Bring back grammar schools to help the poor, says Davis

Posted: Wed 24 Jun 2009 9 16 am

Bring back grammar schools to help the poor, says David Davis

David Cameron is facing a fresh row over grammar schools after an extraordinary challenge to Tory policy by his one-time leadership rival David Davis.

The former shadow home secretary, who went to grammar school, insisted only a return to selective education could 'rescue the next generation of the underprivileged'.

'The simple truth is that grammar schools were the greatest instrument for social mobility ever invented,' he said. In what will be seen as a thinly-veiled swipe at Eton-educated Mr Cameron's privileged upbringing, he said the only winners from the 'catastrophe' of the death of grammars were public school boys who now 'run Britain'.

Mr Davis, who quit as shadow home secretary last year to campaign on civil liberties, has been careful not to voice criticism of the Tory leadership since then.

But his decision to reopen the toxic issue of grammar schools, which triggered an angry rebellion by Tory MPs early in Mr Cameron's leadership, will be seen as a declaration of war.

Mr Davis told the Mail he was also planning to speak out on other issues, such as the need for public spending cuts.

'I think the public are smarter than we sometimes give them credit for,' he said.

'They want to hear us debate these issues such as education, public spending and defence sensibly and intelligently, and that's what I intend to do.'

Right-wing MPs remain angry at Mr Cameron's decision to drop his party's long-standing commitment to academic selection.

The Tory leader said in 2007 he was 'determined to move on from a sterile debate about building a few more grammar schools'. He insists there will be no return to the 11-plus under a Tory government.

But speaking at a debate last night, Mr Davis, who went to Bec Grammar School in Tooting, South London, said it was clear selective education delivered better results for all.

'Every chance I had was created by that grammar school,' he said.

'And that is what grammar schools have done for hundreds of thousands of children from poor homes, council estates, even broken homes, through the postwar years.

'The charge against the grammar school is that they helped the brightest at the expense of the weaker child. The truth about the comprehensive system is that it failed the best without helping the weak.'

Mr Davis said it was self-evident that selective systems produced better results.

Some 70 per cent of children in selective education get five good GCSEs against 60 per cent in comprehensive systems, he said.

'However you measure it, selective systems deliver better results for the whole community,' he added.

Mr Davis blamed Britain's descent to the bottom of the international league table in social mobility on the death of grammars.

'Today we are witnessing the results of a failed revolution, where egalitarians abolished grammar schools to level opportunity in our society, and accidentally destroyed the chances of the very people they were trying to help,' he said.

'They punished the bright poor kids who were held back. They handicapped the intellectual capacity of the country.

'And out of this catastrophe there was only one winning group. Do you know who they were?

'Yes, the public schools. Who teach just 7 per cent of the population.'

Mr Davis said public school boys now 'run Britain', adding: 'The media, the law, business - they are all dominated by public school boys.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1195116/Bring-grammar-schools-help-poor-says-David-Davis.html

Posted: Wed 24 Jun 2009 3 14 pm

This has been obvious for many years .... but it needed saying. The working class has been betrayed by the closure of this means of social mobility, and - wickedly - the many recipients of this advantage have pulled up the ladder behind tham.

Memorably, the former cabinet minister and Salford MP, Hazel Blears, remarked that she went to grammar school, while her brother did not. "I am a cabinet minister, and he drives a bus". I am not sure she drew the obvious conclusion from this.

But it is a "no-brainer", isn't it?

Joined: 11 Jul 2006 Posts: 1237

these MPs never seem to express ideas regarding the majority who will fail the 11+ though

Posted: Wed 24 Jun 2009 8 11 pm

mac1 wrote:

these MPs never seem to express ideas regarding the majority who will fail the 11+ though

Presumably they would stay in the same system/schools we currently have?

If so, they would also benefit as their teachers would have more time for them (as class sizes could be reduced by 10% or so).

Posted: Thu 25 Jun 2009 6 14 am

But it would be better to have some Secondary Moderns, too. In the good ones, non-academic children had their interest engaged by subjects such as metal-work and car maintenance for the boys, and cookery and sewing for the girls.

