The Conservative party’s clause 4 moment was conceived on a gloriously sunny
morning in south London last summer.
David Willetts, its education spokesman, was visiting Haberdashers’ Aske’s
Hatcham College, a school in New Cross, one of Britain’s most deprived
neigbourhoods.
“It was an incredibly poor area but as I walked through the main entrance of
the school – one of the new academies – I was greeted by a string quartet
playing something by the Italian composer Boccherini,” Willetts recalled
last week.
The children at the school were a “completely mixed bag” academically but they
were all “achieving, all being stretched, some going to Oxbridge, some to
local jobs”.
Willetts, himself a former grammar school boy from a modest background, was in
raptures.
“When you can see it can be done in a place like that, with a school taking
forward the best grammar school values in an area in which grammars have
long since vanished, it’s inspiring, genuinely inspiring,” he said.
The New Cross school has a history that matches the twists and turns of
education policy over the past 60 years.
Originally a Victorian charitable foundation, it became a state grammar school
after the second world war – bringing transformative education to
generations of bright working-class children – but went comprehensive in
1979. The Tories made it a city technology college in 1995 and new Labour
has turned it into one of Tony Blair’s flagship academies.
To many traditional Conservatives it would be a prime candidate for
restoration as a grammar school when they return to power. Grammars, they
argue, were once the key to social mobility and would be again if they were
brought back.
Willetts, however, went away with other ideas – galvanised by this modern,
functioning version of the comprehensive schools that were envisioned by the
educationists of the 1960s.
Shocked Tories last week woke up to the consequence of his trip south of the
river. Willetts let them have it with both barrels.
Talking at a conference on public services held by the CBI, the employers’
organisation, in London on Wednesday, he announced that the Tories would not
be building any more grammar schools.
The 164 that remained would not be closed; but from now on the party’s
energies would be channelled into backing and expanding an enhanced version
of the city academy programme.
What surprised most, however, was Willetts’s insistence that academic
selection was not a just or efficient way for schools to admit children.
“We must break free from the belief that academic selection is any longer the
way to transform the life chances of bright poor kids,” Willetts told the
CBI.
“We just have to recognise that there is overwhelming evidence that such
academic selection entrenches advantages and does not spread it.”
Had Two Brains, as the superintellectual Willetts is known, gone mad? Was he
suggesting an educational consensus with Labour?
David Cameron, the party leader, came out in full support. Had he, too,
overreached himself at last in the modernising rush for power?
Unofficial Conservative websites were inundated with messages accusing the
leadership of “kicking away the ladder” to opportunities that Willetts and
other senior shadow ministers had enjoyed.
It was a moment that matched Blair’s renunciation of clause 4 of Labour’s
constitution as he transformed his party. The motives were the same: to
seize the initiative when the government is looking weak and ditch a
political albatross that was beginning to stink.
In the view of the Cameroons, a commitment to grammar schools and academic
selection is as impractical, outdated and elector-ally unpopular as the
clause 4 commitment to renationalisation of key industries was in the 1990s.
Are they correct? Does their new Tory education policy make sense? Is it the
key to restoring good education and social mobility? And will Willetts and
Cameron be able to take the party and the country with them?
From the Parochial Schools Bill of 1807 to the Education and In-spections Act
of 2006, the history of Britain’s education system is both wretched and
proud. For more than 60 years it has been dominated by the consequences of
the 1944 Education Act, which creamed off the brightest 20% of children –
regardless of background – into grammar schools.
In 1964, when Harold Wilson came to power at the head of a Labour government,
there were 1,298 grammar schools in Britain. In his election manifesto,
however, he pledged to get rid of them. His education secretary, Anthony
Crosland, a towering Labour intellectual, swore to destroy every “f******”
last one.
Why? The problem lay in the growing belief that while grammars empowered the
few, the remaining 80% of children were left in the shadows.
Crosland spoke of “a widespread conviction that separation is an offence
against the child as well as a brake on social and economic progress”.
