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| June | 16 |
| 2006 |
Back in 1975, I passed the 11-plus exam. Normally, this would have meant going to St Nicholas’ the fine local grammar school. However, the ruling political dogma held that education was primarily about social engineering, and that learning was an almost irrelevant afterthought.
As a result, just months after passing the exam, the local education authority abolished St Nicholas’, and merged it with two other schools to become the giant Northwood Comprehensive.
So my mother and father sacrificed my family’s annual holidays and made do with a second hand car, so they could afford to send me to a private school.
I got a good education, but thousands of other bright children were denied that chance because their local grammar was closed down, and their parents simply could not afford the fees to send them privately.
Once one of the country’s finest assets, all but a tiny number – around 160 – of grammar schools were swept away as comprehensives, beloved by the country’s opinion formers in the 1960s and still by today’s educationalists, took over.
It is no wonder that yesterday’s report by the Sutton Trust, and educational charity, showed that media professions are more dominated than ever by the products of private schools. The same goes for all professional jobs in today’s Britain.
The bitter truth is that far from creating greater equality in schooling, the abolition of most grammars served only to widen this educational apartheid.
Indeed, there is less social mobility than there has been since the 1950s.
The Sutton Trust looked at the education of 100 leading media opinion-formers. Fifty four per cent had been to private schools, compared with 49 per cent 20 years ago. Of the rest, thirty-three per cent had been to grammar schools. Just 14 per cent came from comprehensive schools – which educate 90 per cent of all pupils.
An earlier study showed a similar story in the legal profession. Almost 70 per cent of barristers from the leading chambers were educated at private schools.
So entrenched is this dominance that it feels almost pre-ordained. But it is wholly man-made – or rather, made by the egalitarian educational reforms of the 1960s.
In the late 1960s, state grammar schools and non-state direct grant schools (privately run schools where the state bought a large number of places for pupils) easily outclassed the traditional private school in academic merit.
The proportion of private-school-educated undergraduates at Oxford, for instance, was on a steady downward path after the Second World War.
In 1946, 57 per cent of female students were from private schools. So successful were grammar schools, however, at giving educational opportunities to children who had previously never been stretched, that by 1967 the proportion had fallen to 39 per cent.
Private schools were, then, often for dunces whose parents simply bought them access to the cachet of the school’s name.
The bright grammar-school pupil, given a leg up from poverty and unprecedented access to education and opportunity, often fared far better. The country was as close as it has ever been to being a true meritocracy.
But the triumph of the ideologues who pushed for the abolition of grammar schools, meant that by the end of the next decade, we had taken a huge leap backwards. In 1971, 35 per cent of state schools were comprehensive. By 1981 that figure had risen to over 90 per cent.
The impact was immediate. The proportion of privately educated Oxford undergraduates shot up, and has continued to do so ever since. Today state school pupils comprise barely more than half of Oxford entrants.
Grammar schools either went comprehensive and lost their academic success, or jumped ship and became private schools.
This had a knock-on effect on private schools. Faced with new local competition from ex-grammar schools which charged far less, lacking the social cachet, the private schools had to up the ante, and refocused themselves on providing an even better education.
The publication of league tables in the 1990s made the difference between the state and private sector all too stark. The early tables, for instance, showed that 80 per cent of 15-year-olds at private schools achieved five or more grade A-C passes at GCSE. State schools managed that for just 43 per cent of pupils.
It is the ultimate irony. The dogmatists who pushed through the comprehensive revolution claimed to be concerned above all with opportunity and equality. But the only opportunity they expanded was that of private schools to take ever greater numbers of pupils, and the only equality they managed was to level pupils’ achievement down.
Perhaps the worst aspect of this national tragedy is the hypocrisy which governs the debate. The very people who refuse to countenance the return of grammar schools are, more often than not, those who have benefited from them.
The media – not least the BBC – portrays those who call for the return of grammar schools as backward looking fuddy-duddies.
