Charlynne Pullen
posted 8 February 2007

Why is it that the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) can claim Blairite ideas and propaganda as its own? While Simon Jenkins writes about Blair being one of Thatcher's sons, Blairite views seem to be the best ideas going in the CPS, set up by Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph in 1974.

This recently published pamphlet by Lord Blackwell for CPS is somewhat predictably a work extolling the virtues of the grammar school system. The main problem with the pamphlet is it that blurs the distinction between selective schools and streaming within mixed-ability schools. Most supporters of comprehensive education see the relevance and need for some streaming (or setting, banding etc.) within a mixed-ability school, but are completely averse to the idea of selective education, because fundamentally it does mean something different. A selective education, in a similar way to single-sex education, creates a very large physical barrier for those who fail to be accepted to the school, and is a constant reminder of that failure or difference. At the time of the Eleven Plus, it used to be a sign to a child, aged 11, that throughout their life they would never be as good as the children who passed.

Grammar schools only used to accept around 30% of the school age population, with the remaining 70% being left effectively 'on the scrap heap'. The comprehensive system that succeeded the grammar school system accepted all pupils, and the LEA (local education authority) was able to enforce that, but this has been altered by a Labour government bent on establishing a system of selection through the back door. We now have a plethora of types of state school, with specialist schools, academies, trust schools, faith schools, and still a few resistant 'bog-standard' comprehensives, without bringing in the grammar schools and secondary moderns. Any of these schools could also be single-sex. With academies and specialist schools able to select a percentage of their pupils on ability, faith schools able to select the majority (if not all) their pupils on the basis of faith, single sex schools having an obvious selection criterion, our education system is not one where comprehensive education and non-selective education reigns. So why does the CPS feel the need to suggest bringing back grammar schools when we already have so much selection?

According to Lord Blackwell, these schools are not 'academic' enough and what we really need is a type of state school classed as 'academic schools' which would essentially be grammar schools that had reached a certain level of academic achievement, presumably as an antidote to 'vocational schools' such as Business and Enterprise Colleges, and the majority of academies.

But how much selection really counts as selection? Blackwell seems to confuse the issue by including streaming as part of his definition of selection. The reason for this becomes clear once you get to the end of the pamphlet. Most of his evidence for there being support for selection is based on a questionnaire undertaken for CPS. The results however point out that the single most common option whenever a question was asked about selection was for streaming within a mixed-ability school. Clearly the general public, but not Lord Blackwell, understand that to divide children on the basis of 'attainment' in one test aged 11 is socially divisive, but it is a somewhat different story when at least a number of children of different abilities are in the same school.

In particular Blackwell says grammar schools offered a possible ladder of social mobility for the 'minority' of poor children who managed to pass what was essentially a middle class exam. But the obvious problem with this is that he highlights the 'minority' of poor children. Comprehensive schools may have had some problems, but they do not throw 70% of the school age population on the educational scrap heap aged 11.

The government's suggestion that the school leaving age is to be raised to 18, comes as only one in a long line of measures intended to make access to most kinds of education universal. This becomes more of a problem when looking at postgraduate level study, but the expansion of higher education has provided greater social mobility for those from 'poor' families than grammar schools ever did. Comprehensive schools were never simply the same as secondary modern schools, as Blackwell suggests, because comprehensive schools by their very nature are not only for those who failed a test, but for everyone.

Blackwell seems to have forgotten the middle class exodus from the state sector into the arms of the independent sector. This meant the remaining comprehensive schools were lacking social cohesion, having been stripped of the upper middle class children (we can safely assume that upper class children will never attend state schools as long as the independent sector exists). Now research shows that children learn best when they are in a mixed-ability setting where the clever children lift the standards of those in the middle and lower attainment levels. This doesn't mean you need a whole range of abilities in a single class, but a grammar school system denies those children not at the upper reaches of the ability scale the chance to interact with those who are.