The solution was the shiny new comprehensive system: big schools taking
children of all abilities, rather as American high schools did.
This policy continued under the Conservatives. While Margaret Thatcher was
education secretary from 1970-74, the number of children in comprehensives
exceeded those in selective schools for the first time.
She showed no sign of wanting to turn the tide while she was prime minister,
although comprehensives became a byword for failure and aspirational
families struggled to pay school fees to get their children a good private
education.
“During the 18 years of Tory government from 1979 to 1997, the Conservatives
did nothing to encourage grammar schools,” noted Vernon Bogdanor, the Oxford
historian, last week. “John Major said that he wanted to see a grammar
school in every town but that was in 1997 at the end of his period of
government.”
Today only 164 grammar schools survive, educating just 154,000 children. Yet
their ethos has gained ground among Tory thinkers in recent years and still
holds a powerful sway over the Conservative grassroots.
Almost all the heights of middle-class privilege have been stormed by formerly
working-class grammar schoolchildren whose opportunities were transformed by
that 1944 act. When they see new generations of deprived children struggling
in failing comprehensive schools, many point to grammar schools as the
obvious solution. Why do Willetts and Cameron disagree?
After his epiphany in south London last summer, Willetts set about examining
the latest research on academic achievement, school performance and social
mobility. The fruits of this study were apparent in his speech to the CBI
last week.
Grammars “might once” have opened up educational opportunities for poor
children and they “probably” aided social mobility in the past, he said. But
the only thing that was certain was that the selection process that still
fed them was “entrenching advantage rather than spreading it”.
“A system based on class, heredity, or favours to tribes and clans is just too
wasteful,” he told delegates. “What’s more, it is plain wrong.”
He went on: “Many people, genuinely worried about social mobility, believe
that grammar schools can transform the opportunities of bright children from
poor backgrounds. For those children from modest backgrounds who do get to
grammar schools, the benefits are enormous. And we will not get rid of those
grammar schools that remain.
“But the trouble is that the chances of a child from a poor background getting
to a grammar school in those parts of the country where they do survive are
shockingly low. Just 2% of children at grammar schools are on free school
meals when those low-income children make up 12% of the school population in
their areas.”
Willetts attacked the thinking behind the 11-plus, the key exam established by
the 1944 act.
Selection for grammar schools was made on the basis of an intelligence test
promoted, among others, by Cyril Burt, the psychologist. The idea of the
test was that it was an objective test of aptitude and would not
discriminate by class.
“By the term ‘intelligence’ the psychologist understands inborn, all-round
intellectual ability,” said Burt. “It is inherited, or at least innate, not
due to teaching or training; it is intellectual, not emotional or moral, and
remains uninfluenced by industry or zeal...Fortunately, it can be measured
with accuracy and ease.”
According to Willetts, research showed that bright children from poor
backgrounds started sliding down the IQ scale from age two on, while the IQs
of less able children from high-income families rose.
“The two curves cross over long before the age of 11,” he said.
The priority for Tory education policy today, said Willetts, citing Benjamin
Franklin’s call for a “land of opportunity”, was to increase social mobility
for the good of the nation by better educating the poor.
But he also argued that the apparent decline in social mobility might be
explained more by the emancipation of women rather than the decline of
grammar schools.
The key studies, he noted, had been skewed by the fact that the number of
women going to university in the 1980s had nearly tripled, from 6% to 15% –
a process that has benefited middle-class families disproportionately.
“The [mobility] data for children born in 1958 and 1970 might therefore be
telling us about the 1980s, a crucial decade when women’s opportunities in
higher education caught up with men’s. A lot has happened since these
cohorts were in education. We are like astronomers staring at the light from
a long-dead star.”
Cameron, who was spending his second day working as a classroom assistant at a
secondary school in Hull – where none of the children recognised him or
could say which party he represented even when told his name – had prepared
his defence of the new line.
“Parents fundamentally do not want their children divided into sheep and goats
at the age of 11 . . . a pointless debate about creating a handful of extra
grammar schools is not going to get us anywhere,” he said.
