Who wants more grammar schools? The Daily Telegraph, of course: “a selective education system would deliver better results for individual pupils and raise the overall standard of schooling”.
The Daily Mail is keen: “grammars can be great engines of social mobility, as millions of baby-boomers can attest.” The Daily Express thought it “good news”, as did the Sun: praising it as a step towards “the reshaping of Britain as a ‘meritocracy’”.
The Sunday Times appeared to support Theresa May’s proposals, urging that they “are worthy of a fair hearing”.
By contrast, the Guardian was totally unimpressed. It’s nuts, it said. The Observer felt the same way: “Selection is bad for children, bad for society”.
The Times was also unconvinced by May’s plans. It argued that “recreating a top tier of selective grammar schools would be retrograde... divisive and bad for overall standards”.
The paper approvingly quoted the one-word response by Sir Michael Wilshaw, the outgoing Ofsted chief, to the argument that a wave of new grammar schools would help working-class children: “tosh”.
“She is an ex-grammar school girl,” said the Times, “but autobiography in this case would be a poor guide to good policy.”
Just so. Consider also the ambivalent views of Sun columnist, and product of a grammar school, Trevor Kavanagh. He recalled the gross unfairness of the education system under which he, and I, grew up:
“Many 11-year-olds were scarred for life by a dubious IQ test which sorted us into sheep or goats, successes or failures, stupid or clever...
We now realise it is absurd to set a child’s educational trajectory at 11. We develop at different speeds and the classroom door must stay open right up to age 16.”
Despite his concern about “school leavers in England and Scotland lag[ging] behind children from other countries”, he was very cautious about returning to selective education.
Acknowledging that “the issue divides voters as bitterly as Brexit”, he thought May had “to show this revolution, which has taken many in her party by surprise, has been carefully thought through.”
Indeed, she does. She needs to take to heart that Times remark about autobiography being “a poor guide to good policy.” I know what that means because I’ve been there.
As a former grammar school pupil, my views about its benefits have see-sawed down the years. Initially, in a book I wrote some 10 years after leaving school, I was very critical of the education I received. (I was a convinced enthusiast for the comprehensive system).
Later, I often found myself revelling in the benefits of going to a grammar, regarding it as an invaluable social mobility mechanism that had helped to propel me up the ladder.
I’ve heard any number of grammar school pupils from that era, the late 1950s and early 60s, say the same. And they still say it.
It is necessary, however, to put what happened to all of us in perspective because the Britain of that time was very different from the country today, most especially in terms of the economy.
We moved into so-called white-collar jobs that were so different from the those of our parents (meaning, incidentally, in most cases, our fathers) because of two key factors: the economy was expanding and, in parallel, manufacturing industry was already beginning to decline.
Our schooling enabled us to take up a range of occupations crying out for our educational skills. Some went to universities (also growing in number) and then into even better jobs - the law, banking, administration and, of course, teaching.
We were, to be frank, lucky. We baby-boomers were in the right place at the right time. Our grammar school was part of the reason for our success, but not even the major part.
It did not strike us like that at the time, of course. Nor, going on conversations at past school reunions, does it appear to have struck my contemporaries.
We did not simply look back on our schooldays and think them the best days of our lives. We look back and think they are the reason for the lives we have lived since.
We have therefore perpetuated a myth about it being the motor behind the insistent call for their return by those who misguidedly believe that the ground-breaking social mobility upheaval of the 1960s can be reproduced a half century later.
Part of the grammar school ethos drummed into us was that we were enjoying a privilege because we were part of a relatively small proportion of the population (I recall a teacher saying we were part of a fortunate 11%).
What then of the not-so-fortunates? Consigned to secondary moderns, their struggle to find jobs and move up that ladder was made infinitely more difficult. Some did succeed against the odds, just as some grammar school children fell by the wayside.
But the overwhelming unfairness, a splitting of the old working class into an educational us-and-them, was evident then and, should Theresa May get her way, will occur all over again.
I agree with the prime minister that Britain has developed a form of educational selection by wealth. That is unjust. Creating grammar schools will add to the injustice rather than cure it, and plenty of Conservative MPs know that too.
As Tim Ross wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, this issue has the capacity to split the Tory party apart. Note the split between the the Times and Sunday Times. Note also the difference between the Sun and Kavanagh. Grammar schools are Brexit part 2.
