Will Gordon shed a tear for his old grammar school?
Andrew Neil 9:19am
When Gordon Brown entered Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister he talked about the excellence of the education he received at Kirkcaldy High School in Fife. He even invoked the school motto – "I will try my utmost" – and claimed: "I wouldn't be standing here without the opportunities I got there."
Some in Scotland detected a massive hypocrisy in these words. His grammar school might have given him - and many like him - the opportunity to get on in life but that had not stopped Brown being in the vanguard of Scottish socialists who wanted to abolish every grammar school in the country. They succeeded: state education today in Scotland is a comprehensive monopoly.
That would seem to have taken its toll on educational excellence, say critics, even in Brown's old elite grammar. According to today's Scotland on Sunday, Brown's alma mater (now a comprehensive) is no longer giving its pupils the sort of opportunities he enjoyed.
"Earlier this month," reports the paper "the school, which was previously regarded as a beacon of academic excellence, was branded one of the most underachieving in Scotland, prompting education officials to draft in a troubleshooter.
"Despite the 1,300-pupil school being ordered to address declining standards in 2006, a new follow-up report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) criticised the school for poor exam results, low staff morale and disruptive behaviour among pupils. Overall truancy levels were twice the Fife average and four times the Scottish average."
It certainly wasn't like that in Brown's day, when the school was one of many Scottish grammar schools which gave pupils from ordinary backgrounds an education rigorous enough to allow them to compete as equals with those who went to expensive private schools, which Brown duly did when he went to Edinburgh University and more than held his own against privately-educated students.
His old school doesn't seem to provide that sort of opportunity any more. Scotland on Sunday reports that "now Kirkcaldy High is being used as the focus of a high-profile campaign to stop youngsters bringing knives to class and the school has a dedicated police officer. Lunches sold in the canteen are now branded with the slogan: 'Knives Cut Lives'.
"In a move that would have been unthinkable during Brown's schooldays, pupils are being issued with the mobile number of the school policeman so he can be summoned quickly in the event of trouble."
There is much talk these days about the decline of social mobility. Brown's old school might provide a case study on why it is so. There is also lots of comment about the return of the public school boy to positions of prominence in society, with David Cameron and Boris Johnson being the two most obvious examples, when for two generations after the second world war grammar school pupils swept all before them.
Those who regret the demise of the grammars pose this question: if you destroy the centres of educational excellence for bright kids from ordinary backgrounds, but keep those which are reserved largely for children who have well-off parents, why would you be surprised if public school kids started grabbing all the glittering prizes once more? The Prime Minister, who took a special satisfaction in the destruction of the grammars when he was younger, might like to ponder the answer to that question as he dips his toast into his boiled egg this morning. He might even shed a tear for what has happened to an institution to which, in his own words, he owes so much.
Previous
Comments
Water
May 18th, 2008 11:00am'Knives Cut Lives' as does over zealous taxation. Mel’s article on asphyxiation seems on point about now.
Perry
May 18th, 2008 11:32amMz. Prudence of Noo-Lie-Bore : the anti-scholastic symbiosis of spreadsheet, suspicion, and self-aggrandisement.
kinglear
May 18th, 2008 11:36amThe key here is the depressing effect not allowing excellence to rise has. Labour has always wanted to bring people down to the lowest common denominator (not that anyone under about 40 would know what that was). The Tories, on the other hand, have always tried to bring people to the highest common factor ( see previous bracket)
Comprehensively educated
May 18th, 2008 12:49pmMaybe Andrew Neil would also like to write some stories about the schools which accompanied the senior high schools (which is what they were actually called in Scotland - "grammar" being the English term): namely the 3/4 of schools which were little more than temporary dumping grounds
Sally C
May 18th, 2008 2:28pmGordon weeps for noone but himself.
Water
May 18th, 2008 2:40pm“anti-scholastic symbiosis” indeed, congeal he tells you congeal... Tories-nicht-bore labour yields snores.
Sandy Jamieson
May 18th, 2008 2:41pmStrictly speaking, Kirkcaldy High School was a Senior Secondary School as was Andrew Neil's Paisley Grammar.Scotland didn't have Grammar Schools per se.
Some of the small Scottish towns such as Kirkcaldy, Dunfermline (H/S), Falkirk (H/S), Stirling(H/S of), Motherwell (Dalzell H/S) and Hamilton (Acadamy) had really excellent senior secondary schools in the 1960s. The High School Stirling still seems to be doing fairly well but that's because it was in a middle class part of the town
dearieme
May 18th, 2008 3:30pmBut, your Majesty, the HCF is generally smaller than the numbers you started with, the LCD larger.
Trumpeter Lanfried
May 18th, 2008 4:36pmA hundred years from now people will look back on the last few decades and identify four major tragedies:
1. The destruction of the grammar schools.
2. Deaths from hospital acquired infections.
3. The rise in violent crime.
4. Welfare dependency.
All four could have been avoided by wise and resolute governments.
Nicholas
May 18th, 2008 5:51pmI concur with the Trumpeter that the destruction of the grammar schools by Labour is one of the most, if not the most, significant factor in the post war decline of British society and culture. The majority have suffered whilst a small socialist minority crow in triumph and spin the damage as "reforming achievement"
In every field, instead of showing humility as the caretakers of a cultural heritage or tenants in a listed building, they have set out to destroy the past, in envy and spite. It is now a supreme irony that these same barbarians talk of "Britishness".
