The Truth about the Grammar Schools in Britain

by Fred Naylor and Roger Peach, England

Having recently changed its Constitution to gain more public support in the 114 LEAs [Local Education Authorities] which are fully comprehensive, the National Grammar Schools Association has published a new pamphlet, The Truth About Grammar Schools by Fred Naylor and Roger Peach. This explains why state-school parents should be able to choose between selective/differentiated and comprehensive secondary schools. The authors make it clear that although educational standards are highly important, the underlying issue is the conflict between two ideologies.

Dealing with educational standards first, the pamphlet describes the sixth form crisis, which had emerged by 1978 and was fully recognised by Stuart Maclure, who was then editor of the Times Educational Supplement. It was caused by trying to maintain too many separate sixth forms and widely dispersing bright pupils and their specialist teachers. Already, between 1962 and 1978, the percentage of school leavers from maintained schools with 2 or more A-levels was much greater in the non-comprehensive sector (the overall average superiority of the non-comprehensive sector was 52%).

The inferiority of the comprehensive system is much more striking today and the full evidence is revealed in Chapters 4 and 5. Furthermore, recent figures published by Lord Adonis show that there is little difference between the nation’s comprehensives and secondary moderns in respect of the percentages of their fifteen-year-old pupils gaining 5+ GCSE grades A*-C (51.4% and 42.3% respectively). Much more shocking – and nationally disastrous – is the comparison of the total number of pupils in grammars and in comprehensives gaining higher A-level grades in academic subjects (including maths, physics and chemistry). 164 grammar schools gain around half the numbers obtained by 2000–3000 comprehensive schools!

NFER research commissioned by Anthony Crosland in 1972 revealed that only 1 out of the 11 fully developed comprehensive schools examined came at, or above, the national average in respect of the proportion of pupils gaining 2 or more A-level passes. This clearly demonstrates that it was ideology that underlay comprehensivisation – the aim was equality of results as opposed to equality of opportunity. (The former can only be achieved by handicapping more able pupils and abolishing competition.)

Today’s parents have legal rights to have education for their children in conformity with their own philosophical convictions. They should, therefore, all have the opportunity to choose between a comprehensive and a differentiated system, wherever they live. The compulsory social mixing taking place in the 114 LEAs, which do not offer a differentiated secondary system, is totalitarian in character. It should also be noted that there are two versions of the comprehensive principle. The second one is designed to affect moral rather than academic standards, and its supporters rightly claim that there are two different views on the nature of the child.

Former education secretary Charles Clarke recently warned against allowing ideology to penetrate the examination of evidence. Unfortunately, he has been guilty of it himself (see Chapter 3). Indeed, such ideological bias is very widespread amongst those with political views on the subject of comprehensive schools. Roy Hattersley, Alan Rusbridger (editor of the Guardian), Tim Brighouse, Baroness Blackstone and two successive education permanent secretaries are all guilty of allowing their ideology to interfere with their judgment of academic success. This has had disastrous consequences for secondary education.

The Truth about Grammar Schools by Fred Naylor and Roger Peach costs £5 including postage from the National Grammar Schools Association (to which cheques should be payable), c/o Specialist Business Services Ltd, 91 High Street, Brackley, Northamptonshire, NN13 7BW.