Willetts’s analysis reflects the consensus view among educationists. But the
academic educational establishment has got things badly wrong in the past.
Last week there was no shortage of dissenting Tory voices.
Paul Carter, Tory leader of Kent county council, one of the few areas where
grammar schools continue to thrive, said Kent would have no truck with the
new policy.
“The results of the grammars in east Kent, where there are significant levels
of deprivation, demonstrate that [Willetts] is wrong to say selection
entrenches advantage,” he said.
“David Willetts has not discussed the policy with us...Local MPs are up in
arms about these policies. They are not very impressed with what has been
produced at all.”
Graham Brady, the party’s Europe spokesman, publicly defied the new line. “I
believe that if grammar schools were available in our inner cities it would
have a major impact in raising standards and on the number of bright pupils
from poor backgrounds going on to university,” he wrote on the New Statesman
website.
Derek Conway, Tory MP for Old Bexley and Sidcup, said: “I think this policy is
sad more than anything. It is posturing. I don’t understand, as a
Conservative, if it is right to select on the basis of sport, arts, music
and drama, which are human abilities, why not selection by academic ability?
“Some people from poor backgrounds are born more intelligent. Why shouldn’t
they be able to develop? We talk about localism, why shouldn’t local people
decide?
“I failed the 11-plus; I’m fat and hairy – we’ve all got our differences. But
I think the party should be making the case for selection.”
Norman Blackwell, chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies, the Thatcherite
think tank, also entered the fray. “It raises questions about the
leadership’s commitment to core Conservative values,” he said.
“We support those who work hard and succeed through merit. We don’t believe
some people should be treated differently because they are from families on
free school meals.
“The issue is: do you attempt to offer terrific education to the most able
that doesn’t depend on income. The wealthy can buy it – either at a private
school or by moving to an affluent area. But the poor kids are left in the
inner city with schools that are not going to be able to provide academic
excellence. It is that cadre of highly able children that I worry about.
Grammars have enabled the children of bakers and merchant bankers to be
treated equally well.”
For Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, the
Willetts speech is a sign that the Tories have no new ideas.
“How do you get a place in a good school? There is a limited range of options.
You can do it by ability; you can do it by postcode [buying a house near a
good school]; or you can do it by lottery,” he said.
“Blair side-stepped the issue by creating specialist schools that are not
really specialist schools. Willetts hasn’t taken it any further.”
This torrent of criticism sparked fears in the shadow cabinet that Willetts’s
intervention had back-fired. When he outlined his new policy at a shadow
cabinet meeting on the eve of the speech, there were early rumblings.
Two members of the team, Cheryl Gillam, the shadow secretary of state for
Wales, and David Lidington, shadow Northern Ireland secretary, raised
concerns about what would happen to grammar schools in their constituencies.
There was no row, however. Most of the shadow cabinet said nothing at all,
according to one of those present: “Perhaps it’s because it was Willetts
speaking and we’d all gone to sleep. It really wasn't a big deal at all, at
the meeting. I don’t think people realised what he was actually saying.”
What of Willetts’s proposed solution – the city academies being built by
Labour?
Only 47 have been built so far out of a target of 400. Last year the GCSE
results in these schools increased by 6.1 points, triple the national
average.
Critics point out that this is from a low base and that the academies have had
huge new investment that few other schools have enjoyed.
However, the academies, as Willetts notes, have proved popular with parents
and, for the most part, are doing considerably better than the schools they
replaced. Moreover, they appear to have reversed the decline in access to
good education by children from poorer families.
“The first set of academies had an extraordinary 40% of pupils eligible for
free school meals,” noted Willetts. “They are doing well in very difficult
circumstances. They show that proper academic rigour should never be
reserved for the leafy suburbs and prosperous families. The Conservatives
back them wholeheartedly.”