Yet the BBC’s own staffing shows how much it has benefited from grammar schooling. Of the 31 leading BBC employees examined in the report, just one – a behind the scenes producer - was educated at a comprehensive.
All the familiar names were either educated privately, such as Jeremy Paxman and Kirsty Walk, or at a selective school, such as Fiona Bruce, Huw Edwards and Nick Robinson.
Politicians are even worse in their hypocrisy. Seven of today’s Cabinet went to a grammar school and just five come from comprehensive schools. The rest were either privately educated or educated in Scotland, where traditional teaching methods still held sway.
Even amongst the comprehensive children, only two - John Prescott and Jacqui Smith – went to what one might call a ‘normal’ comprehensive. Yet these are the very people who refuse to allow others to have access to the same quality of education which they were given.
Labour is often blamed for the ruin of our education system, but it was a Conservative Education Secretary who closed more grammar schools than either Tony Crosland or Shirley Williams.
Her name? Margaret Thatcher. And her party is little better today. One of David Cameron’s first statements as leader was to say “absolutely clearly, the Conservative party that I am leading does not want to go back to the 11-plus, does not want to go back to the grammar school system.".
Mr Cameron’s remark typifies the Alice In Wonderland state of our education debate. The evidence shows clearly that we once had a thriving, wonderfully successful string of state schools –which were responsible for giving opportunities to many of our leading national figures.
Yet mention of that system is now forbidden. Politicians and the chattering classes rule out any return to selection as somehow beyond the pale.
What is truly beyond the pale – and little short of immoral – is, rather, the dogmatic refusal to give today’s children the same opportunities that so benefited today’s opinion formers.
MessageSpace
The simplest way to ensure that people educated at private schools aren't over-represented in the activities you mention is completely to abolish private education. Anything less will obviously fail.
Only in Britain in 21st century could anyone suggest the authoritarian expedient of criminalising those who choose to spend their taxed income on promoting the welfare of their children. In any case, where do you stop? Ban private out-of-school music lessons? Trips to cultural events? Privately-organised foreign exchanges which enable a child to earn a foreign language? Outside tutoring of any kind?
I also suspect the European Court of Human Rights would have something to say about such idea.
Socialism is the greatest crime against humanity ever perpetrated.
It has ruined the lives of hundreds of millions of people in Britain and elsewhere. Interesting that Tony Blair's little yob Euan is going the elite route. No suprise, though
completely to abolish private education.
What a completely nasty suggestion.
I am the product of a comprehensive school and if I can afford it, I will definitely send my children to a private school. Anything less would be a dereliction of duty.
I do think though that the old system was only slightly better than the new one. There should be far more diversity of schools than just two types.
Serf - provided by who? The government? The Tony and Cherie Blairs and the Jack Straws and the Patricia Hewitts can be trusted to make decisions about schools? I. think. not.
Vouchers and the private sector is the only answer to Britain's tenth rate education system. As a point of interest, school children in Singapore are taking their O level courses using British A level papers.
>As a result, just months after passing the exam, the local education authority abolished St Nicholas’, and merged it with two other schools to become the giant Northwood Comprehensive.
So either you went to a private school that didn't teach you about misplaced modifiers, or your local authority took the 11-plus.
Quite true. It is also astounding that Grammar schools had developed since Shakespeare's day and the North of England depended on State Grammar Schools and direct-grant powerhouses like Manchester GS and Bradford GS............most of the public schools were in The South.
A city like Bradford which once had very high quality State Grammar school producing Nobel Prize Winners like Appleton now has a degenerate Comprehensive system near the bottom of national league tables.
That the Conservatives were led by Grammar School products 1965-2005 was a break with tradition which Cameron has reasserted with the Bertie Wooster Factor of Old Etonians and moneyed access breeding contempt for the Northern Grammar School boy so typical of Bullingdon Club members at Oxford University.
It was Edward Boyle as Education Secretary who started the Comprehensive ball rolling and the Conservatives were too Southern and too prone to be privately educated to understand what it meant to get a scholarship
Stephen Pollard is spot on.
