Grammar Schools: A Lesson in Conservatism

Selective education is a truly conservative way of increasing the prospects of all children. It must be brought back.

By Charlie Chadwick

What decade am I describing? A record number of Oxbridge admissions are from state schools. Prospects for bright, working-class kids are looking up. Private schools are struggling to compete, parents questioning the purpose of exorbitant fees.

No, wrong. This is not 2022. It is, in fact, a description of the state of education in the early 1960s. Despite the enormous attention political attention being given to the topics of education, social mobility and class, it is hardly ever mentioned that we have been here before. What was the reason for this, you ask? The answer is very simple: grammar schools.

It is at this point that a large number of readers, who may before have held some interest and sympathy for their author’s argument, will lose patience. Cue a series of furrowed brows and rolled eyes. Hear the angry clap of magazines closed in disgust. For there are few issues in British politics which attract the sheer vitriol, passion, and self-righteousness as that around the abolition of selective education. The arguments are old, and well made. Yet the fact that this perennial debate – about a decision taken more than half a century ago – is still raging is all the more reason for taking it seriously, rather than spurning it as a fait accompli. This is especially true when the issues underlying it are so relevant today. 

Grammar schools existed in their prime for little more than twenty years. However, such was their effectiveness, and so great was the ingenuity of the idea behind them, that they transformed the educational landscape of this country. Oxbridge admissions are clearly not the only measure of success, but they provide a useful indicator. Throughout the golden age of selection, the proportion of state-school pupils admitted to our two greatest universities increased at an unprecedented rate. This decreased for the only time in history during the 1980s, the time when the abolition of grammars had begun in earnest. 

A similar story can be seen by examining the Prime Ministers. It is a common criticism of our system that private schools dominate politics, and while true to an extent, this trope does not take into account recent history. For a while, the grip of the public schools was loosened, with Wilson, Heath, Thatcher, Major, Brown and May all grammar school boys (and girls). It can be no coincidence these all went to school roughly between the 1930s and 60s, a period of expansion in selective education. Since then, the picture changes dramatically. What do Blair, Cameron and Johnson all have in common? The answer is depressingly obvious. Among the next generation, the picture is hardly better: Rishi Sunak, Winchester; Jeremy Hunt, Charterhouse.  

There are few things more tedious in journalism or politics than a writer opining about their own childhood, either in self-pity or promotion. We all know that Sadiq Khan’s father drove a bus, but this does not excuse the fact that the mayor cannot make London’s buses run on time.  Still, the briefest examination of my own education is instructive. I hail from a relatively modest background, but my parents made sacrifices to allow me to be privately educated. Fifty years ago, under the excellent Direct Grants system, my school was effectively a grammar, the state paying the fees of working-class scholars. In 1972, it sent nearly twenty people to Oxbridge. Last year, it managed only one. Grammar schools are not just fairer than private schools then – they are better.

Before examining any counter-arguments to my proposal, I shall briefly run through the history of selective education in Britain. There had been establishments known as ‘grammar schools’ since Elizabethan times; yet the modern system truly began in 1944 with the Education Act, stemming from the same basic ideas as the Welfare State. By the mid-1960s, there were over 1300 scattered right across England. Alumni include Alan Bennet, David Attenborough, and Michael Portillo. The initial plan had been to set up three kinds of schools: the grammars, the ‘secondary moderns’, and the ‘technicals’. Of these, the third type never really became established.

Initially, the plan had attracted bipartisan support. However, by the Macmillan government, the Labour party had come to oppose the schools, and the Conservatives’ support for them was lukewarm. Harold Wilson came to power in 1964 with the intention to phase them out. Yet such was their popularity that he had to reach for a people-pleasing compromise. His party’s manifesto read ‘within the new system, grammar school education will be extended: in future no child will he denied the opportunity of benefiting from it through arbitrary selection at the age of 11’. No successive Conservative administration, despite the party never openly moving to abolish selection, has been bold enough to open more grammars, and the number has remained at around 150 for many years.  

The quote from Wilson’s manifesto captures the Left’s hostility, but also the reason for the futility of their position. Opponents of grammar schools have never denied their effectiveness at education; rather, they make an attack on the grounds of class and fairness. Why should the best education be restricted to a lucky few? What about those who miss out? This sentimentality, though well meaning, is fundamentally misplaced. The inevitable result of trying to provide ‘grammar school education for all’ was that the educational outcomes of all children were reduced to the standards of secondary moderns.  

