1 The Tory Party and Grammar schools

I think the main educational story of the past few weeks has been the spat in the Conservative party over grammar schools and the part these schools should play in the UK education system. This Sunday Times article http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1813890.ece provides a summary of the quarrel.
I see two strands to this debate. The first strand, which has been dominant, has been discussion of its political significance: was this Cameron’s ‘clause 4’ moment, was he deliberately taking the opportunity to show that the new conservatives were not prisoners of the old Tory party. While for the bulk of the conservative press, it was a betrayal of core Conservative supporters. This particular discussion will rumble on, but I wish to consider the second, less prominent, thread, to the debate: does it make educational sense?
In particular, I want to focus on the question of social mobility. In his original speech, David Willetts argued that Grammar schools do not aid social mobility. It has long been a popular belief among the Tory party faithful (at least as far back as Rhodes Boyson and the Black papers of the 1970s) that Grammar schools were engines of social mobility for bright working class children. This belief is deeply embedded in the lower-middle class psyche of the Tory membership. Willetts’ problem was how not to challenge this engrained belief and yet not support a policy of building more Grammar schools. Typically for David Willetts, he came up with a clever argument: Grammar schools used to be engines of social mobility but they weren’t any longer because the world has changed. In support of this argument he cited the numbers of disadvantaged students who are to be found in grammar schools today – maybe 2%, as measured by entitlement to free school meals. To his credit David Brady, who had always struck me as the classic ‘dim but nice’ tory toff, resigned from the Conservative front bench over the matter. He argued that Grammar schools in his constituency (Trafford) were still engines for social mobility and, more than that, they did not just benefit those selected for the grammar school. He claimed that the non-grammar schools in his area produced better results than non-selective comprehensive schools in equivalent areas. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/05/31/do3101.xml
I would observe that this doesn’t seem to be the case in Kent where the local comprehensives in those areas that have retained grammar schools are very poor. Willetts' argument is also boosted by evidence that the reality of Grammar schools today is that places are obtained by coaching and private school hot-housing http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6665115.stm My fear would be that in inner city areas, middle class flight would ensure that the comprehensives would be worse than the old secondary moderns. They would be holding pens for the underclass, dreadful places which would doom their pupils to low quality experiences and outcomes. So, I personally am still in favour of a comprehensive system. Nevertheless, expect to see more comment and debate on the effectiveness of comprehensive schools where grammar schools still exist.
However, I think it’s also worth noting that both Labour and the Tories are now committed to a schools system that is completely unproven: the Academies program. Much is being made of the way that academies have autonomy from local authority control and that this is the key to their success. I hear the sound of a myth being coined here; that schools are tightly controlled by local authorities. In my experience, this simply isn’t the case; headteachers have always been largely autonomous; my experience when I worked in a local education authority was that the Director of Education rarely, if ever, took a day-to-day interest in the running of schools, let alone micromanaged. People propagating this fairy story should reference one of their own favourite educational legends, the ‘William Tyndale Affair’. This was the ‘scandal’ of William Tyndale junior school in Islington where the staff, including the Headteacher, supposedly allowed the children to run wild, in the name of progressive education. The local education authority (LEA) and the Director of Education was apparently powerless in the face of this open anarchy. How so, if they had an iron grip over the running of schools? In recent years, this limited influence of LEAs has been diminished to almost zero. During this time, there has indeed been an increase in the control of school’s activities, but that has been by central government, through the national curriculum and OFSTED inspections. If central control is the problem, then there is no need to establish a whole new type of school: simply loosen the centralised controlling grip, allow a diversity of local supply to develop, and admit that the main planks of educational reform of the last twenty years have been mistaken. What chance of that?
I know there’s nothing new in educational policy being based on myth and one-sided analysis. However, if the Academies’ fail to achieve the inflated expectations being made of them, then Grammar schools will once again arise like the living dead and figure in a future conservative policy. That is, if a post Brown Labour party hasn’t grabbed the Grammars first, as part of a ‘new, new Labour’, ‘real choices for real people’ agenda.