These days this would need to be updated, but the principle remains. I am sure one of the reasons for under-performance and discipline problems is that school is "boring" for these pupils.

Posted: Thu 25 Jun 2009 8 04 am

Bestbear wrote:

But it would be better to have some Secondary Moderns, too. In the good ones, non-academic children had their interest engaged by subjects such as metal-work and car maintenance for the boys, and cookery and sewing for the girls.

These days this would need to be updated, but the principle remains.

Indeed, the boys could be taught shelf stacking & car valeting and the girls childcare and cash register operation & 'airdressin'.

Burger flipping could be offered to all in the interests of equality. Wink

Bestbear wrote:

I am sure one of the reasons for under-performance and discipline problems is that school is "boring" for these pupils.

Joking aside, I think you're right.

My middle child is bored in school. He is never going to be an accountant, lawyer or whatever. He has said himself that he couldn't be stuck behind a desk or in an office all day.

He's 13 now, has all the basic skills pretty much mastered and, imo, would be better served by learning practical & vocational skills that might be more suited to him in future.

Posted: Thu 25 Jun 2009 8 24 am

mac1 wrote:

these MPs never seem to express ideas regarding the majority who will fail the 11+ though

But don'tyou think, Mac, that it could be that our present educational mess has arisen precisely because MPs and "educationalists" have been soley focussed on this "majority who will fail the 11+", trying to turn them into academics when they would be far happier learning plumbing and motor mechanicry?

IMHO Blair's nonsensical target of sending half the country to University is the final reductio ad absurdam of this obsession.

We might ask ourselves, instead "What does this country need?"

My guess- and it is just a guess - is that we need about fifteen percent to be university educated (many of them engineers and scientists) , with the majority of our young people to be leaving education as potentially skilled tradesmen, service providers and the like.

Posted: Thu 25 Jun 2009 9 07 am

Bringing back the grammar school is the only way to give poor children a chance. And I should know!

By Andrea Kon

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1195349/Bringing-grammar-school-way-poor-children-chance-And-I-know.html

Two old school friends and I are planning a very special party. It's a school reunion for the class of 1956 - 110 people selected to study at Kingsbury County Grammar School in North-West London more than half a century ago.

We survived the trauma of the 11-plus examination to win our prized grammar school places and on that first, windy September morning, we stood in the playground, knowing only a few of the others who'd come with us from primary schools.

Looking back at those slightly bewildered children waiting to be allocated to their classrooms, there could be no finer example to prove Tory maverick David Davis's theory of how grammar schools 'rescued a generation of underprivileged children' than to look at what happened to us, the class of '56.

We were the pre-baby boomer generation, from diverse backgrounds, born to parents who were fighting to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of war. Some of us knew real poverty. Real deprivation.

There were those living in pre-fabs intended to last five years but which lasted 20. There were those whose homes were rented flats in rundown properties, managed by unscrupulous landlords.

My own parents had both left school at 14: my father to become a policeman during the war, later joining his brother's dressmaking firm; my mother to find work as a shop assistant before raising a family and, alas, becoming crippled by arthritis.

Yet, as children, my school friends and I were blissfully unaware of 'class differences'. And the main reason for that was that we were all, in one sense, equal. We had been given the same educational opportunity by dint of our own academic achievement, rather than as a result of our parents' pockets.

The local authority's offer of places at our grammar school enabled us to receive a first-class education on a par with the finest that private and public schools could offer. Of course, we didn't know that then.

Nor did we realise what that privileged education would mean for our futures. How it would lift us beyond a 'class war'. How it would enable us to reach above expectations of manual or blue-collar jobs - working in factories, offices or on a shop floor. How far it would take us, thanks to our own efforts and that of our dedicated teachers.

