Tell Theresa: The idea of grammar schools as a vehicle to social mobility is a myth

Theresa May has come out again calling for the restoration of grammar schools to kick start social mobility and promote social justice. Today 90 per cent of youngsters attend state comprehensive schools, seven per cent go to independent schools and a tiny go to one of the 164 remaining English grammar schools.

Although the non-selective comprehensive system has been around since the mid-sixties, right-wing Conservatives and UKIP politicians claim it has failed to create a more just and social mobile society. For the writers James Bloodworth and former Labour minister Alan Milburn, chair of a commission on it, social mobility has ground to a halt. Despite the social and technological advances of the last three decades both the North East and elsewhere is as class bound and divided as ever.

The top Russell Group universities like Newcastle or York, the BBC, the prestigious professions like law and medicine are still the preserve of the upper-middle classes. At Durham university you are more likely to cross paths with an Antonia than an Alice or a Giles than a Gavin.

Is restoring the grammar school of the 1950s – with Enid Blyton, warm beer and cricket lawns – the answer? The foundations of the old “tripartite system” were laid down in the war-time Norwood Report of 1943. Norwood argued against the idea of a common secondary school for and argued there should “selective”’ grammar schools for bright children and schooling geared to boys and girls “who desired to enter industry or commerce at 16”.

By 1944 RAB Butler passed the education act recommending the need for three types of school to cater for three types of ‘’intelligence’’: academic, practical and one that ‘’dealt with concrete things rather than with ideas’’.

Butler’s act represented a major stage of state intervention in mass schooling. It  was based on the key “meritocratic” principle of equality of opportunity which meant that every child should have an equal chance to do as well as his ability would allow and that youngsters with talent could fulfil their potential. Provision was expanded after the war with the introduction of the tripartite system (in practice a bipartite system as few technical schools were built) and the school leaving age was raised to 15 by 1947.

Grammar schools were designed for that quarter of the population deemed academic and secondary moderns for the rest. Selection was based on an IQ exam, the 11-plus, the brainchild of Sir Cyril Burt. Passing the 11-plus was the visa to the local grammar school. The system lasted till the 1960s when a number of Labour intellectuals including Tony Crosland and Michael Young called time. The system wasn’t working. The time was right for the comprehensive revolution. In 2016 most youngsters in the region go to their local high school.

For Theresa May, comprehensive education isn’t cutting the mustard. Grammar schools need to be restored to boost social mobility to enhance the life-chances of the able working-class child. The case for selection is based on the following arguments: One, “creaming off” – where grammar schools continue to thrive alongside comps, as happens in Buckingham or Kent , they cream off the most able pupils. Comps are not true comps at all, as they lack the brightest students. They are barely distinguishable from the old secondary moderns of the bipartite system.

High flyers are held back by the slower pace of learning to meet the needs of the less able. With a selective grammar the more academically able are taught in the same school. The size of comprehensive schools make it hard for teachers to know their pupils personally. The talents of some may be overlooked. Discipline remains a problem. Advocates of the grammar argue that the more able can be stretched through streaming rather than mixed ability teaching. Grammars, they maintain, have had a long history of tradition and success opening up opportunities for the disadvantaged child. Even the Harold Wilson defended them in 1966.

But there’s little evidence that the fifties was a golden age in terms of educational access or success. The notion of the grammar school as a vehicle to upward social mobility is a myth. The system, based on the then fashionable 11-plus, failed to deliver genuine equality of opportunity. The exam was flawed. It was an unfair and unreliable indicator of future achievement. It took no account of late development. The 11-plus was biased against the working-class and ethnic minorities in that it used concepts that were more familiar to middle-class youngsters. Even access to the grammar school was small compared to the pre-war years. The 1944 act perpetuated the selective tripartite system which had existed since 1902.

The grammar did offer an academic curriculum. But in practice it was designed for students with academic ability who passed the 11-plus. Most pupils sat O-levels taught by qualified university graduates. Some  sat A-levels at 18 with the opportunity of going to university or joining a profession. These pupils were mainly middle-class. Even today only three per cent of kids on free school meals attend a grammar school, according to the Sutton Trust.

The secondary moderns in contrast offered a non-academic, practical curriculum with technical drawing for boys and needlework for girls. The teaching was poor and few kids sat exams until the CSE was invented in 1965. The pupils were working-class having “failed” the 11-plus.

Rather than promoting a meritocracy, the tripartite system with the grammar school as the jewel in the crown, reproduced class inequality by channelling the two social classes into two different types of secondary school which offered unequal opportunities. The system discriminated against girls, requiring them to get higher marks in the 11-plus than boys. The system legitimised unfairness through the ideology of the time the time which believe that raw ability could be measured when a child reached 11.

Yet, as Bloodworth and Milburn point out, a child’s social background is the chief factor which determines access to a good school or doing well. There was no golden age. What social mobility that did take place was attributable to the post-war expansion of white collar jobs.

If the PM gets her way there may well be a grammar school for every town. But there will have to be two secondary moderns too. Of-course comprehensive education is by no means perfect. Social mobility is limited. Inequality is alive and well with family background the key determinant to job success. But the comprehensive school – a Labour government innovation – has opened up wider educational opportunities for many. More young adults today acquire academic and vocational qualifications by the age of 18 than ever before. Labour must step up its campaign against grammars and reaffirm the principles of comprehensive secondary education.

Stephen Lambert failed his 11-plus and later graduated from Warwick University. He is a councillor in Newcastle, director of Education4Democracy and a member of the advisory board of Policy North.