Wednesday 13 November 2013

Bad Grammar, Good Grammar

On one level, it hardly matters what either side of the grammar schools debate says. The question reappears, it used to be around once every five years, it is now around once every seven or eight years, and it will soon be around once every 10 years, if that.

It is discussed for one day, although never by anyone in a position to do anything about it. Then, it goes away again. This has now been happening for many decades. It might end when, quite soon, there is no one left in public life who remembers grammar schools. Or it might not. Only time will tell.

But in anticipation of the next outing, the proponents do need to find some way of addressing the fact that 13 per cent, more than one in eight, of those currently attending the state grammar schools still in existence got into them from private prep schools, while a huge proportion of the rest was privately tutored at a weekly rate many multiples of the total income of anything like an average family with two working parents.

This is not because they are all in posh areas. They are not. There are decidedly less salubrious parts of any local authority area. Just as there are rich people in all of them, who would do this kind of thing throughout the entire country. They used to do exactly that.

Bandying about figures about how many people from state schools used to enter Oxford and Cambridge in the grammar school era, quite apart from the fact that those figures were not much higher than they are now, bizarrely assumes that everyone included in those figures was "working-class". They were not. Most of them were middle-class, and a high proportion was upper-middle-class.

Oh, well, the partisans of grammar schools probably have 10 years to think about this. Possibly, they now have longer than that. Conceivably, they now have forever. I am not saying that that is a good thing, or that it is a bad thing. It is just the way that things are.

By then, of course, we shall have had at least one of the comprehensively schooled Prime Ministers whose nonexistence is held up as proof of the failure of the comprehensive system. Although we shall have been treated to the circular argument that any school which could produce a Prime Minister was obviously not a "typical" or a "real" comprehensive.

Astonishingly, that claim is even made of any that sends people to university, or at any rate to university that was already in existence in 1990. In reality, when it comes to schools with Sixth Forms (a great loss in many places), institutions which do not do that simply do not exist. I should not be at all surprised if Sixth Form Colleges which did not send people to those universities every year did not exist, either.

In the meantime, since the abolition of the existing grammar schools is no more likely than their restoration everywhere else, a new educational charity should elect to Associateship those pupils in all schools who, on leaving the Sixth Form at 18, had attained since beginning Year 10 examination results at or above the average in the remaining state grammar schools, both in terms of the marks themselves, and in terms of the range of subjects studied. It should also elect to Fellowship those teachers whose pupils attained such results over 10 consecutive years.

Associateship would be automatic, so that hostile schools or whoever else would not be able to deny it to anyone. The most prestigious universities would be contacted in order to make the Associateship an admission requirement. And this charity would be called after a Labour politician who fought to defend the grammar schools.

There are plenty from whom to choose: Ellen Wilkinson, George Tomlinson, Sidney Webb, R H Tawney, Eric Hammond, to name but a few. Durham County Council's Education Committee, an entirely Labour body, fiercely resisted comprehensivisation. But, alas, Margaret Thatcher was too much for that Committee.

Speaking of Hammond, some years ago I posted something on this subject and it referred to him. He was described as "obscure" by an interlocutor, who has since bought the Chairmanship of the Governing Body of one of Michael Gove's already-failing "free" schools. Such is the breadth and depth of the knowledge of those who have been put in charge of those institutions, which are absolutely forbidden to select academically, as is just as well if they are being run by persons as ignorant as that.

But of course they are. Remember that all-Labour Education Committee of Durham County Council. A bipartite or tripartite system is only possible with very powerful Local Education Authorities. Successive Governments have dismantled LEAs in order to make grammar schools impossible. But no Secretary of State has ever gone further down that road that Michael Gove.

Nor have Gove and his supporters the slightest interest in restoring the full employment, the workers' rights, the strong trade unions, the co-operatives, the council housing and other municipal services, the public ownership and the Welfare State that made possible the civilised and civilising world of the Workers' Educational Association and the Miners' Lodge Libraries, of the pitmen poets and the pitmen painters, of the brass and silver bands, of the male voice choirs, of the people's papers rather than the redtop rags, of the grammar schools, and of the Secondary Moderns that were so much better than what has replaced them.

All of those things were of a piece. Anyone who will not support all of those on the first list, does not and cannot support anything like any of those on the second list.

24 comments:

  1. David Lindsay writes
    "the proponents do need to find some way of addressing the fact that 13 per cent, more than one in eight, of those currently attending the state grammar schools still in existence got into them from private prep schools"

    Peter Hitchens has addressed precisely this very point in his latest post today.For the fiftieth time. Perhaps you can't read.

