When political parties are vying for the votes of a disinterested and disengaged public, decades-old debates about historically polarising topics begin rising from the dead. Brexit, immigration and planning reforms have all resurfaced as both the Conservatives and Labour look to reaffirm their stance on important issues to their voters.
Now, pockets of Westminster have now turned their attention to grammar schools. Anger broke out within Conservative ranks last week after Rishi Sunak abandoned plans to expand grammar schools that had been drawn up by his predecessor, Liz Truss, despite stating during his Conservative leadership that he would support such a move.
Baroness Barran, a minister in the Department for Education, confirmed that the Government has no plans to open new grammar schools following a second reading of the School Reform of Public Selection Bill, a private member’s bill introduced by Labour peer Baroness Christne Blower, which asks secondary schools in England to phase out admission tests.
As it stands, there are 163 grammar schools in England. Legislation was introduced to ban the creation of new ones in 1998 by Tony Blair. But the issue of whether or not selective schooling is a good thing has divided people across political lines ever since.
Supporters of grammar schools argue they give academically bright children whose families cannot afford private education an opportunity to receive advanced schooling. In 2016, Theresa May unsuccessfully embarked on a campaign for a mass roll out of new grammar schools across England. At the time, Ms May said the longstanding ban on new selective schools “has held bright poor children back”. Her then-rival, Jeremy Corbyn, remained fiercely against selective schooling, arguing that they “depress overall educational achievement and siphon off a few better-off children at the expense of the rest”.
Concerns over class division and elitism are some of the reasons selective schooling has remained so controversial, particularly within divisions of the political left. Although around 41 per cent of Labour voters support selective schooling, according to the latest polling, it would hardly be a good look for the Party’s image to be encouraging of a system that divides children by academic ability.
During an interview on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg last week, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson confirmed Sir Keir Starmer’s party would seek to block the creation of new selective schools, doubling down on Labour’s position. Some MPs want to scrap grammar schools altogether, with Labour’s Andy Burnham throwing his support behind the campaign The Time’s Up for the Test, which launched in December.
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Opponents of grammar schools say the system benefits parents who can afford to tutor their child in preparation for the 11 plus, the optional exam that Year 6 pupils sit in order to gain entry into grammar schools. With the data we do have, we can assume this is at least partly true. In 2016, out of the 6.9 per cent of pupils eligible for free school meals with high prior attainment who were near selective schools, only 2.4 per cent actually ended up attending a grammar school.
But such statistics don’t reveal the whole picture of the educational experiences of thousands of pupils. I grew up in Kent, which has 32 grammar schools and 69 non-selective schools, so passing the 11 plus exam was basically the equivalent of finding out you were about to receive a knighthood. I still remember the faces of my peers, half ecstatic and half devastated by disappointment, as they received their letters of confirmation.
My parents didn’t want me to sit the 11 plus. It was known to be an incredibly challenging and stressful undertaking, and looking back I’m grateful they were more concerned with maintaining my sanity than pushing me to do something that was beyond my capabilities at the time. As a result, I attended my local comprehensive. I had a fine school experience, but a combination of inconsistent teaching, disrupted classes and the fact that teachers tend to teach at the pace of the average pupil meant I had to enroll myself in advanced after school classes in order to achieve the GCSE grades I needed.
I later went on to attend an all-girls grammar school and was taken back by the shift in the learning environment. I was surrounded by students who were just as engaged and motivated as I was, and it created within me a healthy sense of drive and competition. It was where I flourished, both academically and socially. I was the only black student at my local comprehensive, but was now encountering peers from all sorts of different backgrounds, and I’m still close with the friends I made there a decade ago.
This may sound very nostalgic, as people’s recollections of their school experiences often are. Whether good, bad or ugly, being a school student takes up some of the most formative years of our lives and shapes who we become as an adult. Debates about selective schooling are often highly charged with emotion and heavily influenced by the experiences of the individual making the case.
Additionally, the pros and cons of selective schooling ignore the fact that where a parent decides to send their child to school is a personal choice and political dogmas about class shouldn’t interfere with their right to make that decision. Most parents would not sacrifice their child’s potential for the sake of some perceived sense of educational equality. In fact, studies show that most people would send their children to grammar school if they could.
The most recent data from Ofsted revealed that 88 per cent of all schools in England are now rated good or outstanding, up from 68 per cent in 2010. However, their report from April 2022 also highlighted that schools still face significant challenges catching up after Covid. Politicians’ efforts would be better focused on giving schools the support they need to overcome these challenges, rather than becoming enthralled in another fruitless debate around selective schooling that only encourages further division among the public.