The problem with grammar schools

By rights, I should be one of those Tories who is passionately in favour of grammar schools. After all, I went to one myself. My attachment to them should be particularly strong because before arriving at William Ellis in Highgate I went to two bog-standard comprehensives and failed all my O–levels apart from English Literature, in which I got a C. The only other qualification I left with was a grade one CSE in Drama. William Ellis was the making of me. Had I not got in, I doubt I would have ended up at Oxford.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not a passionate opponent of grammar schools either. I wouldn’t want to deny to other children the opportunities I had and would like my own children to have — a form of hypocrisy that’s widespread among critics of selective education. But I’m not so naive as to think that bringing back grammars would boost social mobility. Rather, they’d be more likely to impede it.

My own story is a case in point. At 16, after five years of comprehensive education, I was on a steeply downward trajectory. My father ran a sociological research institute in the East End and my mother was a novelist, yet after my abysmal O-level results the most I could hope for was skilled manual work. Consequently, I joined a residential workfare programme in South Devon and tried my hand at different trades. As a hedge, I retook three O-levels so I’d have just enough (the grade one CSE in drama was the equivalent of a C) to get into a sixth form if things went pear-shaped.

Needless to say, I was no better at site management and motor mechanics than I had been at physics and biology. Certainly not good enough to get a job in either field.