    It's a dud argument.

    They are not "all in posh areas" (who said that?)-but many are in the London commuter belt.

    Living near to them, commuting to work in London, and paying for "prep schools" is cheaper than paying £100,000 for a private school-so that's what the middle classes do.

    If there were grammar schools in every catchment area-including the poorest ones-then the rich logically couldn't dominate them.

    Logically, as Hitchens says, if all primary schools prepared kids for the 11-plus (as they used to)-then nobody would need "prep schools" and those who used them wouldn't have a great advantage.

    Where we have a nationally selective system-Northern Ireland-a third more state school kids get to University than on the mainland.

    And far more than in wholly comprehensive Scotland.





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  2. Logically, as Hitchens says, if all primary schools prepared kids for the 11-plus (as they used to)-then nobody would need "prep schools" and those who used them wouldn't have a great advantage.

    The rest of your comment is culturally illiterate, knowing absolutely nothing about either Scotland or Northern Ireland and so on. But this bit is beyond even that. I invite anyone with two or more working brain cells to read it over for a laugh.

    External exams at 11 or thereabouts are notoriously a con, dominated by children whose parents have spent a small fortune on either prep schools or tutoring.

    They still are, because they are still used to assess state primary schools (the prevalence of tutoring renders them almost useless to that end), but oversubscribed secondaries also look at the results in order to decide whom to admit, thereby perpetuating the age-old incentive for this kind of thing.

    That has always been the case. It was in the grammar school era. It always will be.

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  3. It is almost charming there are people who believe anything as naive as the material peddled today on the blog of the public schoolboy Peter Hitchens.

    As for his little fan boy on here, he should thank his lucky stars for comprehensivisation.

    You are drifting back in the right direction. Selection favours people who can buy extra tuition. Always has, always will. It's that simple.

    Anyone who doubts it is either not a product of the state system, Hitchens. Or too young to remember the old system, the fan boy.

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  4. "If there were grammar schools in every catchment area-including the poorest ones-then the rich logically couldn't dominate them."

    No one is that naive. It's impossible.

    Logically, as Hitchens says, if all primary schools prepared kids for the 11-plus (as they used to)-then nobody would need "prep schools" and those who used them wouldn't have a great advantage.

    No one is that naive. It's impossible.

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  5. Oh, but they are, Iain.

    Oh, but they are...

    Not that it matters. This one-day debate will not now come back round for at least a decade.

    And remember that there are two sides to it. The militant pro-comps have to accept that their cause is as doomed as the other side's is.

    Since the remaining grammars are not going anywhere, they ought to make themselves useful to the people who pay for them. I set out how.

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  6. Scotland is wholly comprehensively educated.Northern Ireland has a nationally selective system.

    Those are both facts.

    The evidence proves selection gets more poor kids into Uni in Northern Ireland than comprehensive schools on the mainland.

    So, in 2011/2012 the proportion of young full-time first degree entrants, from socio-economic class 4 to 7*, to Higher Education institutions were as follows.(*National Statistics Socio-Economic Classes)


    England…30.9% (Largely comprehensive)
    Wales…..29.1% (Totally comprehensive)
    Scotland….26.6% (Totally comprehensive)

    Northern Ireland…..39.1% (Almost wholly selective)

    The UK average is 30.7%
    England and Wales combined 30.8%

    "So the university chances of a child from a poor background in selective Northern Ireland are almost one third greater than those of a similar child in largely comprehensive England and Wales"

    The point (which you ignored)is that all primary schools no longer prepare children specifically for the 11-plus-therefore giving a huge advantage to parents who pay for tutors that do.

    Of course, those that can afford private prep tutors would still have some advantage (as middle class children already have an advantage since their parents have more time to spend with them, more books and more money to spend on them) but who is aiming for utopia here?

    It's the Left that aims for egalitarian utopia; we don't claim such a thing is possible.

    Grammar schools would simply be better than the present situation, where selection is wholly done on the basis of money.

    The other point (which you were clearly too stupid to read) was that, if there was a grammar school in every catchment area, then they couldn't be dominated by "the middle classes".

    And that is the point about the 1960's system; there were too few grammars (particularly for girls)-and Antony Crosland started abolishing them before they could be expanded.

    Social mobility has gone into reverse-and Oxbridge has gone to the private schools-ever since. When comprehensives were meant to have the opposite effect.



    The

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  7. You are at it again. Hopelessly confused and simply misinformed.

