Good Grammar

Although he is far too soft on the Prime Minister who nationalised schools in the first place, who occasionally affected to have attended a state grammar school without ever quite telling that lie direct, and who as Education Secretary had closed so many of them that there were not enough left at the end for her record ever to be equalled, Gerald Warner writes:

If there is one thing on which the surviving Tory faithful, huddled around Dave’s tattered banner and whistling to keep their spirits up, are adamant it is that, for all its admitted failings, the Coalition Government boasts one jewel in the crown: education reform. It is an article of faith among the dupes of 6 May that it is a good thing second-rankers such as Aristotle and Einstein handed in their dinner-pails when they did, thus saving themselves the humiliation of being intellectually dwarfed by Michael Gove.

In fact, Gove and his education policies have an iconic status, even if not quite in the sense the Education Secretary would like to imagine. They are significant because they epitomise the imposture that is represented across Europe by the weasel term “Centre Right”. This term implies seeking an electoral base among instinctively conservative voters, dressing up certain policies in pseudo-conservative guise, promoting them with appropriate rhetoric – but never, under any circumstances, abandoning the consensual, progressive premises of Received Thinking.

You could not ask for a better illustration of this ideological betrayal than Gove’s programme. The whole world knows British state education is a basket case; there is near-unanimity that something must be done. The system has only one successful model: the grammar school. Common sense would dictate, therefore, that the grammar school system, which at the moment educates just 140,000 pupils, should be expanded. Common sense, however, has nothing to do with it: common sense is heavily trumped by political correctness in the world inhabited by politicians.

Grammar schools are deemed “socially divisive”, “elitist”, “outdated” – perm the entire PC thesaurus and you will hardly find a vocabulary adequate to demonise the one successful corner of the state education system. Dave hates them: probably not so much from Etonian disdain as from abject conformity to the progressive consensus. If this Government had the slightest intention of genuinely reforming education, the Bill it has just rushed through Parliament would have been one to convert the highest-achieving comprehensive schools into grammars; but, for reasons of PC grandstanding, that cannot happen.

Instead, we have had Gove burbling on about “free schools” on the Scandinavian and US charter schools model. Their sole achievement appears to be to free schools from local authority control and place them more firmly under central government. The fact that the Liberal Democrats are on board for this cosmetic reform testifies to its ineffectuality. Would they have supported an extension of grammar schools? The scheme is a watered-down version of Margaret Thatcher’s grant-maintained schools, but with nothing to frighten any but the most paranoid socialists.

Tinkering around with the Blairite concept of “academies” is an evasion of genuine, purposeful reform. It also potentially endangers the futures of grammar schools, as Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee recognised when he tabled an amendment to the Bill out of concern that the governors of a grammar school which became an academy could change its status without consulting parents.

The ideological sterility of the Tory pseudo-reforms was highlighted by Schools Minister Nick Gibb, during the debate on 26 July, when he said: “This bill is not about a full-scale assault on comprehensive education… we are committed to comprehensive education and this bill will strengthen comprehensive education.” Have you got that? Vote Conservative to strengthen comprehensive education. The one reform the British education system desperately needs is “a full-scale assault on comprehensive education”; but do not look to the Vichy Tories to deliver it.

Their whole education policy is a charade. A year ago Michael Gove told Independent readers: “I am a strong believer in setting and streaming within comprehensive schools. More children should be taught by ability in more subjects. And more children, overall, should be pursuing a traditional, ‘grammar-style’ academic education in any case.”

Look, Michael, I have a zany suggestion which may tax even your prodigious mental powers: might it just be conceivable that the most suitable environment within which children could pursue a “grammar-style” academic education would be – of all cockamamie notions – a grammar school? If grammar school education is best, why not create more grammars, rather than trying to grow prize roses on weed-smothered waste ground? Well, of course it would make complete sense; but Dave and his fellow Etonians are not about to compromise their progressive street cred by pandering to a bunch of unreconstructed grammar-school oiks. So, the brave new world of Tory education reform will be safely contained within Gove’s archipelago of Potemkin academies.

Until, that is, we return to the spirit of the Ministerial defence of the grammar schools by "Red Ellen" Wilkinson of the Jarrow Crusade, and by George Tomlinson. Their academic defence by Sidney Webb and R H Tawney. Their vigorous practical defence by Labour councillors and activists around the country, not least against Thatcher. Their protection in Kent by a campaign long spearheaded by Eric Hammond. Their restoration by popular demand, as soon as the Berlin Wall came down, in what is still the very left-wing former East Germany. And their successful popular defence in the Social Democratic heartland of North Rhine-Westphalia.