This opposition to elitism and total unwillingness to treat people differently is deeply wrong. Firstly, it is a fact of life that not every child will benefit equally from a highly academic education. For some, a technical education will be much more rewarding and useful. In this respect, the abolition of grammar schools is closely linked to the lack of apprenticeships and practical training, and the ridiculous Blairite policy that 50% of children go to university. The failure of education in this country arises, not, as is often argued, from budget cuts, but from a boneheaded ideological insistence on the same style of education for all. It is for this reason that we see record graduate unemployment, at the same time as a critical shortage of electricians, plumbers, and engineers. This imbalance in skills is one of the main contributors to our low economic productivity and slowing growth.

However, even if an academic education was for everyone, it is not the case that abolishing grammar schools has reduced class distinctions. Quite the contrary, in fact. As the columnist Peter Hitchens has often pointed out, we have simply replaced selection by ability with selection by postcode. The wealthy have simply moved to the catchment areas of the best state schools, bringing with them private tutors and the best teachers. This in turn reduces for the quality of schooling in poorer areas. A recent report by the IFS[1] has shown that basing admissions on proximity to a school is the biggest driver of inequality between wealthy and deprived families. Oxford and Cambridge often celebrate the fact that admissions are increasingly from state schools; but this claim ignores the fact that this is often only a small minority of state schools, dominated by the wealthy. Grammar schools, while not perfect, at least provided some check on the ‘postcode lottery’.  

As so often, a utopian ideal from the Left sounds good in theory, but in reality only exacerbates the problem it claims to solve. Such policies have been called ‘luxury beliefs’[2]: the middle-class votes for socialist policies in order to ease their conscience, while the poor must suffer the adverse consequences of such policies. Among these can be counted calls to ‘defund the police’: a luxury when one can afford private security, but a grave injustice considering that crime hits the poor the hardest. A similar story with the ‘marriage gap’. Marriages are nearly 50% more common among the elites.[3]Intellectuals hypocritically pontificate on the oppressive nature of the institution, while ordinary people learn the consequences of broken families and absent fathers.

It is wrong to make polarising generalisations about politics. Nevertheless, it is increasingly true that the left burns with righteous indignation, labelling its foes ‘Tory scum’ and the like, while the right cowers guiltily, lacking confidence in the strength of its beliefs. For most Conservatives, and indeed conservatives in general, the best we can say for ourselves is ‘yes we may be evil, but at least we care about a strong economy’. This must change. Grammar schools are just one example of a policy which can truly benefit the underprivileged.

The present government is in a unique position to build on the new ‘Blue Wall’ and deliver real improvements to people’s lives. However, tragically, it has drawn the conclusion that the only way to do so is to accept the tenets of socialism: higher spending, state control, egalitarianism. It is time to win back the battle of ideas. When the left cries ‘equality’, we must reply ‘aspiration’. When they accuse us of being cold-hearted, we say that they are unrealistic. Let us fight utopianism with pragmatism, pessimism with optimism.  

What better way to return to the path of true conservatism than to recognise the mistake of fifty years, and reintroduce grammar schools? This will allow us to build on the good work done under the Gove reforms in weakening the power of local councils and toughening up exams. Yet we must go further. Half a century of progressivism in education should be replaced by a truly conservative emphasis on standards, empirical knowledge, and discipline. As ‘Britain’s strictest headmistress’, Katharine Birbalsingh,[4] has shown in her school, this method drastically improves outcomes, especially among the poorest.

Only by recognising that conservatism is about more than simply economics, and by accepting that we should be proud of our principles, not hide them, can we begin to save Britain from decline. If Boris Johnson wishes to survive, this is what he must do. If not, I suggest we replace him with someone who can.  

Charles Chadwick (The Publications Editor) is a first-year undergraduate at St Anne’s College reading Literae Humaniores.

[1] E. Greaves & L. Sibieta, ‘Estimating the effect of teacher pay on pupil attainment using boundary discontinuities’, IFS Working Paper W14/03 (2014).

[2] https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-status-symbol-for-rich-americans/.

[3] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-marriage-gap.

[4] Headmistress of the Michaela Community School, Wembley, and chair of the Social Mobility Commission.