Free, With The Facts

On The Week In Westminster, the Cameron cheerleader Daniel Finkelstein claimed that the Tories had previously been “obsessed with grammar schools”. When was that, exactly? When Tory LEAs were the first to abolish grammar schools? When, as Education Secretary, Margaret Thatcher closed so many that there were not enough left at the end for her record ever to be equalled? When, under 18 years of her and John Major, not a single grammar school reopened? When the Tories recently voted in favour of a Government Bill to ban the creation of any more grammar schools? When, exactly? When?

Finkelstein also mentioned the “free schools” scheme, a classic example of what happens when the public schoolboy interns are let loose in the think tanks. Which is, of course, all the time, since everyone in any of the (pretty much interchangeable) think tanks is really a public schoolboy intern. Hence ideas like this, among so many others. In any case, this one is only ever made known to the readers of certain right-wing blogs. It is not going to happen. It is just a way of bringing out the core Tory vote on the day.

In that, it goes hand in hand with the equally secret proposal to let state schools use things like the IGCSE. If that ever happened at all, then it would only ever happen in the Lenin High Schools. There is no suggestion of bringing back O-levels and simply abolishing GCSEs, for which the raising of the school leaving age ends any conceivable excuse, since even the argument that you need some piece of paper, however worthless, on leaving school no longer applies.

Just as there is no suggestion, nor has there ever been from the Tories, of bringing back grammar school, and with them the Secondary Moderns that were so much better than that which has so very often replaced them.