OK,we are feeling good. A spectacular Olympics looks set to be followed
by new levels of Paralympic achievement. But we mustn’t rest onour laurels. Once our athletes have run their race and enjoyed a well-earnedcelebration, they will think how to do better next time. Britain must do thesame. Olympic president Lord Moynihan causeda stir earlier this summer when he observed: “It is one of the worst statisticsin British sport and wholly unacceptable that over 50 per cent of ourmedallists in Beijing came from independent schools, which means that half ofour medals came from just seven per cent of the children in the UK.”
He wasn’t criticising the medal winners lucky enough to have had an expensiveeducation but was rightly lamenting the wasted talent and unfulfilled promiserevealed by that shocking statistic. If the state-educated majority did as wellas the public school minority couldn’t Team GB be pushing even China and the USin the medal tables?
Frighteningly we see the same yawning chasm between independent schools and state schools inacademic achievement. Oxford and Cambridge take nearly a third of theirentrants from just 100 schools: 84 of them fee-paying, 14 state grammars andtwo state comprehensives. Exam league tables are dominated by public schools.Too many children in state schools are being failed, deprived of the chance tofulfil their potential. This declining social mobility is a tragedy formillions but the cost to UK plc is vast as well. This country has always livedoff the wit and ingenuity of its people and today more than ever we need toequip young people to succeed.
Many things need to be done. MichaelGove is working to raise expectations and restore discipline. He is right toallow more schools to manage themselves as academies, he is right to giveparents more choice by allowing “free schools” to be set up. He is passionateabout raising standards and I think genuine in his belief that parents makebetter choices for their children than the state. I share that belief and wanthim to give more freedom to schools and parents by scrapping Labour’s law thatprohibits any new grammar schools.
We now have more than 40 years of evidence comparing selective areassuch as mine in Trafford with comprehensive areas. It was summed up in 1997 byAndrew Adonis, before he
becameTony Blair’s adviser, when he wrote: “The comprehensive revolution tragicallydestroyed much of the excellent without improving the rest. Comprehensiveschools have largely replaced selection by ability with selection by class andhouse price. Middle class children now go to middle class comprehensives. Farfrom bringing the classes together England’s schools, private and state, arenow a force for rigorous segregation.”
Accordingto a poll this analysis is shared by 76 per cent of the public who would likenew grammar schools opened yet all main political parties appear determined tostand in the way of something that has been proven to raise standards andaccelerate social mobility. Why are they so reluctant to do something sopopular? Politicians are locked in a time-warp, looking at the grammar schooldebate of the Sixties, incapable of looking at how selective systems succeedtoday.
Inareas such as mine the key to success has been not just keeping grammar schoolsbut raising the standard of high schools. It is the selective areas as a wholethat outperform comprehensive areas and give the public schools a run for theirmoney, not just the grammars. The proof is that in the areas with the beststate schools, whether Trafford, Buckinghamshire or Northern Ireland, hardlyanyone pays to go private.
Governmentshould empower people, not dictate to them. I wouldn’t force schools to becomeacademically selective if they didn’t want to.
Idon’t want the chaos of nationwide reorganisation. I do however want governmentto let go, genuinely to trust parents to make the right choices and accept theevidence that as some will thrive best at schools that specialise in music orballet, others will benefit from schools that focus on a more academiceducation. Outside the few remaining selective areas that kind of academiceducation is only available to those who can afford to pay.
Ifwe can’t afford to waste the sporting talents of 93 per cent of our youngpeople, nor should we squander their academic prospects.