Some years before the 2010 general election, when he was the shadow education secretary, David Willetts delivered a tough dose of realism to his fellow Conservatives. “We must break free from the belief that academic selection is any longer the way to transform the life chances of bright poor kids,” he said. “We just have to recognise that there is overwhelming evidence that such academic selection entrenches advantage, it does not spread it.”
Nothing has happened in the eight years since then to undermine that message. Indeed, copious evidence has been gathered and analysed that reinforces it. And yet the party’s nostalgic attachment to a version of an earlier age that never really existed cost Mr Willetts his job. Now Nicky Morgan, the ambitious education secretary, will have pleased many in her party – at least until their child fails the 11-plus – by giving the go-ahead to the first new grammar school for 50 years. She insists there is no change to existing policy of allowing successful schools to expand. That is not how the move will be read in the education sector.
Many Tories yearn for a return to the 11-plus, less for Latin lessons and school caps than because of a deeply held belief that the ladder of opportunity no longer reaches into poorer communities in the way that it did in the 1950s or 60s. That claim can be traced back to a single comparison between two surveys which recorded how far children moved along the income spectrum from their parents. This appeared to show that a partially grammar-school-educated cohort, born in 1958, were somewhat more mobile than the largely comprehensive-schooled babies of 1970.
There are, however, questions about this data. The background measure of family income had become more accurate by the time of the second survey, which meant it was bound to be a better predictor of fortune. Furthermore, even if the numbers are right, there was an awful lot more than educational reforms going on. Take occupational class instead of income, and the postwar decades did indeed represent an exceptional period, not so much in terms of relative movement up and down the scale, but rather in terms of opportunities. There were new universities, changes in industry and a growing public sector, alongside a decline in manual work and an expansion of jobs in the managerial sector. And, of course, baby boomers who were trying to get ahead were doing so in a generally more equal society than those who came of age during the Thatcher years.
So, first, the decline in social mobility since the 1970s may not be all it seems. Second, it may have little to do with schools policy. If selective schools did open doors for social advancement for poor working-class kids, it may be mainly because they were such an advance on what was there before. And it is notable that even in 1959, just 0.3% of students who left with two A-levels were from the unskilled working class. Nor do memories of their importance reveal how they compare with the comprehensives that came later. Some recent analysis of the comprehensive-schooled children of the 1990s suggests there is a weakening link between parental income and GCSE scores, while a quick glance at the social makeup of existing grammars shows they take far more children prepared for the 11-plus by private primaries than they do children on free school meals. And while there is a very slight grade advantage in grammars’ GCSE results, there is a disadvantage for their non-selective neighbours. Grammar schools damage the local school ecology.
Those who really care about social mobility look at different evidence. They look at research showing the way the achievements of above-average-ability toddlers from poor backgrounds are overtaken long before they start school by less able children from better-off backgrounds. Real equality of opportunity would take a lesson from the Scandinavian countries, the most equal societies in the world, and study the investment that goes into supporting pre-school children through extended paid parental leave, affordable and plentiful nursery places and degree-level training for nursery workers – the kind of expansion of support that Labour began working towards through innovations such as Sure Start and children’s centres.
Insecurity at home, lack of space, forced moves – all these matter too. Evidence-based policy would treat calls for selective schools for what they are: a move to entrench the privilege of ambition, expectations and learning environment already conferred by birth on the children of the middle classes.
