Eleven plus minus
What a difference a decade makes.
Ten years ago the Labour Party conference was delighted to hear this ringing decaration: "Watch my lips. No selection - by examination or interview." It was the reassurance the party needed to pull back from defeating their leadership (and you can see the video of it right here).
With victory in the bag the man who uttered those words made clear that he hadn't meant to suggest Labour was going to stop the selection going on now. Tush tush. No, he was saying that there'd be no more selection if Labour were elected.
Many in the Labour Party felt betrayed. Wind forward a decade and we find the prime minister standing next to the Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, declaring that "under Labour there will be no return to selection at the age of 11" - words that have not proved enough to reassure Labour backbenchers including a man called David Blunkett who (yes, you remember it now) uttered the "watch my lips" promise.
Mr Blunkett has, I'm told, made his concerns clear in a series of backbench meetings with Ruth Kelly. He will not, perish the thought, speak out (yet) or rebel, but he wants to "act as an honest broker" between the backbenches and the government to bring about "appropriate concessions".
When it comes to selection, words will clearly no longer do for those who've heard them and even uttered them before.
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Selection at the age of 11 produced most of the "better educated" MP's; politicians are so frightened to tell it as it is, preferring to churn out the politically correct, majority pleasing statements that they think will keep their seats on the gravy train. They should look at 50% of what Margaret Thatcher said / proposed; or should I have said Ignore 50% of what Margaret Thatcher said. Which would be more politically correct?
The elephant in the room here is that Labour is encouraging the most invidious form of educational selection - selection by postcode and, therefore, by wealth.
Nick Robinson's comments about Labour and "Read My Lips" reminds me of "Read My Lips" by the Republican and Democratic Leadership [in America]. This article should be read in the USA since "Read My Lips" [in US Politics by the same two "traditional" parties] have translated into "the same broken promises", "the same scratched grammophone records". In the meanwhile, issues [such as Health Care Problems] have been languishing. There has to be a renovation in America where Words are transformed into action.
The battle lines are being drawn. The armies of the disenherited left are arrayed against the over-inherited right. Will the offspring of these two great principled sides be cushioned by the soft might of the comprehensive, or thined by the selective grammars?
Trouble is, most kids dont fit into either camp really. If the kids are a bit more than average in the brin department they do okay in comprehensives, but the resources and backing to do briliiantly are missing. If we take away the comprehensives the only-average kids that miss out on the grammar run the risk of being left in the cold completely.
Basically - neither system works properly. We just end up sliding the problem up and down the intellectual scale. But this is what the MPs will waste our money arguing over. If they really want to do something special, then come up with a new system. There must be something that makes a bit more sense!
How about one that selects by ability at 14 or 15 when kids choose their GCSE or vocational courses? Then it is the kids that are choosing where they want to go to succed, not either Blunket or Blair.
I have never understood the argument that the only way to get a working class person a good education is to stop a upper middle class person getting a good education. Apply the wrong agument to a bad sytem and you will get a useles solution - or our current education system, if you prefer.
The fact is that selection works. I was fortunate and hard working enough to get into the local grammar and it was one of the most important points in my life. The old-lefties like Blunkett can complain all they like, but ruling out any form of selection is a sure fire way to ensure generations of bright students being subdued by the mediocre and poor ones. Fair dues to Cameron for sticking with Blair on this one - getting selection in schools and hastening the departure of Blair... two birds, one stone.
There seems to be a worrying conflation in the media and on the Labour benches between "selection" and "restoring the grammar school system".
In a system based around parental chocie, as the White Paper appears to suggest, schools can set their own admissions polcies - but not on academic criteria. Instead schools could set criteria relating to locality or faith, for example.
It's about them determining their own character, and if that's one that delivers results, and appeals to parents then they succeed.
Simply railing against the strawman argument about grammar schools totally ignores this.
Selection does not work. I was unfortunate and hard working enough to get into the local grammar. Along with many of my classmates, I suddenly found that, from being one of the brightest in the class at primary school, I was now barely mediocre. Clearly this is not good for an 11-year old's self esteem. The attitude of the staff didn't help: results were everything and the personal development of pupils completely ignored.
I left after GCSEs to go to a comprehensive sixth form and it was the best decision I ever made. I would never send my own children to a selective school and I strongly believe that those with potential are able to succeed in a comprehensive environment.
The idea of David Blunkett acting as a 'honest broker' is a rather amusing one I must say.
It will be interesting to see if Cameron does back the Bill, as I expect many of his party will be urging him to oppose it. Another defeat for Blair in the Commons must surely hasten his departure as PM? I thought the Tories wanted to face Brown?
Nick should dig out the video footage of Brown at the Labour Party Conference before they got elected, announcing "An end to the Means Test!"
What a sad joke that was.
Here in Lancashire, the issue is made more acute by the presence of sectarian (Anglican and Catholic) schools. Lancaster has some 40,000 people. Its biggest secondary is Anglican, and apart from two grammars it also has a Catholic secondary. They all select, the local comps get the academically least able, and hey presto: proof that comps don't work!
In a country where so few people attend church (many of them only to get places in the right schools), our taxes should fund schools to which we can all send our children without 'church attendance' tests. America has the world's strongest Christian commuity, without such a system.
What about selection by behaviour?
I went to a comp and the only real problem was that 80% of students had their classes pulled down by the other 20%. And most of those kids wouldn't act up if they weren't kept with the most troublesome 5% of the school.
These 5% kids held everyone else up by disrupting and delaying classes, spoiling it for everyone else. Now if we could select THEM out of the mainstream we'd see massive improvements. One reason why grammars were successful was because they could bump down the ones who did nothing but play up.