Mind Your Grammar, Auntie

Tomorrow evening, Radio Four apparently intends to broadcast a denunciation of the remaining grammar schools for daring to select by academic ability instead of by the parental income (whether paid as fees or paid as house prices) or the social clout employed by the schools attended by the Radio Four set’s own offspring.

There are, it is said, lots of “middle-class” children at grammar schools. Well, of course there are. Only “middle-class” people have the time, the money and the self-confidence to devote to the constant campaigning necessary in order to retain grammar schools. So it is only in largely “middle-class” areas that there still are any.

“Middle-class” enclaves in other areas, meanwhile, achieve the same effect by tiny (if any) catchment areas, by complicated feeder primary arrangements, by overpriced uniforms, by private school funds to which there is a firm expectation that parents will contribute, by annual residential excursions as an integral part of the curriculum, and so forth.

As a result, socio-economically the most exclusive secondary schools in this country are not grammar schools, nor even fee-paying schools, but nominally comprehensive schools. The Radio Four lot will know all about that. But they certainly won’t be making a programme about it.

The solution to all of this is not to abolish the remaining grammar schools.

It is to restore the abolished grammar schools.