When I was a young man (not at a grammar school I hasten to add) the excellence of Britain's time-tested institutions, constitutional, religious, political and educational, was inculcated. The arrogance of Labour has damaged or destroyed all four in less than half a century, to the fanfare of "needed reform", replacing the proven and time-tested with . . . well, crap.
This is not a record anyone associated with Labour should be proud of, but as the good Trumpeter observes, it will take history to judge objectively the true extent of the cultural vandalism perpetrated by Labour.
Tiberius
May 18th, 2008 6:30pmComp Ed: is it not actually the case (typically of a Labour government)that they failed to fix what was wrong with Education in the 1960s, the secondary moderns, and instead wrecked what was working perfectly well? I hold an indescribable antipathy towards Crosland and his fellow travellers.
Water
May 18th, 2008 6:54pmI agree Nicholas we seem to have become an indiscernible gelatinous blob. Either history or the Tories will eventually have to pick up the dishevelled baton; I certainly hope it’s the Tories.
John
May 18th, 2008 8:12pmDoubt Brown will shed a tear for anything, he is inhuman.
Jessica
May 18th, 2008 8:15pmYou are completely right, all the high earing and powerful jobs are now going to privately educated Brits or foreigners because of the lunacy of getting rid of Grammars. I am a supporter of Cameron but this is one issue where I strongly disagree with him.
Tel, Spain
May 18th, 2008 8:20pmNo wonder private education has boomed under 10 years of New Labour. However it would be no different under the Tories they support the abolition of Grammar schools.
Water
May 18th, 2008 9:13pmLooking at the way his hands are poised, he may just be praying to the lamentable labour gods. Tear drops of rain to irrigate these scorched plains.
Fergus Pickering
May 18th, 2008 11:30pmComprehensively Educated, here in Kent we have GRAMMAR SCHOOLS and we also have what used to be called secondary moderns. ome of them are not very good but others re just as good as comprehensives in nearby counties (I am going by exam results because that's really all you can go on. It is not true that all Secondary Moderns were no more than dumping grounds. That is just a leftie myth. read Brian Blessed (the LOUD actor) about his secondary modern to which he says he owed so much. Come to that, come to that, two England cricket captains went to secondary moderns, and good for them.
Water
May 19th, 2008 7:28am"pupils are being issued with the mobile number of the school policeman so he can be summoned quickly in the event of trouble." That's worrying in and of itself.
Austin Barry
May 19th, 2008 12:45pmThe secondary modern I went to was probably typical of most London schools in the 60/70s: knifeless and gunless, certainly some peashooters and chinese-burns and dead-legs inflicted on the unwary, but generally you could instigate a reign of terror with a balloon on a stick.
David Short
May 19th, 2008 1:49pmAs someone who benefitted from an old-style grammar school in the North East and came from a Tyneside slum (the third street above Catherine Cookson's Fifteen Streets), I used to argue vehemently in favour of that system.
Now I am not so sure. Other countries such as the US and France do not have such a selection process, and social mobility through education through hard work and education is not a problem.
Perhaps the closing of the grammar schools (which the Tories did as much as Labour, if not more than) should have been planned better, with schools being replaced with a proper, national standard curriculum, with a US style grade point average, and a proper High School Graduation certificate, without which you cannot leave school until you passed.
That should be enough for most people in life, anyway. A proper basic education, useful in life and work. As Julie Burchill once wrote 'not everyone wants to be Ken Barlow'.
The destruction of the grammar schools was led and supported by people born into the middle class or higher, and they didn't really care about the hoi polloi afterwards.
Frank Pulley
May 19th, 2008 3:25pmWater
Your last three posts are reminiscent of how some ganga ginks I once encountered spoke while under the influence of Lebanese Gold (aka skunk - even in those 'heady' days of the late 60s). I coined a proverb then: "In vino veritas -in ganga gobbledegook."
It was 'dishevelled baton' that blew it for me finally - but I did try, old chap, (or dear - as the case may be). WTF are you on about? Chill out and try again.
David Lindsay
May 19th, 2008 3:39pmSomeone I know who used to teach there says that it only looks that bad because there hasn't yet been an inspection of the school down the road.
But he adds that it's still pretty awful, and that horizons are now so limited that once, when he was once organising a trip to Holyrood for his Higher class, one of them asked if it would entail an overnight stay. You can actually see Edinburgh from Kirkcaldy.
Water
May 19th, 2008 3:49pmFrank Pulley from prior threads you may have seen that I’m very much against drugs of any order. I’m glad you have developed some form of theory as regards the wording of my last three comments but I’m glad to say you’re totally of point. But do keep trying as you say.
David Lindsay
May 19th, 2008 4:28pmYou do all realise, don't you, that the Tories voted in favour of the Government Bill that banned the creation of any more grammar schools?
Frank Pulley
May 19th, 2008 7:51pmDavid
What makes you think that any of the above commenters approves of Tory policy regarding Grammar Schools? We are having a dig at the PM, along with everyone else at the moment. It's Gordon's turn in the barrel. Join the queue or go play sandcastles 'til we've done.