As a professor of English, whose recent conference diatribes have been on Political Correctness and the demise of English in the 70s and 80s, the enormous damage wreaked by the ideologues such as Neale et al is incalculable.
Most of the textbooks today for ESL or EFL were written by those educated as Generation X ers and it shows in the shaky grammatical assertions which any of the previous generation would immediately recognize as ludicrous.
Moving to the demise of Grammar Schools - this is yet another example of the major disservice done to the majority children of this country and of the English speaking world as a whole.
Add text messaging and the zombyization is now complete.
As for the hypocrisy referred to in the minds of the movers and shakers, it is extraordinarily difficult to understand what is actually running through their minds with such decisions.
Error, sorry - by Neale, I meant A.S.Neill of Summerhill 1921, whose school still wreaks havoc but not on a worldwide scale. In the 70s and 80s, open plan education was largely influenced by his experiments with children. The colonies, in particular, followed suit.
"... the enormous damage wreaked by the ideologues ...". James Higham, surely, as a professor of English, you know that the past tense of "wreak" is "wrought"?
This is absolutely and depressingly right. This egalitarian educational fantasy has destroyed educational opportunities for the less well off, and restrained social mobility.
It gets worse. Labour destroyed the best education system in the world, and they are now doing it to health care as well. Just as the education system has been dumbed down to the lowest common-denominator, so has health care. Anyone can be a teacher now. All you need is enthusiasm. Enter the “teaching assistants”. And in hospitals, it is the “nurse-specialist,” the “EMT” and all sorts of “Health care professionals”. Health care profession is New Labour speak for “there is no doctor available”.
The “great and the good” do not use comprehensive schools. Increasingly, the “great and the good” do not use the NHS either. They go privately so that they can see a properly trained doctor.
Margaret Thatcher was grammar school educated. It could not happen now. The Blair children were rescued from their local comprehensive. And so it goes on.
Until the “great and the good” start using the NHS and the state education system they will remain in decline.
BW
John
Dearest Verity,
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/wreak?view=uk
wreak
• verb 1 cause (a large amount of damage or harm). 2 inflict (vengeance).
— USAGE The past tense of wreak is wreaked, as in rainstorms wreaked havoc yesterday, not wrought. When wrought is used in the phrase wrought havoc, it is in fact an archaic past tense of work.
— ORIGIN Old English, drive (out), avenge; related to WRECK and WRETCH.
Now, the truth - I thought as you did, Verity, that I had got it wrong and the visage went red, I can tell you. It was pure luck that Oxford came up with this.
You and I are always meeting on Stephen's site - maybe we should meet.
Yes, of course wreak is OE. It is a weak verb, in that it changes its form to make the past tense. But do you say "wreaked-iron"? When you are distressed, are you over-wreaked?
Even Fowler notes that wrought is on the decline which I think is a great pity, not just because wreaked dumbs down our language for people who can't remember, but wrought is a nice word.
Anyway, it's moot (if that is still a word) given that in 10 years all parts of speech will have been declared old-fashioned in the face of texting.
I am a very long way from Britain, I'm afraid.
Positively the last from me, Stephen, before you throw me off your site and close down the comments section, I promise; but Verity is intriguing - I also am 2453 miles from London. Long live the expats. Interesting last comment about 'wreak' dumbing down English. Wrought is a fine word and the more of such vocabulary we can keep in the lexicon the better.
An excellent article. I had the benefit of attending one of those 160 or so state grammar schools which survived the closures of the seventies. In the year I left my school surpassed Eton in the 'A' level league tables and sent 100% of my year to university, 20% to Oxbridge. This despite the alleged handicap of 30+ pupils per class and decrepit buildings.
I hate the hard left. I absolutely hate them and wish them ill. I hope Tony, in his leisure time, slinking down a corridor at No 10, breaks a heel.
