It seems that the government is to end the ban on Grammar Schools, leading to predictable joy in the Conservative party and of course, outrage on the left.
I don’t share this love of grammar schools – although I do not subscribe to the left-wing crusade against them. Personally, I believe that parents should choose schools rather than schools choose pupils, and am highly sceptical of the notion of a standardised test at 11, and I think the track record of grammar schools on social mobility highly mixed. However, if parents vote for it they should not be stopped – that choice also needs to be available too. Obviously there are advantages and disadvantages to concentrating bright pupils in one place.
My main concern is just how backwards and unoriginal this is as an idea. The idea of a grammar school in every town is the right wing version of a “good local school” everywhere. I agree with Steve Hilton here: it’s lazy thinking when the future should be about choice and diversity. We should be questioning whether schools should even exist as we currently understand them? Do the same group of pupils need to be taught by the same teachers in the same buildings? We are at the stage when technology can give pupils access to the best teachers in the world.
Instead we are obsessed with an idea proposed in 1944. We are oblivious not just of changed circumstances but of any new ideas in the meantime. The Labour party is even worse for this than the Conservatives. The party that once speak of the white heat of technology and a thousand days to prepare for a thousand years really enjoys nothing more than to speak of the spirit of 1945.
NHS-fetishes, grammar school fetishes, it’s time we moved on, because, guess what: no-one in 1945 was obsessed with social policy ideas from 1875.