Peter Lampl, the millionaire educational philanthropist, agreed with Willetts
that grammars are no longer proving a vehicle for advancement for children
from ordinary backgrounds. “They have become almost free independent schools
for the middle classes,” he said.
However, Lampl does not believe that city academies are the answer.
His solution, which is not supported by either of the political parties, is
that private schools should be required to take children of high ability
regardless of whether their parents can pay the fees.
In south London, Dr Elizabeth Sidwell, chief executive of Haberdashers’ Aske’s
Hatcham College, explained the school policies that had impressed Willetts
so much.
“We are a genuinely comprehensive school but with our own ethos, which
is rather traditional in some respects with proper uniforms, prefects in
gowns and setting,” she said.
“I’m very happy with grammars; they do a very good job; but comprehensives
must take an even spread, which we do, and we also produce very good
results.”
Her school, which gained its quasi-independent academy status in 2005, is one
of the best performers in the country, with 91% of pupils getting five A*-C
grades at GCSE, including maths and English, last year. Half a dozen of its
pupils went on to Oxbridge and the school is now oversubscribed by a ratio
of 12 to one.
This success has enabled Sidwell to take over a neighbouring school which was
failing. Its results improved by 200% last year and Sidwell expects to see
another improvement this year.
Both schools take all their pupils from a three-mile radius which covers some
of the most deprived areas in the country, and the pupils are picked in
quotas according to ability.
“All our pupils take a nonverbal test before coming to the school and are then
banded according to ability,” Sidwell said.
“We take equal proportions from each band after prioritising children with
special needs, children in care and those with medical difficulties. This
system means we get a genuine spread of children from all parts of the
ability range.”
Do the poor performers prove disruptive and drag everyone else down? “It’s the
reverse,” said Sidwell. “Come and see us. See the mix. As long as you have a
proper spread you are able to raise standards. The brightest pupils set the
bar and pull everyone up. It’s really not at all the other way round.”
Some Conservatives, while not comfortable with their party’s new policy, saw
its political advantage. They suggested it might have more to do with
wrong-footing Gordon Brown rather than principle. The prime minister elect
is widely believed to be lukewarm on the city academy programme. By
embracing it, the Tories may be able to cast him as an educational Luddite.
Beyond the party, however, the policy is interpreted as proof that a genuine
cross-party consensus is emerging on education; a consensus that combines
the comprehensive principle of education for all and the rigour and
discipline of the old grammar schools.
“This is a seminal moment in education policy,” Lord Adonis, Blair’s education
guru and the architect of the city academy programme, said yesterday.
“At last we have moved beyond the old unfair selective model on the one hand,
and the old comprehensive model on the other, to embrace a new model of
independent state schools and academies offering a first-class education to
all."
Alison Wolf, professor of public sector management at King’s College London,
agreed: “We are at a key moment. Conservative policy has been bedevilled by
the grammar school issue.
“We do now have a consensus – although probably not shared by the left of the
Labour party – and this is a defining moment. The new Conservatives and new
Labour are moving in the same direction.”
Anthony Seldon, Blair’s biographer and master of the independent Wellington
College, also believes that a new concord is being established between the
two main parties.
“There is now a consensus. Willetts is right behind Adonis and this will
ensure a measure of continuity on policy,” he said.
Who will take the credit for the new system and will Labour, under Brown,
continue supporting it with Blair’s vigour?
Already that battle has started. Willetts said last week that the new
academies were essentially updated versions of the city technology colleges
that the Tories had started in the 1980s. These, too, were independent of
local education authority control.
“If you are looking for the party that is most wedded to the city academy
programme and most wedded to improving education in this country it is
us...we have every intension of seizing back the initiative,” Willetts said.
Adonis, however, believes that the Labour initiative will not be lost under
Brown. “It is the new Labour party which invented the policy and the new
Labour party which can be trusted to deliver it,” he said.
“Our ambition is, in effect, grammar schools for all – schools with all the
ethos, discipline, leadership, aspiration and quality of teaching and
learning of the old grammar schools, but serving the whole pupil cohort, not
just the top 20% as in the past.”
