I utterly oppose selection at 11, it was good, and needed, for its time. Now, we need to recognise specialisation of talents, not simply “smart”/”not smart”. Maths, language, whatever. Not by specialist schools either, but by making sure that the talented within each school are pushed to acheive good things at what htye’re good at, but still able to learn a broad enough field as to be able.

The Grammar schools were destroyed by an alliance of two very different groups: Middle Class parents who were horrified by the prospect of their not very bright offspring ending up in a Secondary Modern, which was not unlikely; and Working Class Socialists who wanted to ensure that bright working class children were kept in their place (no more escaping via the Grammars).

So who exactly wants Grammars back? Working Class parents of bright kids would probably be the logical answer to that question, though don’t forget that such parents often did not want to lose their children, which they thought they would be giving them a liberal education unrelated to life in their local community. But anyway, they are such a small group as to make little if any impact.

“For one, while it is certainly true that social mobility has declined since the 1950s and that this has coincided with the dismantling of the grammar school system, I can’t recall any of the advocates of grammar schools producing evidence that the former is caused by the latter.”

Well they don’t of course, social mobility happens for a reason. In the first half of the 20th C British society got richer, and as a consequence needed more people to be educated in a certain way, and hence grammar were born to elevate the brightest of the Working Class into the Middle Class. That is why we had social mobility. However, that obviously cannot go on indefinitely, at some point saturation is reached and no more people are required. We have reached that point, indeed I would say the Middle Class is too large and has more people than it needs.

”Nick Cohen is right to point out that the parents of the “thick rich kids” unable to pass private entrance exams buy better education for them through house-purchase. But since these schools don’t practice selection, isn’t it worth asking why they are better?”

Well they are better for the obvious reason that bright parents beget bright children. If you are intelligent enough to be able to afford a house in the best catchment area you are more likely to have an intelligent child, and they will go to school with similar types of people and hence the school will be good. I went to such a school, and I can tell you that the kids there took their education seriously, and indeed mocking people for having few O Grades was quite common (no doubt in prole schools it was the opposite).

The other thing is schools are about more than getting bits of papers certifying that you have passed Maths or Physics or whatever. I am acquainted with a few ex Public School boys, none of whom did well academically, some quit their courses and some went to 2nd rate Universities. Nevertheless they have a self confidence and self reliance that allows them to prosper and make their way to riches and success in life, and this is as a direct result of their schooling. So you can see why schools are about more than education.

If this is true, it suggests that one factor making bad schools bad is the effect that the kids that go there have on each other. The policy solution for this? I don’t know, but I suspect giving a class or school a meaningful (o the kids) collective result based on the average exam results of the kids might help.

If I was running UK education I would seriously consider importing the Finnish system lock stock and barrel. Incidently Finnish kids don’t start school until they are 7 which suggests to me that the first two years of schooling in the UK is wasted.

In just over 60 years we’ve gone from a situation where a tiny handful of children from working-class backgrounds could get a scholarship to (fee-paying) grammar schools in order to ‘better themselves’, through the ’44 Education Act (free grammar schools for anyone who could pass the 11+) and on to the idea that education should be available for everyone, and not dependent on passing a single exam at a tender age.

Just as the ’44 education act recognised the need for drastic change, grammar schools were replaced by comprehensives because it was recognised that the system damaged and limited an awful lot of people.

There are undoubtedly problems, but they’re not going to be solved by retreat to the fantasy of the golden age. If anything, the persistence of that fantasy contributes to the problems. This is 2006 – why on earth do we want to turn the clock back?

If anything, the education system hasn’t gone forward fast enough to keep pace with the extraordinary amount of social and technological change in the last few decades. Hell, we couldn’t even manage the relatively modest reforms suggested in the Tomlinson report. Instead, we just keep doing roughly the same things with a few innovations – a bit like souping up a horse and cart and expecting to enter the Grand Prix.

When people hanker after the good old days, they also forget that the system depended on compulsion, fear, physical violence and subservience. Those who say we should ‘bring back corporal punishment’ are probably right, in that it was an important ingredient.That’s not (thank God) the way we treat children any more – but in that case we need to find something that goes out to children as they are now, rather than trying to make children fit a system that we’re too scared to change and writing off those who won’t or can’t conform.

Maybe we should be asking children themselves? That’s probably a bit too radical, though.

I meant…ach you know what I meant…

Luis – I was thinking that Nick Cohen has conflated two concepts of equality – one has to do with ‘equality of opportunity’ and the other to do with ‘inequality of outcome’. Britain fails on both counts. More of the former would be desirable in the sense that it is obviously bad that the child from the poor background should be denied the best education simply on account of his or her postcode. Whether grammar schools facilitated such mobility is entirely possible but its advocates have yet, as far as I’m concerned, failed to produce any persuasive evidence that this is so – still less that it could do so in the future in a world of private tution and coaching. They seldom if ever make any international comparisons, only doing so when the evidence supports their preconceptions. Sweden is used because they have a voucher system. Finland, which has the best educated 15 year-olds in the OECD is barely mentioned – yet it has a fully comprehensive system.

Grammar schools may or may not facilitate greater ‘equality of opportunity’ but I doubt whether it’s as important as some people seem to suppose. After all, American society is more mobile than Britain, yet they have nothing resembling the grammar school system.

But even if it did, this would do nothing to help those at the bottom of the social ladder. The most exceptional might escape but no one should believe that an above average working class kid has the same chance today of grammar school entry as a mediocre rich kid whose parents can afford tution to pass the 11+.

Forgive me – maybe this counts as self-interest on my part: those of us that lack merit see a ‘meritocracy’ as being a hard-hearted world in which to live.

NB: This site has obviously gained a certain notoriety – I discovered today that I can’t post comments during the day because Glasgow City Council’s firewall deems this ‘political organizations’ of an unprofessional nature ;-)

“Anyone who believes this reflects the merits of denominational education in this part of the world is capable of believing anything.”

True enough. Both me and the partner went to catholic schools. The experience wasn’t entirely unrewarding, but it was gothic enough to make the description “bog standard” seem like an unambiguous compliment.