible for it.

Baron

Cogito Ergosum @ 6.19:

You’ll be blocked, the gate keepers who censor the posting will not get you through. I’ve tried, all in the waste paper basket. That’s what the freedom of expression means to the ninnies who shout freedom, but censor freedom.

TomTom

"But there should be teachers' recommendations to guide them"

Funnily enough the OECD Pisa Studies knows this is how Germany functions because the Head of the PISA Group is German and experienced this.

There is a high correlation between children of professional parents being "recommended " for Gymnasium and children of non-professionals being "recommended" for Realschule or Hauptschule. Interestingly enough German has no 11= Exam but Teacher Recommendation.

It also has a very high R2 for senior executives to be sons of senior executives. It is just interesting that the 11+ is so Northcote-Trevelyan and that is maybe why it grates on English class sensitivities

Mr L

There seems to be an assumption that these researchers whose work is quoted are disinterested observers. Of course they aren't. Academics are commonly as left-liberal as they come.

I just know that for me and my friends, coming from working-class homes in the 1950s, success in the 11+ opened many opportunities that otherwise I very much doubt we would have had.

Gawain

What a load of over intellectualised tosh ! I am sorry, but, aiming to "raise standards across comprehensive schools" is an oxymoron.The whole ethos of "comprehensive" schools is aimed at absolute equality and levelling down. Only competitive entry and competitive examinations will raise academic standards. That is the way it is done in other parts of the word.

escapedRoger

The problem is stated in the phrase "abolition of the grammar schools", nobody ever talks about the abolition of the secondary modern schools because it was a levelling DOWN exercise.

daniel maris

TrevorsDen -

What do you mean I am naive on the selection principle? I don't think I am.

I am suggesting a way of avoiding the grief and stress of the 11 plus system.

I think firstly most parents would be prepared to follow teachers'
recommendations. Secondly, lots of parents don't really like the academic environment for themselves or their children. If they can see there is a good local school that offers non-academic opportunities, in particular those leading to employment after school will I think be very happy to send their children to the modern equivalent of technical schools. I think I'd probably call them business and vocational schools, but the name is not the most important thing.

Personally I would introduce other reforms, including the guarantee of a job for school leavers who complete their school career.

daniel maris

Tom Tom -

Well thanks for that confirmation from the German experience that it is not naive to suppose that in broad terms teacher recommendations are followed by parents.

I would agree it was the 11 plus that was the problem. It caused a lot of emotional pain for children by forcing them to all undertake an academic-type exam and brand some as failures.

I think if there were good employment-orientated secondary schools, many parents would be happy to see their children go there, and there would be no suggestion they were going there because they were "failures".

We could then avoid subjecting non-academic children to the mental torture (for them) academic course work - with all the resultant disruption and discipline problems.

One last point: we have moved on a lot I think from the times of the Corn is Green generation when there was a large pool of children with academicly orientated children in working class families being denied opportunities. (Well apart from more recent immigrant communities.) Working class towns and estates have been stripped of their academic talent a number of times over - the old self-education movement within the working class is more or less dead, the labour movement no longer runs libraries, night classes and so on.

We are now pursuing an illusion - that there is still a high percentage of children from poor backgrounds who are ready, able and willing when it comes to academic work.

I think rather than putting in place state enforced quotas, we should I suggest just ensure there is maximum freedom within the system, and making it a matter of parental choice rather than anything else (11 plus exams, where you live etc) that is important.

lids

Well, I have written to Mr Willets and asked him whether I should send my child to our Grammar school or a local comp. Under his socially engineered model, universities will discount good grades from the grammar because everyone gets good grades from there. So, in Willets' socialist world, she should be able to ease back, do no work, perform (relatively) poorly, and still get her university of choice if I send her to the comp, stacked high with special needs kids. What sort of message is this guy putting out???

Sir Everard Digby

Indeed Grammar Schools are not the answer,unless the objective of education is to produce excellence in learning;the political classes don't want this -people who can think,value and judge are dangerous and might realise what the the political classes are doing and get rid of them.