It is an optimistic vision and one that has been floated before. Sir Eric
Anderson, provost of Eton College, still believes that the way to raise
standards in schools is to bring back selection.
“Harold Wilson promised that comprehensives would mean a grammar school
education for all. After 40 years of comprehensive schools, they mean a
secondary modern education for all in the inner cities,” he said.
Freer learning
Both Labour and the Conservatives now see merit in allowing schools more
freedom and diversity than the “bog standard” comprehensive has. These are
some of the initiatives being pursued or considered:
Trust schools
Many schools are run by local education authorities, but the government is
encouraging them to bring in outsiders and set up trusts to run schools with
more autonomy. The trusts would own the school buildings and the schools
would have a greater say over admissions. The policy has been described as
“academies-lite”. So far, around 100 schools have shown interest.
Specialist schools
Labour has put in place a programme to encourage schools to specialise in one
(or possibly two) of 10 areas: arts, business and enterprise, engineering,
humanities, languages, mathematics and computing, music, science, sports and
technology.
The government says the programme helps schools “to build on their particular
strengths, establish distinctive identities and raise standards”.
The schools must still teach the full national curriculum.
Vouchers
Both parties have toyed with the idea of giving parents vouchers to pay for
education. This would take the money the government provides for every
child’s schooling, but allow parents to spend it on whichever school they
liked. Children from poor families could get higher value vouchers, suggest
the Tories.
However, critics say such a scheme would only work well if there were more
good schools to choose from.
State-funded independence
The last Tory government instituted a programme of city technology colleges
(CTCs) that operate independently but are funded by the state.
In some ways, CTCs are the forerunners of city academies and have been
absorbed into that programme. Some of them are among the best-performing
state schools. But they proved so expensive only 15 were ever built.
The state we’re in
1944 Education Act establishes free primary and secondary education to
the age of 14 for all. Previously only free primary education was
guaranteed. The new act created a ‘tripartite’ system: grammar schools for
the academically able; technical schools for the vocational and secondary
moderns for the rest. All children sit the 11-plus
1948 The first two experimental comprehensives built in Middlesex
1949 Anglesey becomes the first fully comprehensive education authority
1964 Labour wins power promising to abolish 11-plus and introduce
comprehensive education
1970 Margaret Thatcher opens more comprehensives than any education
secretary past or since
1979-89 Thatcher government introduces league tables, grant maintained
schools and greater parental choice
2007 Blair government increases school funding, starts new school building
programme and creates city academies
How city academies work
Tony Blair’s project for improving education was the introduction of city
academies and David Cameron plans to continue the scheme. How do they differ
from other state schools?
What are academies? They are free schools for children of all abilities
and are mostly located in disadvantaged areas. Almost all are coeducational
and many have sixth forms. Some replace old, failing schools.
How do they differ from ordinary comprehensives? They have an element
of independence. They are funded by the state along with private sponsors,
faith groups or voluntary organisations. The aim is to enable the school to
draw on the skills and ethos of the sponsors to develop local solutions for
local needs.
How many are there? The first three academies opened in 2002 and 47 are
now operating. A further 109 are under discussion or in development. The
government wants 200 open by 2010.
How big are they? Existing academies typically have 1,200 pupils. The
largest has more than 1,800, the smallest about 900.
How does their admissions system work? Academies are open to children
of all abilities and offer a broad and balanced curriculum. However, they
can choose to specialise in certain subjects such as sport, arts, design and
technology or foreign languages. They can select 10% of their intake on the
basis of aptitude for their chosen specialism.
Why are they controversial? While the principle of giving more freedom
to schools is welcomed by many, academies are proving expensive. Critics say
that some academies have cost £40m, although supporters claim that the
average is closer to £25m. The government has spent more than £50m purely on
consultants to help to set up the schools.
What is their performance like? Many academies have not been open long
enough to judge their results; fewer than 30 can be ranked on GCSE results.
