A question unasked in all this row about the Conservatives and grammar schools is, ‘Why did the Tories, in power for 22 of the 42 years since Labour first tried to make comprehensives compulsory, never bring grammar schools back?’ The answer is numerical, and it explains the problem with which poor David Willetts is wrestling. At their height, grammar schools educated about 19 per cent of the secondary-school population. This meant that dissatisfied parents always outnumbered satisfied ones. Although many secondary moderns were good, broadly speaking, parents whose children were not at grammar schools felt ill-treated. This was especially true of those parents, often likely Tory voters, who had high aspirations for their children which were dashed when they failed the 11-plus. Perhaps if grammar schools had admitted, say, 40 per cent of the nation’s pupils, the electoral weight on their side would have prevailed, but 19 per cent was never enough. So what the Tories are trying to do today is to escape from being the permanent representatives of a minority interest in education. They should never disparage grammar schools in their attempt to do this, and they should not say that selection is wrong. That was the trap into which Mr Willetts appeared to fall in his speech. But they are surely right that the next big thing in education will be not selection, but school independence. Tony Blair’s city academy programme is the germ of this, and Mr Willetts should be backed in wanting to expand it so much that the ‘bog-standard comprehensive’ will become a thing of the past.
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Hazel Blears, who wants to be deputy leader of the Labour party, declared last week: ‘I went to a grammar school. My brother didn’t. I’m in the Cabinet. He’s still driving buses. So I don’t like grammar schools.’
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