Yet now these beacons of educational excellence have been dimmed - or extinguished for ever. Only 164 grammars remain today - and these are constantly under threat as the Government seeks to impose its 'one size fits all' educational policy across the board.
David Davis MP, another ex-grammar schoolboy, who has called for their revival, saying they are 'the greatest instrument for social mobility ever invented'

Nor does the Tory leadership offer much hope. David Cameron remains unwilling to stand up for any form of selective entry school, fearful of being branded an elitist or highlighting his own educational privilege.

No matter that as David Davis (himself a grammar school boy) pointed out: 'However you measure it, selective systems deliver the best results for the whole community.'

No matter that grammars were - and are - the single most effective way of encouraging aspiration, endeavour and social mobility. Better, it seems, to deny these simple truths than to upset the educational establishment.

Yes, the same educational establishment which has betrayed generations of children through its hatred of grammars, and which remains in utter ignorance of the travesty it has wrought.

You'll know the arguments by now - that grammars were unfair to children who were 'stuck' with lousy prospects if they went to the secondary moderns or technical colleges.

Even today, with falsified exam grades unable to disguise the true scale of Britain's educational decline, they fail to see how their determination to impose the comprehensive system has dumbed down all schools rather than encouraging successful ones to prosper.

To be sure, we in the Kingsbury class of '56 were envied by those who went to the nearby secondary moderns. But they were by no means 'trapped' by their so-called 'failure' to pass the 11-plus, the exam so hated by the reformist zealots.

They had another chance to move upwards and over to the grammar school for A-levels and sixth form, if they worked hard to pass their O-levels.

The fact is, all the children in our part of town learned important lessons from the existence of our grammar school - and not all of them academic. We learned that if you worked hard and applied yourself, anything was possible. For some, like me, that transformation started with the first day at Kingsbury.

During our first school assembly (we had them every morning) and for the next seven years, we stood in the oak-panelled school hall and were invited to look up at the wooden scholarship boards bearing witness to the academic successes of those who'd gone before us.

Our headmaster, Mr Jones, resplendent in his graduation gown and mortar board, told us then, and many times afterwards, just how privileged we were to be here, in this august institution - and we were.

All our teachers taught by example - not only when it came to the strict dress code. We were taught, through mutual respect, that concentration paid dividends; that if we set our sights high enough, we could reach the sky. It was a matter of reaching for the highest denominator, not sinking to the lowest.

<snip>

Among our number are doctors, teachers, lawyers, chemists, academics, singers (and, yes, a few rogues too).

As we all exchanged emails, someone wrote: 'There must have been something very special about the Year of '56. We became members of a unique club by dint of the whims of the 11-plus and a local authority.'

In truth, we weren't that unique. We were ordinary children, with a modicum of academic ability, who'd been encouraged to make the most of our lives through education. If that's not the best way to bring about social progress, I don't know what is.

Grammar school raised us, nurtured us and gave us an opportunity in a hard world.

I only hope David Davis will succeed in his campaign to bring back grammars and thus offer my own grandchildren that same chance to shine.

Joined: 11 Jul 2006 Posts: 1237

Bestbear wrote:

mac1 wrote:

these MPs never seem to express ideas regarding the majority who will fail the 11+ though

But don'tyou think, Mac, that it could be that our present educational mess has arisen precisely because MPs and "educationalists" have been soley focussed on this "majority who will fail the 11+", trying to turn them into academics when they would be far happier learning plumbing and motor mechanicry?

IMHO Blair's nonsensical target of sending half the country to University is the final reductio ad absurdam of this obsession.

We might ask ourselves, instead "What does this country need?"

My guess- and it is just a guess - is that we need about fifteen percent to be university educated (many of them engineers and scientists) , with the majority of our young people to be leaving education as potentially skilled tradesmen, service providers and the like.

I think the people who introduced the 1944 Education Act, did ask themselves:"what does this country need?" so they came up with the tripartite system of which the grammar schools were only one of 3 types of schools as opposed to a stand alone solution proposed from time to time by Tory MPs.

Posted: Thu 25 Jun 2009 10 48 pm

I would be very pleased if we returned to the 1944 education act's provisions, Mac. I am pleased that you would like that too.