Such results as there are seem to be mixed.
On average, only 22% of pupils at new city academies achieved five grade A-C
GCSEs, including English and maths last year (though former City Technology
Colleges that have become academies did much better). In comparison, 45% of
pupils at ordinary state schools achieve five grade A-C GCSEs, including
English and maths.
However, supporters of academies point out that many are in deprived areas
where educational attainment was always low and that the new academies have
improved results, albeit from a low base.
The existence of schools like the Hatcham Academy, costing millions of pounds and with facilities undreamt of by many of the independent schools that middle income families can afford, surely points up the futility of universities trying to discriminate in favour of children from non-selective state schools and "deprived" backgrounds, whatever that means. These academies were simply unavailable until recently, and you can't just swap children from one school to another in the middle of their education in order to fit in with the latest government wheeze. Can't we now just call a truce and allow children to be admitted to university on their own merits and on what they have achieved, not on what their postcode is and what kind of school they go to?
Jess, Birmingham,
I'm a product of private schooling, but most of the people I respect from my parents' generation are products of grammar schools. It's not enough to be clever; you have to be driven as well. Selection on the basis of ability allowed the creative drive of these people to flourish and much of today's public and private sector landscape was built by these post-war grammar school boys and girls.
Selection by academic ability, ie. the grammar system, is not somehow morally wrong. I'm sick of New Labour/ New Conservative ethical posturing. If grammars are "wrong", so is going to Eton, on another level. The practical point is this: what's better, selection by academic ability, or by postcode? At the moment, money buys children into state schools with the best teachers and facilities. The egalitarian in me wants bright, driven kids with poorer parents to have a real chance to shine.
David Cameron, I even voted Conservative in 1997. But you've lost my vote.
Jonathan Jones, London, England
We don't need no selection?
We already have it, and in far worse forms than the 11+. SATS (from the infant school on) are used to place children in sets/streams. In primary schools they are placed in "tables" - the groupings corresponding very closely with attainment as measured by SATS. Selection for higher sets in year 7 is also by the results of KS2 SATS. The younger you start this selection, the more the results are influenced by preschool input: mainly family background. Inevitably the gap between hign & low achievers progressively widens.
Now SATS (unlike IQ tests) measure only attainment, not potential. The 11+ included verbal and non-verbal reasoning tests which went some way to spotting undeveloped intelligence. I well remember the effort needed to bring underachieving intelligent children, mainly from poorer homes, up to scratch. I also remember the personal and academic flowering of many of these childen.
We do need selection - mainly for potential.
Michael Bruce, Selby, Yorkshire
If you read your guide to Academies it immediately becomes clear that they are different from comprehensives in only two ways:
- they get more money
- they are exempted from government and council interference more e.g. can expell pupils without LEA overruling them
So if all comprehensives were treated the same way, they would do as well.
Loe Jones, Holyhead, Wales
The real issue is not selection / grammar schools per se it is why, for the past 40 years we have failed to achieve acceptable educational performance from the 80% of students who did not go to grammar schools. Secondary modern schools were mediocre. Abolishing almost 90% of grammar schools resulted in comprehensive schools which have not, on average, performed acceptably. The successful was destroyed and not replaced by something of equal value. Meanwhile the middle classes voted with their money and moved to independent schools. The losers have been the intelligent children from poorer families who could have gone to grammar school but cannot afford independent schools. Cameron is right to concentrate on improving standards of comprehensive education and hopefully City academies can help. It’s a pity that he feels a need to divert attention from this by rubbishing the selective grammar school system which did at least deliver for the selected 20% of students.
Graham Whitehead, c, UK
David Willets is right, and his experience in New Cross shows that the excellence that is currently being achieved in the best academies, notably Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, provides a model that can be used in other areas, provided the management is right. The real damage that has been done in many comprehensive schools stems from failing to match work to the full range of pupils' needs. Academies do this, and may well rank alongside Ireland as one of the handful of things Blair got right.
John Bald, Linton , Cambs