Clever children who could contribute not just to themselves and their own futures, but to the country, jettisoned by individuals who don't want our ancient country to survive. I have no respect for the British because it was so obvious from day one, and they went along with the gag. Well, now they're gagged. Get out of that one.
Dr. John Crippen correctly points out, the “great and the good” do not use comprehensive schools nor increasingly use the NHS either. They go privately so that they can see a properly trained doctor. This must change and thankfully there are a growing number of policymakers that believe they should lead by example by actually using the services they have created. Putting his money where his mouth is on the issue of healthcare, Brian Jenkins MP has for instance just signed a petition promising he will never seek private healthcare. The Tamworth Herald quoted Mr. Jenkins on 15th June as saying "I have always used the National Health Service in the past and I wouldn't want to use private healthcare in the future". "I want everyone to know that I am an NHS user just as they are and that we are determined to secure its future." Mr. Jenkins is one of 34 MP’s who have signed the new health petition that can also be signed by the general public at www.ourpetition.org. Will the other 95% of policymakers also sign the petition? Much depends upon the action or inaction of ordinary citizens. Only if the petition gets enough signatures from ordinary citizens will the issue of healthcare be placed on the political agenda in time for the next general election. Democracy is after all about electing policymakers that work for the people and not the other way around.
Stephen rails against: "the dogmatic refusal to give today’s children the same opportunities that so benefited today’s opinion formers."
Precisely.
They don't want anyone that well-educated, and that well taught to think, ever again. Because the new ruling class has been installed.
They were the last generation to benefit from a real education and they are now the generation in power. Forever. Their children, educated at private schools (not comprehensives - heaven forefend!) and overseas, will be the next rulers - not governors - because our British children have been betrayed ... and taught texting, basket-weaving and foreign religions with no reference to their glorious history or where they came from.