    One hardly knows where to begin. The jump from "grammar school educated" to "poor" is, I suppose, the obvious place to start.

    And there are plenty of state-educated people at Oxbridge. From exactly the backgrounds that they always were.

    You are beyond naive.

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  8. Like you, I regret that the Thatcher years saw the loss of the grammar school curriculum for those to whom it was appropriate at the comps.

    We are the right age to remember the very cultured and very left-wing teachers who tried to keep it going as best they could, but then they retired.

    The age of pre-Thatcher comps was probably the golden one. They were still teaching all the grammar school subjects to everyone whose aptitude for them had been spotted by the teachers, not by the loaded 11 plus with its private tutors, class based questions and all that.

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  9. Oh, yes, I had forgotten about the class-based questions.

    11-year-olds were expected to know, if they wanted to pass the exam, the meaning of terms such as "tradesman's entrance" (not marked on the question paper, obviously) or "7 for 7:30".

    Children whom the teachers, perhaps even out of sincere concern, felt were just too common to fit in at grammar school were simply not entered for the 11-plus. That was standard practice, throughout the country.

    And yet that was before most teachers came from families of teachers, as is increasingly the case, or almost all were second or subsequent-generation middle-class, as is now firmly the case.

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  10. David Lindsay continues targeting strawmen, and missing the point by miles.

    Lindsay tells us

    "there are plenty of state-educated people at Oxbridge"

    But not nearly as many as when we had a selective state school system in the late 60's.

    As the facts show.

    the (1966) Franks Report into Oxford University noted that in 1938-9, private school pupils had won 62% of places at that University . A further 13% were won by direct grant schools (fine institutions which after 1944 operated as combined grammar schools and independent schools, until stupidly abolished and driven out of the public sector by Labour in 1975)""

    ""By 1958-9 (14 years after the Butler Education Act created the national selective system), private schools were down to 53%, direct grants up to 15% and state grammars up to 30%.""

    "" By 1964-5, private schools were down again to 45% , direct grants up to 17% and grammars up to 34%.""

    (The totals do not add up to 100% because of foreign students and home-educated entrants)

    Until Antony Crosland put a stop to this, this was an accelerating, almost revolutionary process. The next year (the last recorded by Franks) private schools were at 41%, direct grants at 17% and grammars up to 40%.""

    "Michael Beloff, a former President of Trinity College, Oxford has said that the state schools were supplying 70% of new entrants to Oxford by the early 1970s"

    Mr Lindsay and his fan-boys appear to think we are arguing for an absolute cut-off point, at the age of eleven, benefiting those with private tutors.

    Who advocates this? All grammar school advocates (including Hitchens and Heffer this week) advocate schools that take in pupils who show aptitude AFTER the age of eleven-leaving the door open to those who didn't benefit from such tutoring.

    Lindsay also says we say the remaining grammar schools are "all in posh areas". Who on Earth says this?

    The most significant concentration of remaining grammar schools in England (there are now none in Scotland or Wales) is in Kent and Buckinghamshire.Both these counties are within commuting distance of London (Other London commuter Counties, such as Oxfordshire, Sussex, Hertfordshire, Essex, Hampshire and Berkshire, have very few grammar schools or no grammar schools at all). The same is true of the outer London boroughs.""


    It is therefore both rational and practicable for families whose breadwinners work in London to plan their lives so as to give themselves access to grammar schools. (In most parts of the UK no such planning is possible, as grammar schools are a remote memory). Given that the cost of five years of private single-sex secondary day-school education (comparable to a grammar school education) is roughly £100,000 of post tax income, it is not surprising that parents who value schooling do the following:""

    ""1.Buy houses in the catchment areas of grammar schools.
    2. Spend money on preparatory school and tutor fees to ensure that their children pass the grammar school examinations""

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  11. They are the same people. A lot of independently-endowed grammar schools left the state sector at the time of comprehensivisation, but they are still serving the same constituency. And it's not the plebs. It never was.

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  12. An absolute scream, having grammar schools everywhere would kill the demand for prep schools and private tutors. Apparently proved by the fact that it hasn't in the areas that still have them!

    The earlier point is important, the grammar school curriculum continued for people who needed it, not just those with parents who could afford to cheat. But Thatcher's curriculum changes, not imposed on private schools, made that more and more difficult and then the teachers retired.

    I remember my comp's Classics teacher, proper Old Left, retiring and never being replaced because it was not on the National Curriculum. Oxbridge also bears a lot of guilt for that, abolishing the language requirements for entrance. But mostly it was Thatcher.