Cameron,amongst others is always talking about improving education of the poorest in the poorest areas -what's the incentive for those pupils to improve,when a comfortable life on benefits is there for minimal effort?

The first step must be to answer the undelying question 'as a society what do we value? Currently it's 'celebrity' and 'political correctness'

Neither seem good building blocks for a decent society. A fine monument to decades of political-class meddling in education.

TomTom

"hat it is not naive to suppose that in broad terms teacher recommendations are followed by parents"

Actually Daniel you make the wrong inference. Teachers base their recommendations on parental background, so you have little hope of Gymnasium if your parents are not educated professionals.

The German System is different because there are no national exams. The Abitur is set at Land level and varies from poor in Bremen to good in Bayern; Bremen has Comprehensives, Bayern has Selection.

Northcote-Trevelyan 1854 introduced Exams into the Civil Service to create "carriere ouverte aux talents" in place of Class....it was copied in schooling....until the backlash came against Merit and in favour of "background" and "Social standing".

That's why we are seeing a reaction against Mid-Victorian Values of striving urban middle classes moving onto the territory owned by landed interests through exams, using proletarian doctrines of mass-solidarity to overthrow the striving middle class

2trueblue

Parents want the very best for their children. Some strive to make this happen, some expect others to do it for them, and some think that everything will be OK so don't take an active part in any of it. The opportunity should always be there.

Most people think that grammar schools give the opportunity to those with academic ability to achieve their best. The cut off at 11yrs is wrong as a lot of children are just not mature enough and should be allowed to defer it to 13yrs., which is when public school entrants take their exams.

Streaming should be a given in all schools for obvious reasons.

David Davis is too old to be dining out on his past.

PayDirt

The school I went to was called a “Technical High”, so there were some around for a while Daniel Maris. What is of great importance in this talk of social mobility is openness to competition. Give the young opportunities, even the slow ones will eventually bite, keep giving them opportunities: inspiring teachers, a whole variety of activities/subjects, whatever; and not the dullness of making it obligatory to attend school regardless until 18 years, duh. For the slow developers, give them second chances and third chances, but not for free… competition is about learning the right to a place in the race, one early lesson to learn is having to pay for what you want . Educational boffins are usually in too much of a rush, why 18 years old for university, why the straitjacket System?

Victor

You only need to look at what jobs siblings do who went to grammar vs comp schools - to see that this is utter, utter tosh.

Rhoda Klapp

TD: "you won't be surprised to learn I was average"

To the contrary, I am indeed surprised.

Rhoda Klapp

Sorry, Trevor, but if you put up a feed line like that, it cannot be resisted.

RocketDog

This article is pretty typical of the 'modernising' cant that we are expected to swallow from the msn nowadays

I went to a direct grant grammar school and most of my classmates have done well. The 'poor' ones resent the cosseting that the rich ones received at the time. Some of the girls from the High School feel bad about the pressure that the 11 plus puts on their daughters when it comes time to follow in their mothers footsteps

Parents in the catchment area and beyond would kill to get their kids into either school. Many kids that fail the 11 plus are sent to private schools locally

A simple analysis of these facts tell me that Grammar schools work. There is an impact on other local non-selective schools, both state and private, as the less able kids get to go there. We are run by a bunch of privately educated people who can please a majority by failing to support grammars as they judge them not to be 'meritocratic' - pick up on the support of folk who don't want to see their little darlings challenged by anything resembling an examination too early - and put the 15% of people who might be 'traditionalised' by being given the opportunity to learn to think properly, under the iron heel of their modernising marxist agenda

...and then the msn atttacks anyone who may have the temerity to disagree with them (thanks Nicholas). Do you think that we are stupid? Grammar schools may have had their day, but selection had better not have - for all of our sakes

Simon Too

It may be that David Davis is reaching a conclusion in favour of grammar schools to promote social mobility based on correlation rather than causation. However your conclusion "The real answer is to raise standards across comprehensive schools" appears to be purely hypothetical and perhaps just eirenic.

For most decisions it is necessary to make them faster than the full evidence can be collected. Nonetheless, making a decision based on at least a correlation seems sounder than choosing a nice idea that has been attempted, but so far without success.