I had a dull sense of inevitability when Blair got in. It will take another 20 years to scrape him off the soles of British shoes, if that indeed happens before Britain is subsumed by a Napoleonic Europe and, eventually, through the open door of Turkey, Islam.
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外来媳妇本地郎
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终极一班
爱情魔发师
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恶魔在身边
争霸传奇
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爱在离别时
我和僵尸有个约会
粉领一族
深情密码
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百万新娘
天国的嫁衣
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对不起,我爱你
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宫
外来媳妇本地郎
哑巴新娘
终极一班
爱情魔发师
恶作剧之吻
人鱼小姐
巴黎恋人
大唐双龙传
王子变青蛙
半路夫妻
恶魔在身边
争霸传奇
石破天惊
爱在离别时
我和僵尸有个约会
粉领一族
深情密码
我的女孩
最后之舞
亮剑
百万新娘
天国的嫁衣
光辉岁月
神雕侠侣
武林外传
对不起,我爱你
白袍之恋
大长今
豪杰春香
刁蛮公主
白蛇传
天外飞仙
火花
东方茱丽叶
皇太子的初恋
火舞黄沙
火花游戏
天若有情
血色浪漫
法证先锋
大清后宫
侠客行
蓝色生死恋
天国的阶梯
战神
火力少年王
宫
外来媳妇本地郎
哑巴新娘
终极一班
爱情魔发师
恶作剧之吻
人鱼小姐
巴黎恋人
大唐双龙传
王子变青蛙
半路夫妻
恶魔在身边
争霸传奇
石破天惊
爱在离别时
我和僵尸有个约会
粉领一族
深情密码
我的女孩
最后之舞
亮剑
百万新娘
天国的嫁衣
光辉岁月
神雕侠侣
武林外传
对不起,我爱你
白袍之恋
大长今
豪杰春香
刁蛮公主
白蛇传
天外飞仙
火花
东方茱丽叶
皇太子的初恋
火舞黄沙
火花游戏
天若有情
血色浪漫
法证先锋
大清后宫
侠客行
蓝色生死恋
天国的阶梯
战神
火力少年王
宫
外来媳妇本地郎
哑巴新娘
终极一班
爱情魔发师
恶作剧之吻
人鱼小姐
巴黎恋人
大唐双龙传
王子变青蛙
半路夫妻
恶魔在身边
争霸传奇
石破天惊
爱在离别时
我和僵尸有个约会
粉领一族
深情密码
我的女孩
最后之舞
亮剑
百万新娘
天国的嫁衣
光辉岁月
神雕侠侣
武林外传
对不起,我爱你
白袍之恋
大长今
豪杰春香
刁蛮公主
白蛇传
天外飞仙
火花
东方茱丽叶
皇太子的初恋
火舞黄沙
火花游戏
天若有情
血色浪漫
法证先锋
大清后宫
侠客行
蓝色生死恋
天国的阶梯
战神
火力少年王
宫
外来媳妇本地郎
哑巴新娘
终极一班
爱情魔发师
恶作剧之吻
人鱼小姐
巴黎恋人
大唐双龙传
王子变青蛙
半路夫妻
恶魔在身边
争霸传奇
石破天惊
爱在离别时
我和僵尸有个约会
粉领一族
深情密码
我的女孩
最后之舞
亮剑
百万新娘
天国的嫁衣
光辉岁月
神雕侠侣
武林外传
对不起,我爱你
白袍之恋
大长今
豪杰春香
刁蛮公主
白蛇传
天外飞仙
火花
东方茱丽叶
皇太子的初恋
火舞黄沙
火花游戏
天若有情
血色浪漫
法证先锋
大清后宫
侠客行
蓝色生死恋
天国的阶梯
战神
火力少年王
宫
外来媳妇本地郎
哑巴新娘
终极一班
爱情魔发师
恶作剧之吻
人鱼小姐
巴黎恋人
大唐双龙传
王子变青蛙
半路夫妻
恶魔在身边
争霸传奇
石破天惊
爱在离别时
我和僵尸有个约会
粉领一族
深情密码
我的女孩
最后之舞
亮剑
百万新娘
天国的嫁衣
光辉岁月
神雕侠侣
武林外传
对不起,我爱你
白袍之恋
大长今
豪杰春香
刁蛮公主
白蛇传
天外飞仙
火花
东方茱丽叶
皇太子的初恋
火舞黄沙
火花游戏
天若有情
血色浪漫
法证先锋
大清后宫
侠客行
蓝色生死恋
天国的阶梯
战神
火力少年王
宫
外来媳妇本地郎
哑巴新娘
终极一班
爱情魔发师
恶作剧之吻
人鱼小姐
巴黎恋人
大唐双龙传
王子变青蛙
半路夫妻
恶魔在身边
争霸传奇
石破天惊
爱在离别时
我和僵尸有个约会
粉领一族
深情密码
我的女孩
最后之舞
亮剑
百万新娘
天国的嫁衣
光辉岁月
神雕侠侣
武林外传
对不起,我爱你
白袍之恋
大长今
豪杰春香
刁蛮公主
白蛇传
天外飞仙
火花
东方茱丽叶
皇太子的初恋
火舞黄沙
火花游戏
天若有情
血色浪漫
法证先锋
大清后宫
侠客行
蓝色生死恋
天国的阶梯
战神
火力少年王
宫
外来媳妇本地郎
哑巴新娘
终极一班
爱情魔发师
恶作剧之吻
人鱼小姐
巴黎恋人
大唐双龙传
王子变青蛙
半路夫妻
恶魔在身边
争霸传奇
石破天惊
爱在离别时
我和僵尸有个约会
粉领一族
深情密码
我的女孩
最后之舞
亮剑
百万新娘
天国的嫁衣
光辉岁月
神雕侠侣
武林外传
对不起,我爱你
白袍之恋
大长今
豪杰春香
刁蛮公主
白蛇传
天外飞仙
火花
东方茱丽叶
皇太子的初恋
火舞黄沙
火花游戏
天若有情
血色浪漫
法证先锋
大清后宫
侠客行
蓝色生死恋
天国的阶梯
战神
火力少年王
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