    The Associateship is a grand idea.

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  13. This is a very good discussion, apart from the drivelling adolescent who posts reams of half-understood material from Peter Hitchens's blog as if it were the last word. I don't know why Mr. Lindsay lets his stuff up.

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  14. "Annie."
    Annie said...

    ""An absolute scream, having grammar schools everywhere would kill the demand for prep schools and private tutors. Apparently proved by the fact that it hasn't in the areas that still have them!""


    No-it's "proved" by the fact that Northern Ireland gets more kids from "socio-economic class 4-7" into University than we do in the comprehensive Wales and Scotland and almost-wholly comprehensive England.

    Nobody said grammars would "kill off" private tutoring-simply that selection by ability is better than our current system of selection by money, where good schools are only available to those who can afford fees or lovely catchment areas.

    Read the facts, before commenting please.

    The state schools were driving the private schools into the ground until Antony Crosland abolished thousands of them.

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  15. I love the contributor who posted angrily about the "public schoolboy Hitchens".

    I guess, in your quarters, that's a devastating insult and a devastating argument.

    Crawl back to your Maoist bunker, please. This is for grown-ups.

    Only facts will do, thanks.

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  16. That was Margaret Thatcher.

    Crosland Shirley Williams, who rather amusingly had a daughter at one at the time, merely caused certain independently-endowed institutions to move sector, because they could.

    They then carried on exactly as before. They still do.

    The shift in state school admissions to Oxbridge (still around half the total) from that day to this, reflects the shift in status of the same schools during that period.

    Admittedly, that is a result of comprehensivisation. But those were not typical grammar schools in the first place. Had they been, they could not have made the shift.

    I have been very affected by the suggestions on this thread that the period between comprehensivisation and Thatcherism was when people admitted without fiddling the 11-plus were then introduced to full range of grammar school subjects if they were appropriate to them. That rings very true indeed.

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  17. Hitchens did not attend a state school, did not not (unless I am very much mistaken) send any of his children to them, has never worked in one, has never even been a governor of one or anything like that.

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  18. Loving the dig at JS near the end.

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  19. "Hitchens never attended a state school".

    So? Unlike him, you never lived in the Soviet Union, was an industrial correspondent during the 1970's trades union strikes, interviewed Margaret Thatcher, witnessed an execution, reported from the Romanian Revolution, lived in and reported from Iran and Mandela's South Africa and won an Orwell Prize.

    But you still have an opinion on all of these things-and your opinion is no less valid than his, as a result.

    He has, however, researched and reported on comprehensives for his books (as he has researched and visited the prison system here and abroad).

    Facts count for more than experience; and the facts show that, where we still have a nationally selective system, we get more children from the lowest socio-economic class into university than on the mainland.

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  20. It never mattered how working class an area was, the grammar school was always posh.

    Areas with tiny numbers of posh people had tiny grammar schools, or hardly any grammar schools for miles and miles, or both.

    The school you know best as ex-pupil and ex-governor is going the same way, far more expensive uniform than in the past and all that. Disciplinary system now being used to weed out the proles.

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  21. Anonymous says

    ""Areas with tiny numbers of posh people had tiny grammar schools, or hardly any grammar schools for miles and miles, or both"

    So the solution is to build more of them in those areas. And in every area.

    And leave them open to late developers who aren't coached to pass entrance exams.

    That way, the middle classes will still get into them-but it needn't be at the expense of the poor.

    Whereas, when you just have a few of them, concentrated in the commuter belt around London, then middle classes will besiege them, at the expense of everyone else.

    We didn't have nearly enough grammars after the 1944 Butler Act-or enough technical schools.

    The answer was to expand them-not to abolish them.

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  22. I cannot speak for Anonymous 00:44, but in principle I would be open to considering that. However, it is not compatible with everything that you have already said. Peter Hitchens makes the same mistake.

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  23. David, if I may add to this...

    You don't appear to have read "The Fall of the Meritocracy"-the chapter in Peter Hitchens book which shows that Graham Savage and the Labour Party's plan to abolish grammar schools had nothing to do with improving education-it was an entirely political radical project, aimed at abolishing the class system and achieving an egalitarian society.

    I'd urge you to read this chapter of "The Broken Compass" to understand this subject properly.

    Hitchens addressed his post "Doing Your Homework" to Owen Jones-he may as well have addressed it to you.

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  24. Of course I have read it. But it is not the only thing that I have ever read.

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